Love in Winnipeg - Being 60 (week 19 - by Margaret Ullrich)

Julie Powell should've come to Winnipeg.

Okay...  I got into blogging because of Julie Powell and her first book Julie & Julia.

  

I thought Julia's latest book Cleaving, which has as a subtitle "A story of marriage, meat, and obsession" would be a perfect book for this month's theme of Eat Pray Love.  Alright, not much praying, but 2 out of 3 ain't bad.

I mean, how much could a person change in a couple of years?

Hooo, boy.  Plenty.

Julie has a thing for butchers.  Unfortunately her long suffering, super patient husband Eric isn't a butcher.  D, Julie's lover, isn't a butcher, either, but that doesn't seem to matter.  He has, shall we say, other talents.

Julie goes to the Catskills to a family-owned butcher shop to learn the craft under the guidance of a delightful group of "meat hippies".  She gives lots of details on how to cut up cows, pigs and poultry.  Pages and pages of info.  Her lover dumps her.

She drinks a lot of booze.  

She eats a lot of meat.  

She developes carpal tunnel syndrome.

She decides to go on a quest.

Julie goes to Argentina, a country of cattle markets.  She watches the gauchos, goes to stockyards and has some fun with the butchers.  She drinks a lot of booze.  She eats a lot of meat.  She tells a fellow she's looking for "Whatever you've got."

Alrighty, then.

Julie goes to western Ukraine.  Some vampire thing.  She has some fun with the butchers. 
Oksana tells her, "We don't expect so much, maybe.  Or we're happier because we know what we want."  

Julie says, "Maybe."  She drinks a lot of booze.  She eats a lot of meat. 

And some raw pig fat.

Julie goes to Tanzania.  She lives in bomas.  She has some fun with the butchers. 
A woman asks, "What is the center of your life."  

Julie was hoping they'd tell her.  She's almost raped.  She eats a lot of meat.  She drinks a lot of booze. 

And some raw blood.  Cow and goat.

Julie goes back to New York.  Her husband Eric takes her back and makes some beef stew.  The way to a woman's heart... 
Julie makes a date to meet her ex lover.  He rattles off a grocery list of the crazy things she did.  She agrees she acted nuts.

Eric knows Julie met with D.  They hug.  They eat shrimp gumbo.  They drink a lot of booze.  Julie writes about her Jack the Ripper theory and goes back to work with the upstate butchers.  They chat about Eric and his girlfriend.

Oh, and there are recipes. 

  

What does all this have to do with love?

Maybe the women Julie met had it right.  Maybe Julie wants too much.  You have to be pretty well off to go on that trip just to watch butchers in action.  A person has to have a center in life.

And maybe, just maybe, a more balanced diet.