Julie Powell is a bored, 30-year-old secretary living in a rundown apartment in Queens. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, so she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes, in the span of one year. But she comes to realize there's more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the eye.