Julie Powell, food writer known for Julia Child cooking saga, dead from heart attack at 49

Julie Powell, the food writer known for her blockbuster writing project chronicling her attempts to cook the recipes of legendary American chef Julia Chid, died this week at age 49. 

Powell's husband Eric told the New York Times that the writer died from cardiac arrest. In the days before her death the writer posted on Twitter that she had woken up with a symptom called "black hairy tongue," which WebMD classifies as a "harmless" condition. 

The writer became famous in the early 21st century for her extended blog account of attempting to cook every recipe in the tome of Julia Child's 1961 cookbook "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." Powell's folksy self-deprecating approach to the project was met with praise from readers and home cooks; the blog was eventually turned into a book, and then a 2009 movie starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Powell. 

Child herself, prior to her death in 2004, was reportedly dismissive of Powell's humorously clumsy attempts to cook through the recipes of "Mastering." An exacting cook whose relentless refinement of the recipes in "Mastering" is the stuff of food legend, Child is alleged to have remarked: “I don’t understand how she could have problems with [the recipes]. She just must not be much of a cook.”

Powell followed up with another book in 2009, "Cleaving," which detailed difficulties in her marriage juxtaposed with food and cooking. 

She is survived by her husband, her brother and her parents.