The bestselling author Julie Powell, whose account of her attempts to execute each recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking served as the basis for the film Julie & Julia, died on October 26 at her New York residence. She was 49.

Her husband, Eric Powell, confirmed her passing to the New York Times and claimed that cardiac arrest was the cause of her death.

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The 2009 Nora Ephron-directed film adaptation of Powell’s book starred Amy Adams as Powell and Meryl Streep as Julia Child.

Soon after 9/11, Powell started a blog on Salon.com where she detailed her year-long quest to master all 524 of Child’s classic French cookbook’s recipes in her tiny Astoria, Queens kitchen. Powell was looking for a way to escape her mundane job as a temp in downtown Manhattan.

After the blog attracted a devoted following eager to share in Powell’s achievements and tribulations as she attempted to create difficult meals like Boeuf Bourguignon and a deboned duck for Canard en Croûte, the memoir Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen came into being.

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Following the success of the number-one bestseller, Powell published Cleaving: a Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession in 2009.

More recently, she wrote a number of criticism pieces for Salon earlier this year regarding the Food Network show The Julia Child Challenge.

Powell “truly made her own lane,” according to senior Salon writer Mary Elizabeth Williams, who once oversaw Open Salon, the website that housed Powell’s blog. “We were lucky enough to be the conduit.”

Powell’s adoration for Julia Child’s food and manner of life was at the core of his blog, which was subsequently the inspiration for the well-received movie.

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“Julia taught me what it takes to find your way in the world. It’s not what I thought it was,” Powell noted. “I thought it was all about — I don’t know, confidence or will or luck. Those are all some good things to have, no question. But there’s something else, something that these things grow out of. It’s joy.”