3.4 out of 4 stars.
Ce livre est très drôle! For all of you that are not as skilled as moi at translating french (aka good at googling) this sentence means this book is very funny!
Guiliano is a french woman who lived a short period of time in the States when she was in high school. She LOVED it and felt the entire experience was nothing short of amazing. That is until she returned home and her father gasped when he saw her new American figure. In his words, she “looked like a sack of potatoes”. Guiliano had no idea how bad it had gotten but quickly realized that her father was not the only one that felt this way. Her mother immediately signed her up with a nutritionist that Guiliano lightly referred to as Dr. Miracle. The doctor said the only way for her to get back to her shape is to ditch the bad habits she picked up in the US and go back to her french roots. Why? French women don’t get fat!
Mireille fills each chapter with recipes and personal tips on how to slim down without dieting. She believes that everything can be handled with moderation, joy, and a simpler lifestyle. All I had to really hear was that no dieting was needed and I wanted to be signed up! Don’t have to tempt me with an easy shortcut.
Besides this being a cookbook with helpful suggestions it is also a delightful insider scoop to the French culture. What person doesn’t like to hear the romance of all that is Paris from an actual source? Guiliano paints her life to what most of dream of. It consists of champagne at lunch, eating hamburgers whenever she feels like it, and above all not worrying about her apperance every time she passes by a mirror. What would life be like!
A few of my mother’s closest friends are french and were kind enough to offer us a trip to their cottage on one of my college breaks. We were fed lots and lots of soup (even though it was 100 degrees!), bread (of course), and surprisingly fruit as a desert! I thoroughly enjoyed every piece of the french cuisine EXCEPT for the fish portions. Even though I am a New Englander it is still tough for me to throw in a piece of salmon into my diet as if it is chicken. Other than that I left the table feeling like I was still hungry but really I had more of a well balanced meal than I ever had in my past. It was just my devilish mind playing tricks on me. The same mind that convinces me that a slice of pizza is essentially a garnish rather than a meal. Je suis stupide!
I looked at this book as more of a lifestyle change rather than just recipes. If you loved, “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert I feel as though this is similar to that or if Martha Stewart got a sense of humor and wrote a book (heehee).
Check it out and bon appetit!
