A trimmer waistline starts in the kitchen not with deprivation, believes New York Times bestselling author Mireille Guiliano. This philosophy serves as the theme of her latest book, French Women Don't Get Fat Cookbook. Previous books penned by Guiliano share advice and tips for women on getting the most from life without skimping on enjoyable foods such as bread, wine and chocolate.
“Diets are about deprivation. Don’t eat this. Don’t eat that. Do this. Don’t do that. I’m saying you can have it all, just pick your moments. Pick your portions. Eat at a table. Develop how to eat with your senses,” Guiliano says.
While her other successful books have included recipes, this is her first true cookbook but certainly not a diet book. In fact, it is a non-diet book. Following the viewpoint of moderation and not depriving oneself, Guiliano’s book advises on preparing meals at home and proper eating habits rather than specialized foods and avoidance. The dishes in the book include some items given a bad reputation in the US over the past few years.
Cooking is Key, Not Depriving
Maligned foods with carbs have a place at her table. “In China they don’t have bread, but they have rice. In Italy, they have pasta. The thing is, the body needs carbs. It was all of these diet books that promoted that. If you deprive yourself of carbs for a week, you’re going to lose a lot if weight but you can’t sustain that because your body cannot function without it. I go back to my philosophy of moderation. Just a little bit of everything is fine. You can eat anything, just not huge amounts.”
While moderation and portion control are important to overall weight management, Guiliano believes the biggest factor is cooking. “I want you to go to the kitchen and cook, that’s the main objective,” she says of her book.
Cooking is so much a vital component of her “you can have it all” philosophy, that she leads off the book by saying, “Cooking is a reality check.” By which, Guiliano means cooking leads to discoveries not readily found when taking the prepared food route for meals. “It really shows you what food is.” It also is a huge cost saver over purchasing premade or precooked foods. “It’s more economical and you can control what you put in it. Salt. Sugar. We don’t add any chemicals or [high fructose] corn syrup.”
Guiliano's Favorite Recipe – Magical Breakfast Cream
Of all the recipes in the book, Guiliano has a fondness for something called The Magical Breakfast cream, a mixture of yogurt or ricotta cheese, lemon juice, flax seed oil, unsweetened cereal, honey and nuts.
“It is a complete meal and it shows the French philosophy of what I call my Holy Trinity. Three meals a day and each meal has three things—carbs, proteins and fat.” For the cereal component, Guiliano recommends Post® Shredded Wheat. “I tested a lot cereal and I was appalled at what I saw on the boxes, between the high level of sugar and high level of sodium. To me, Post Shredded Wheat was the best thing and that’s what I use exclusively.”
Her other recommendation for Magical Breakfast Cream is to use homemade ricotta cheese. “I make my own ricotta cheese. I love it with ricotta. The one you make is so much lighter and airy than the one you buy. It gives it a totally different texture. Once you taste that you will never want grocery ricotta ever again. I promise you,” she states. A simple recipe for homemade ricotta is available on her website.
Above all, Guiliano wants readers of the book to experience food and to enjoy the relationship with it and get into the kitchen and cook.
Lisa Hechesky - With a background in communications and a passion for food and cooking, bringing together these two passions makes my heart sing. I ...
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