French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes, & Pleasures
by: Mireille Guiliano
Published by: Vintage
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Reviewed by Jamie Driggers
If in French Women Don’t Get Fat, Mireille Guiliano taught women to rediscover the pleasures of eating and cooking, in French Women for All Seasons, she teaches them to rediscover (or discover for the first time) the fine art of joyful living, particularly in season.
One cannot help but savor the seasons right along with the author as she travels through her memories of each one—eating, playing, working, enjoying–each quirk and each joy. When she discusses the strawberry, I found myself six again, scouring my mother’s strawberry beds and gorging myself senseless (gorging, I’m sure, because I’m an American and hadn’t learned the fine art of savoring). I do know how those fresh tiny berries taste warm and full of the summer sun. And the remembering makes me desire a strawberry bed of my own for my children to savor and remember.
Packed with tips for eating and recipes to go along with it, as well as ideas for staying in good physical condition and looking “effortlessly chic,” all while experiencing joie de vivre, this book packs a lot of punch. It is apparent the author loves food. The way she waxes rhapsodic about asparagus nearly had me rushing to the store to see what it is I had been avoiding all these years. And oysters, mercy. And I am determined to dig myself out of the menu rut I’ve been dragging along in most of my adult life.
But it isn’t just about eating and food or even asparagus. More, I think it is about living life with balance and perspective. Buying yourself flowers to get through the winter and putting color into your life–not just putting in the days so much as getting life out of them. It is an encouraging book (unless your American-TV watching, French-fry-dunking toes don’t like a little stompage). It will make you crave more out of life and out of your food. And that has to be a good thing.
Armchair Interviews agrees: That is a good thing!
Author’s Web site: http://www.MireilleGuiliano.com
From our armchair to yours...
