In Pursuit of the "Magical Breakfast"

One of the first (THE first, perhaps?) books I read on French lifestyle was French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure by Mireille Guiliano, former CEO of the luxurious Veuve Clicquot.  In this first of her six book, Ms. Guiliano introduces the simple secrets of the "French paradox" of how French women enjoy their food all the while staying slender and healthy.  

One of Ms. Guiliano's "secret weapons" in her arsenal of tricks and recipes is introduced in her fourth book, The French Women Don't Get Fat Cookbook .  The recipe is for her "Magical Breakfast Cream" and has come to be one of my breakfast staples as well as go-to snack.  There are many variations to this recipe- an entire page of tips and tricks to help you find your own favorite version is included with the original recipe!  The recipe below is the version that I make and have varied little from over the years:

Ingredients:

• About 1/2 Cup of plain, fat-free yogurt
• 1 teaspoon flaxseed oil
• Juice of half a lemon (I love Meyers but any yellow will do)
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 2 tablespoons raw rolled oats
• Half a dozen walnuts

Ok, so this definitely looks like more than 1/2 a cup of yogurt... which means I will make up for it by using more of the other ingredients.

Start by mixing the flaxseed oil into the yogurt.  Squeeze the juice from one lemon half and mix completely.  Add the honey and mix completely.  Ms. Guiliano states that "It is important to add each ingredient one at a time and mix well to obtain a homogeneous preparation."   

Next, prepare the oats and walnut mixture.  I add my 2-3 tablespoons of oats and half a dozen walnuts to my chopper and chop away.  I actually do this a few times and keep the mixture in a jar in my fridge.  This really helps save time!  Sprinkle a few tablespoons of the mixture over the top of your honey and enjoy!

So, why does Ms. Guiliano call this recipe "Magical?"  In addition to the benefits of detoxifying lemon juice and high-fiber flaxseed oil, it's a perfectly complete breakfast that will keep you from getting hungry until lunch.  Substitute this for a week after a more indulgent period of time (ahem, Christmas holidays, anyone?), along with omitting two other "offenders" (foods you tend to consume out of proportion) for the week and see if you don't say good-bye to pounds that accumulated during said time.  

All Photos ©Fiona Diaz, 2016

In Pursuit of Authentic French Cooking

I (along with everyone else who had not already done so) fell in love with Julia Child after seeing the 2009 film, Julie and Julia.  The movie inspired me in more than just cooking; it was the inspiration to start my blog!  Even though I knew it would be silly to copy Julie Powell's idea of cooking through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I was intrigued about how easy or difficult Mrs. Child's recipes truly were.

A few years later, I decided to try cooking through her TV series, "The French Chef."  While her recipes didn't seem necessarily difficult, they were all rather time-consuming.  I started saving them for weekend entertaining, when I would have the luxury of a few hours to cook a meal.  While I didn't cook through every episode (sadly, Amazon gradually removed the Prime Instant Video of "The French Chef," first seasons 2-10, and ultimately all of the seasons), I did find a few "go-to" recipes that I knew were fool-proof and would always turn out tasty.

"Casserole Roast Chicken"

I was quite disappointed when I discovered Amazon no longer had any of the episodes available on Prime and decided to read Mrs. Child's biography, My Life in France.  It starts just like the movie, with her and her husband, Paul Child's arrival in Paris.  It did take me a little while to get in to it, as most of it is written as she would speak: not always coherently, and sometimes jumping around from thought to thought.  About half-way through, I started to really get into it.  I enjoyed reading the back stories of the different French Chef episodes- I could read about her traveling to to visit Professor Raymond Calvel and learning proper techniques to make French bread and follow it with the episode she filmed covering her lesson.  This was especially fun to do with the "Pressed Duck Dinner" recipe, where in the book she documented traveling to Rouen to film the ritual at one of her favorite restaurants, La Couronne.

Most recently, I was listening to a podcast of The Splendid Table's 20th anniversary show where Lynne Rossetto Kasper replays an interview of Julia Child from their first episode.  The topic is summer barbecue meals, and Julia shares her recipe for Potato Salad along with a tip about most importantly making sure the potatoes are cooked correctly.  She also expresses her preference for Ground Chuck as her hamburger meat of choice and exclaims that she "Hates fake food- you can't have any fun with that!"  Lynn and Julia then have a brief conversation on the importance of moderation and their dislike of low-fat and fat-free products. Julia proclaims
that, "People are nutty who want to watch their fat or give it up entirely.  You can't have any fun eating that kind of a diet- all you can eat is vegetables and legumes and to hell with that is what I say!"