I am not a big fan of diet book but it happened to be there at a garage sale (lunch time at work) and I heard about it a lot. So I picked it up, along with two beefy novels and an Israelian music CD for $2 each.
First of all the author claimed it was not a diet book. It was more about how to enjoy food and life. In other words, she tried to introduce a lifestyle, or even more so, a philosophy.
This philosophy, as far as I understand, is to make friends with your food, as long as they are fresh and of high quality. For her nothing is a taboo, no matter it is bread, cheese, meat or chocolate. Of course the key is to eat a small amount, e.g. fish/meat has to be less than 150g per serving--now I finally understand who would pay for bird-feed amount of food at a dear price in those fancy restaurants, French!
I had to admit the book is a disappointment. Nothing wrong with her ideas but it is just boring. To be fair it is because in some ways Chinese women, at least this one, has already been practicing what she advocated. I like to spend a lot of time on food, shopping, experimenting/cooking, and chewing. I would love to grow my own food if possible. I always try to eat moderately--MM always wondered how I managed to keep fit with at least a couple of Ben & Jerry in my freezer. The answer: I eat them as treat, not as staple food.
On the other hand the book offers some "soothing" feeling along with boredom. It is good to know other people do similar things (except for the wine part, unlike French I hardly drink) and they too manage to keep fit and more importantly happy. By the way I also share the same idea towards exercises with the author: we are not gym-goers and prefer to stay fit by keep moving around. I walked to work everyday and that is 40 minutes of exercise in total. Perhaps gym is a more effective way to go, but somehow a gym-scene always reminds me of the movie "Modern Times", where Chaplin moved like crazy by an assembly line...
So, boring but soothing, what else? Right, the author is a bit snobby for my taste. The book is full of French to start with, and she kept on mentioning fancy brands or dishes. Not her fault or course, she is a French after all and the CEO of Clicquot, Inc. But I have to say some of her suggestions are not so realistic. For example, she recommends to go to a fresh food market for food, that part is not too bad, but, listen to this, THREE TIMES A WEEK! I am not sure how possible that is for most full-time working ladies. Not for me, that's for sure; even if I can handle, the farmer's market in Canberra only opens once a week.
The book did inspire me to do a couple of things: 1) eat more diverse good. I think I am doing pretty good, especially in the fruit and veggie department but there are things that we don't normally touch, e.g. leeks. 2) buy a yogurt machine. If there is anything MM and I would fight about it will be yogurt. To this date we haven't found anything as satisfactory as the American "Australian style" yogurt here yet. Perhaps it is time to make an investment.
A new idea just popped into my mind--How does leek-yogurt smoothie sound?
"Umm," MM said.
No comments:
Post a Comment