Vive la difference! French author lives well

By Alison Appelbe

Even if you haven't heard of Mireille Guiliano, you've heard of her book, French Women Don't Get Fat. Published in 2005, it surprised no one more than its French-born author by becoming a blockbuster, translated into 37 languages (including Arabic).

A second book, titled French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes & Pleasure (Random House Canada), has just come out. But if you're thinking "fluff," think again. This is the work of no-nonsense woman-by her own admission, something of a revolutionary.

In a phone interview from New York, Guiliano comes across not as a delicate, over-refined French femme consumed with eating well and maintaining her fine, 60-year-old figure (though these are certainly among her accomplishments), but as a forceful, well-rounded woman of determined spirit.

A sought-after spokeswoman for moderation, Guiliano is committed to helping everyone caught up in our gluttonous culture to eat well but sparingly, consume goods and services intelligently, exercise regularly but not fanatically, and enjoy every season of the year, even the coldest and least abundant. Above all, she implores us to make the most of life by practising old-fashioned discipline.

The success of French Women Don't Get Fat has clearly boosted her confidence. "Something must be done," she says of the North American leaning to sugar and fat-fuelled foods, and the resulting obesity. "Being fat not only damages your self-esteem, but it has health repercussions. This is an emergency.

"What stuns me with so many of my American friends-and they're bright people, very accomplished-is that when it comes to food they're a disaster.

"The other day I talked to a woman who said she hadn't cooked or set the table in months. I said, 'You have three children, how can you do this? What do you eat at night? And where?' She said, 'On the couch. We order pizza.'

"And I said, 'Do you want your children, when they grow up, to remember that they ate pizzas, on a couch, from cardboard? What is this?' I really gave her a hard time. I just have no patience for that. I don't want to be mean, but I want to show people what they're doing to themselves."

And yet Guiliano is sympathetic. "Yesterday I was at the airport in Orlando, and the plane was delayed," she continues (she's a great talker). "You have nothing to do, and you're surrounded by all these food outlets, and by people munching and eating and drinking. It takes something else to say, 'I'm not going to do this.'"

Guiliano has that "something else"-big-time. In French Women for All Seasons, she explains how she and her husband Edward employ the "50 per cent solution" to keep their alcoholic consumption under tight control.

She claims to drink a single glass of (presumably superb) wine or champagne on a daily basis. As for chocolate-her "drogue of choice"-she says (as if it needed saying), "a little square savoured goes a long way."

The backdrop to French Women for All Seasons is her childhood in a small city in Alsace, in northeastern France, where a large garden supplied the family kitchen with the fruits and vegetables that nurtured her appreciation of fine food.

The book includes dozens of her recipes of modest caloric content. They range from figs with ricotta in summer, through pears on brioche in autumn, to duck breasts sweet and sour in winter, and oysters on steamed leeks in spring (she's an oyster freak). She also provides sample menus for a (seasonal) week.

The fare is usually simple, fresh, and above all imaginative. Making the most of life by adventurously perusing the varied, foreign or just plain interesting, in other words maximizing the potential for pleasure, is another of Guiliano's themes.

She also describes how her father, who she calls "le pigeonnier," laid the foundations for her appreciation of the likes of frogs legs, foie gras and other French specialties that North Americans tend to eschew.

"My father prized his pigeons, but he did not sentimentalize them," she writes. "He was breeding birds with two purposes. One was the enjoyment of a young pigeon roti_ but my father's real love was the (homing pigeon) race."

As for the downside of showing others how to do it, she's tired of being accused of benefitting from the luxury of time. "People say, 'Oh it's so easy for you. You don't have children," she says on the phone. "But how do they now how hard I work? When I get home at 7:30 I'm tired and hungry. But I want to eat well. And all it takes a bit of planning. There are no excuses. You can make an effort."

Having mastered the art of living well, Guiliano now faces the challenge of protecting her privacy-a keystone of the relaxed and sophisticated lifestyle she shares with her slightly younger husband. (She blames, primarily, her appearances on Oprah and other major American talk shows for becoming a familiar face).

Edward will no longer accompany her to the weekend market in New York City out of a dislike of being approached and pestered.

"They want to take a picture," Guiliano says of her legion of fans. "Or in a restaurant they want to know what I ordered, or what they should order. Last summer, when we arrived in Provence [where the couple have a home], my husband said: 'We're finally here. Nobody's going to find you out.' Not true-it turned out."

But Guiliano would never succumb to fame. When a huge circulation lifestyles magazine asked to do an article on her clothes closet, she put her foot down. "I said, my closet is very well organized because I'm an organized person and I don't have very many clothes. But I'm sorry. No. As a result, I missed out on a big piece. You pay. But I'm willing to pay that price."

published on 04/04/2007