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Engaging stories of love, joy, comfort and friendship with proven scrumptious, healthy recipes, we celebrate LOVE as the secret ingredient for wonderful food!

Paula Deen and my fatness rant

January 18, 2012 by Mary Frances 9 Comments

Ok, I have to get on my soapbox now. Paula Deen has Type 2 diabetes!!! Duh!!! Are you kidding me? I mean, really, you are what you eat and if she’s surprised after eating all the butter, cream cheese, fried food and sugar she eats, she’s nuts. And believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time in the South. Southern cooking is not all that, or just that.

First of all, the fact that she hid it from her audience and fans  for three years is despicable. She had to get all her ducks in a row with whatever diabetes drug she decided to take, make the deal to negotiate to endorse it, and get the money from them. This is incredible! I think she is scum. (I won’t hold back.)

I have always told my children, look at the chef whose recipes you’re making. James Beard’s recipes were always loaded with butter, cream, mayo and everything fattening. He was huge. His recipes were incredibly tasty and frankly, not all of them were fattening. In fact, I still use his Canadian method for cooking fish as a standard.

Never to put her name in the same category as James Beard, as she is not a chef, I was watching Rachel Ray two weeks ago while making dinner with one of my sons. She was promoting four weeknight dinners with pork, each dinner for four people had a full stick of butter!!! That’s ridiculous. That’s two tablespoons of butter per person, per day, not counting the fats from the sausages and other cuts of meat, because she doesn’t drain the fat. Look at Nigella Lawson – I love her personality and I like a lot of her recipes – but you can’t eat like that all the time. Maybe just a few times a year. I splurged with Bobby Flay’s Nacho Burgers I made two weeks ago.

Now Melissa Clark and Mark Bittmann, they are both average-sized, slim people and their recipes speak to it. The article in The Times today talked about all the butter used in Michelin star restaurants like Bouley. But you don’t eat at Bouley but maybe once a year for a special occasion – at least for me – and these people – Paula and Rachel are encouraging folks to eat like this every night of the week. It’s absurd! And by the way, Thomas Keller of The French Laundry and Per Se is mighty thin, as the portions at his restaurants are small too. All of his dishes are just one or two bites. Chef Anthony Bourdain said that Paula Deen’s fatty food made her “the worst, most dangerous person” on the Food Network. It’s true, because she’s got all of America listening to her.

I even try to use less oil whenever possible. And I do love my olive oil. But if a meat recipe that calls for browning, calls for three tablespoons of olive oil, I try to do it with two. I even have a recipe for four chicken breasts that calls for one teaspoon of olive oil to brown the skin side, and believe me, it works!

Take a look at the line up of people waiting to get in to Paula Deen’s restaurant. You’re not surprised, are you?

Deen

Filed Under: Dinner Tagged With: (Anthony Bourdain, Bobby Flay, Bouley, Canadian method, Chinese herbs, James Beard, Mark Bittmann, Melissa Clack, Michelin stars, Nigella Lawson, Paula Deen, Per Se, Rachel Ray, Southern cooking, The French Laundry, Thomas Keller, Type 2 diabetes

Hop on the merry-go-round

October 6, 2011 by Mary Frances 2 Comments

So I’ve been cooking up a storm for four and a half years now, ever since my kids have grown, I don’t have help at home and we’ve moved back to the city which took place all at the same time. I will admit, as much as I’ve always loved to cook and always cooked up fancy 3-4 course meals on the weekends, this cooking every night business took some getting used to. This week, my son Zach (23) offered to cook on Wednesday, last night. Great!! I figured he’d do a simple ok dinner and I’d make a fuss about how wonderful it was, and be oh so appreciative of simply having an evening in which to get some other things done, like laundry and sewing a hook on a pair of pants.

Well let me tell you about his dinner!! At first he was going to make Chicken Cacciatore but then when we came home, he had the most beautiful boneless, skinless chicken thighs in a pan starting to brown, stuffed with mushrooms and goat cheese, each tied up beautifully in three areas with thin little string. They were so beautiful, I wanted to cry. He had decided on a Food and Wine recipe he found online.

Now let me tell you about the taste. He learned this weekend from a James Beard recipe where he was making a duxelles sauce, to squeeze the moisture out of the mushrooms. So he chopped the mushrooms for tonight, then put them through the garlic press to get all the moisture out and wow – it made for a truly rich, rich mushroomy taste that was divine!! The goat cheese added creamyness (I’m never going to lose weight) that was just yummy. He served this with steamed Basmati rice and sauteed dandelion greens with olive oil, garlic and lemon. My husband even told him that his dinner was like one of mine.

So you see, the love you put out always comes back to you tenfold. Cook! Spread the love to encourage others to as well.

Filed Under: Dinner Tagged With: James Beard

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Mary Frances

Mary Frances

Spread love through cooking.

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