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Staying slim is NOT about counting calories or fat grams. || Staying slim is NOT about exercise exhaustion. || Staying slim is really about personal style
be chic, stay slim Anne’s Age: 65 You Can Be French Chic & Slim Anywhere 10 July 2009 || Bonjour! CORN PANCAKES Hot. Hot. Hot. The first forecast for today was for 107 degrees F. Then, it was revised — to 109. Oh dear! At 7:00 AM this morning, the air was still mild, and the strong breeze made my exercise walk pleasant. But by the time I finished the watering around 8:30, the sun on my arms felt as if I was standing too near the oven. The next few days temperatures are predicted to be in the 105 to 107 degree range. It worries me that we are seeing such scorching days in early July. If this is July, how hot will August be? Days like these I certainly don’t want to add extra heat to the house with baking. I was missing the cornbread I had been eating frequently for breakfast so I switched to corn pancakes.
You can use a dedicated corn pancake recipe, but I simply substituted cornmeal for half the flour in my regular pancake recipe. Quite tasty. The few minutes it took to cook the pancakes produced much less heat in the kitchen than if I had baked cornbread for 45 minutes at 400 degrees F. I doubled the corn pancake recipe and froze the extra pancakes to pop in the microwave for quick breakfasts on hot mornings. The corn pancakes taste as good with molasses as cornbread. be chic, stay slim — Anne Barone
5 July 2009 || Bonjour! JULY 4th INDEPENDENCE DAY Happy 4th of July weekend.
My son arrived in time not only to help celebrate my birthday, but to install the flag holder on the new house so Chez Anne could fly Old Glory to celebrate America’s birthday. Holiday Moderation I hope that those of you who celebrate the 4th of July are having a safe holiday weekend. And I hope you are remembering moderation when it comes to all those hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, ice cream, watermelon and other traditional goodies. For all your picnics be sure to include a big green salad and a plate of raw veggies (sans high cal dip) to the menu. The watermelon that made dessert on our 4th lunch was the seedless variety. To me seedless melons don’t have the flavor of the seeded ones, especially the Black Diamond variety that was the watermelon variety I ate most in my childhood. We lived about 40 miles from an area with a lot of watermelon farms. My grandmother was expert at thumping an uncut melon to judge its quality. Alas, like my grandmother’s ability with pie crust, watermelon thumping was not a feat I have ever been able to master with the same level of expertise. be chic, stay slim — Anne Barone
30 June 2009 || Bonjour! FARRAH FAWCETT’S HAIRSTYLE About three weeks after I went to live in Corpus Christi, Texas, I understood Farrah Fawcett’s famous hairstyle. In that “sparkling city by the bay” in all that fierce Gulf Coast wind and sun, for anyone who spent any time outdoors, their hair just seems to poof and sunstreak. After Farrah Fawcett became a star, a Los Angeles hairdresser got the credit for creating Farrah Fawcett’s feather cut hairstyle. But in Corpus Christi, the actress’s home town, the locals would tell you that a Corpus Christi hairdresser was doing that famous cut on Farrah’s locks years before when she was in high school and later when she attended the University of Texas. While living in Corpus Christi, I happened one night to find myself at a small dinner party at which the Farrah’s Corpus Christi hairdresser was also a guest. Since I was in the process of writing Chic & Slim and very focused on personal style, I naturally asked the hairdresser about her role in Farrah Fawcett’s famous hairstyle. The hairdresser was a modest woman. Though admitting that she cut Farrah’s hair in her pre-Hollywood days, she did not claim to have “created” the Farrah Fawcett hairstyle. I assume this was some tacit acknowledgment that though she did the scissor work, a certain role was played by the sun and wind of the “Texas Riviera.” She Really Tried Farrah Fawcett recently lost her battle with cancer. Her funeral in Los Angeles is today. The New York Times article about her by Alessandra Stanley began with the sentence: She really tried. And for a sex symbol that alone can be like an accomplishment. The article closed with: Not all of her performances will stand the test of time, but what is worth remembering is how hard Farrah Fawcett tried. Corpus Christi, Texas, especially the years Farrah Fawcett was growing up there was very “small town.” Those years I was living in Corpus Christi and writing Chic & Slim and then Chic & Slim Encore, I met a lot of people who had known Farrah Fawcett well — both when she was growing up there and when she was a student at the University of Texas in Austin. How hard Farrah Fawcett tried and how seriously she worked at whatever job she did was a constant theme in the remembrances of her. This surprised me. An attitude of serious effort is not usually a personality trait associated with sex symbols. For those of us who value individual personal style, Farrah Fawcett leaves us a useful lesson. While still in her teens, she took a natural luxurious mane of hair, chose a talented local hairdresser to cut her hair who made the effects of the local sun and wind an asset. Then, when Farrah Fawcett went to live elsewhere and began her rise to stardom, she kept that hairstyle that was so flattering to her and made it her signature style. Out of such processes do successful and memorable personal styles grow — when helped along by serious effort. When you have really tried. be chic, stay slim — Anne Barone 29 June 2009 || Bonjour! HOME COOKING My son drove to Texas to help celebrate my birthday. As he was backing out of his driveway, a neighbor hailed him to wish him a safe trip. “Going to visit your mom,” said the neighbor. “Guess you will be eating some good home cooking.” My son’s response: “Well, I guess you would call it home cooking — if your home is France.”
As for what the French are eating these days: More sandwiches. Sandwiches in themselves are not a big change. The French have long loved their sandwich au jambon et fromage. Thin slices of ham and cheese tucked into a well-buttered baguette. And then, of course, croque-monsieur and croque-madame. The problem isn’t necessarily sandwiches, but how they are eaten. If you haven’t read the article about the sandwich trend in France, it is at the link below. Le Sandwich Takes a Bite Out of French Tradition be chic, stay slim — Anne be chic, stay slim — Anne CONTACT INFO |
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