SKINNY ITALIAN: REVIEW AND BONUS ENTRIES

SKINNY ITALIAN:
EAT IT AND ENJOY IT -
Live La Bella Vita and Look Great, Too!
by TERESA GIUDICE
with Heather Maclean

ABOUT THE BOOK:

To many of us, “diet” is a four-letter word. And rightfully so. Starving yourself thin or keeping track of each bite like pennies in your checkbook is no way to live. So what’s a girl with skinny jean dreams supposed to do?

Teresa Giudice has the answer. In fact, she was born with it. The first-generation Italian-American mom of four and svelte star of The Real Housewives of New Jersey credits her knockout figure to her Old World upbringing. And now, in her fun, encouraging, and budget-friendly cookbook, she skewers the myth that looking fabulous has to be a chore.

In Skinny Italian, she reveals how to:

• substitute tedious meal plans with simple, flavorful recipes
• choose fresh, flavorful ingredients instead of counting calories
• slow down and enjoy a faster metabolism
• replace starvation with celebration by adopting an Italian attitude to cooking, eating, and entertaining
• love food, love eating, and still love your body afterward

Teresa shows how anyone can master the cornerstones of Italian cuisine. Learn how to make six different tomato sauces from scratch, how to choose and use the right olive oil, and how to prepare over sixty Giudice family recipes straight from Salerno. From Gorgeous Garlic Shrimp to Beautiful Biscotti, you’ll want to make these sumptuous recipes again and again. Discover how easy and economical wholesome, homemade cooking can be.

Skinny Italian is not a diet book. It’s an “eat it and enjoy it” book. Join Teresa and discover how gorgeous can be a sumptuous side effect to living la bella vita.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Teresa Giudice is the star of The Real Housewives of New Jersey. After a career in the fashion industry, Teresa and her husband opened a restaurant in Hillside, New Jersey: Giuseppe’s Homestyle Pizzeria. Now, with her trademark spunk and charm, Teresa shows us how to cook delicious Italian meals and still fit into our skinny jeans!

Teresa Giudice is a true Jersey girl born and raised. Her parents emigrated from Italy and raised both Teresa and her brother Giuseppe, in an Italian Catholic home. She grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, where she met her "juicy" husband, Joe. The couple played house together as children, and have been married for more than ten years. Joe, an entrepreneur, owns several successful businesses throughout New Jersey.

Teresa is a true housewife, if there ever was one, devoting herself to her four beautiful daughters -- Gia, Gabriella, Milania and baby Audriana -- and managing the household while still managing to stay "fabulous!" She shuttles her girls to dance, gymnastics, acting, voice and guitar lessons, while always making sure her home is beautiful and there is homemade dinner at the table each night -- all without the help of a nanny, housekeeper or personal assistant.

Before becoming a housewife, Teresa earned a degree in Fashion Marketing and Management from Berkeley College. She worked in the fashion industry in New York as an associate buyer for Macys before deciding to stay home with her children. She is the owner of TG Fabulicious, an online boutique. Her first book, "Skinny Italian," a lifestyle title that teaches authentic, healthy Italian cooking with over 60 recipes straight from Salerno, hit stores in May 2010.

Teresa is proud to be from the Garden State and happy to live and raise her kids there. She loves to entertain her family and friends while enjoying all that life has to offer.

MY REVIEW:

SKINNY ITALIAN: Eat It and Enjoy It-Live La Bella Vita and Look Great, Too! by Teresa Giudice teaches you how to cook and eat like a real Italian. Italy is full of many beautiful, fine figured and fantastic women so you may wonder how that can be when Italian food is so rich and fattening? As Teresa Giudice, pronounced JU-dee-Chay, explains in her new SKINNY ITALIAN book, that is because they eat REAL Italian food that is made from high quality products and all-natural, unrefined foods. Yes, that delivered pizza and the Italian chain restaurant does not serve authentic Italian food but rather American-Italian food. American-Italian would be the pizza we know that comes to our door when we call and the other deep fried and fatty foods that are served in what we call “Italian restaurants“.

Teresa is first generation Italian and you may know her as the sweet, feisty, and gorgeous homemaker on Bravo’s “Real Housewives of New Jersey”. SKINNY ITALIAN author Giudice doesn’t claim to be a professional chef but rather a wife and mother who wants her family to eat proper foods and be healthy. She cooks for her family nightly and enjoys it all. She writes the book the same way she talks so it is friendly and also quite amusing. No big fancy French cooking terms but just good food you can make for your family like she does for hers. The book contains a lot of gorgeous photographs of the food as well as her family life including her husband she refers to as “Juicy Joe”. In fact, Joe has Juicy Joe’s hints and bits of information through out the book, as does Teresa with her “Teresa’s Tips”

The book is divided into 12 sections as well as one at the end about Nutritional Information for every recipe. The recipes themselves are very simple and they use easy-to-find ingredients from your local market. The sections include:

1. Salute: -An introduction to Teresa’s cooking
2. The Corner Stones of Italian Cuisine (Or Things Not Found as the Olive Garden):-need I explain this?
3. Blessed Virgin: Olive Oil-where you’ll learn about the importance of extra-virgin olive oil and the different types
4. Italian Seasonings: What’s What and Who’s Who-To grow, store, and cook with the proper herbs and spices
5. Fresco E Naturale:-My favorite in this section is the Zucchini Spaghetti Salad
6. And God said “Let There Be Pasta” and There Was and It Was Good:-Ahhh, the Penne with Portobello Mushroom Sauce!!
7. The Secrets in the Sauce:-A Hint…it doesn’t come in a jar! but OH, the pesto and puttanesca sauces!
8. Pizza! Pizza!:-and remember that Juicy Joe started out with his own Pizza Restaurant
9. Scratching It Up in the Kitchen:-What else can you make ‘from scratch’ and then can it, is taught here
10. The Art of Eating:-Remember a meal in Italy is an event and DINING slowly works so well on your metabolism
11. Italian Dressing and Delicious Shoes:-You must have realized that Teresa would have something in here about clothes and how ‘dressing’ correctly makes the woman
12. Love-Love-Love: -Some very romantic meals and how best to cook them

This cookbook is so humorously enjoyable that you will actually want to read it cover to cover like a novel and not a cookbook. I found it so interesting and beautifully done with the set-up and the glorious photographs and now, having written this, I’m starving so off to see if I can really make one of these new sauces. Good luck as I bet a lot of you are going to want this one for sure!

THANKS TO CAITLIN AND ANNA AND MY
GOOD FRIENDS AT FSB ASSOCIATES, I
HAVE ONE COPY THIS COOKBOOK AS WELL
AS 2 OTHER COOKBOOKS TO GIVE AWAY!
AND FROM "GRANDMA BINGO", 2
PAULA DEEN "HOME COOKING"
DVD's TO ENJOY AND FOLLOW!
ONE WINNER WILL WIN ALL FIVE ITEMS!
ONE RUNNER-UP WILL WIN AN EXTRA
COPY OF "SKINNY ITALIAN"
ALSO THANKS TO FSB ASSOCIATES

--U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY
--NO P. O. BOXES
---INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS
IN CASE YOU WIN!
--ALL COMMENTS MUST BE SEPARATE TO
COUNT AS MORE THAN ONE!

HOW TO ENTER

+1 ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING ABOVE THAT MAKES YOU WANT TO WIN "SKINNY ITALIAN" AS WELL AS THE OTHER 2 COOKBOOKS AND 2 DVDs

+1 MORE ENTRY: TELL IF YOU COOK ANYTHING ITALIAN AND IF SO, WHAT IS YOUR BEST DISH? IF NOT, WHAT DO YOU WISH YOU COULD MAKE?

+1 MORE ENTRY: GO TO TERESA'S WEBSITE, TG FABULICIOUS, AND FIND SOMETHING INTERESTING IN IT TO COMMENT ON. YOU MAY EVEN JUST WANT TO LOOK AROUND AT WHAT IS FOR SALE BY THIS JERSEY HOUSEWIFE.

GIVEAWAY ENDS AT
6 PM, EST, MAY 25 !
GOOD LUCK!