"Skinny Italian" ~ My New Favorite Cookbook

One of the the . . . OK, the ONLY upside of having the flu for the past several days was that I got to do some uninterrupted reading.  I'd just gotten Teresa Giudice's cookbook, "Skinny Italian" late last week, and I read the whole thing over the weekend.  It's fabulous.  Really, it is.  You know I love Real Housewives of New Jersey, and even before reading this cookbook I knew I would love hanging out in the kitchen with Teresa, drinking wine and gossiping, but this cookbook is so much more than I had anticipated.

I rarely buy cookbooks anymore, because let's face it, you can find fifty recipes for anything you want to cook online in about two minutes.  I have favorite recipe sites and food blogs, not recipe books.  But Teresa's is worth buying.  Not only is every recipe in it simple, healthy, and delicious-looking (with all nutritional information at the back), but it's well written (yes, by a ghost-writer) and funny.  One of my favorite parts is a chart with the most commonly used Italian herbs and spices, what form they are best used in, and when in the cooking process to add them - HANDY!  I made Teresa's Favorite Tagliatelle for supper and the guys LOVED it (sorry, forgot to take a picture) and this week for lunch I'm eating Panzanella Salad.

You start by making the croutons from 1-inch cubes from a loaf of day-old Italian bread coated with  1/3 cup olive oil, 2 cloves minced garlic, and 1/8 tsp salt and baked until crispy.  Then make the dressing from 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp pepper.  The salad itself contains 4 diced tomatoes, 1/2 red onion, 1/2 cup kalamata olives, 10 basil leaves, 1 Tbsp capers, and 4 oz of cubed fresh mozzarella.  You can see I also added a whole bag of baby spinach because I love it and thought it would be a good addition to take this from a side salad to a full lunch.  Delicious!

Tonight I'm making Tilapia with Capers and Lemon.  The next thing you know I'll be taking with a Jersey accent, flipping tables, and calling people "prostitution whore!"

Skinny Italian: Eat It and Enjoy It Live La Bella Vita and Look Great, Too!