THE ART OF SAVOIR FAIRE

Mireille Guiliano: The Art of Savoir-Faire

  These days a year seems ridiculously short within which both to make and achieve a resolution.  And if we only begin in January, don't get underway until February, have a break at Easter then plan the summer holidays, autumn will be rushing towards us before we've really got into any sort of stride at all.  Moreover, by then we probably will have forgotten why we resolved what we did and what we intended to do about it.  The resolution will have proved no more than a good intention - a bit like a Government target - rather than a clear plan for action and delivery.

    I was brooding on this very point as a matter of fact on 22nd December.  (I don't know about you but I am given to brooding on dark mornings over my porridge and am often still brooding when I arrive at my desk and open up my trusty laptop:  my own personal alchemical window on the world through which I scry the comings and goings of my friends.  Not only friends either, for the butcher, baker and candlestick maker all clamour for my attention).

My friend Amazon is particularly efficient in this regard.  She writes first thing every morning with an amazing offer. (I call her 'she' because, first, she is big and mighty and, second, because I am not sure that any Amazons were men, which raises the interesting question of how the race was perpetuated; Reader if you happen to know perhaps you could leave a comment.) 

So Amazon wrote on 22nd December beseeching me that 2012 would be a very different sort of a year, and boundlessly more prosperous, if only I clicked on the right hand side of the page and they  deducted £9 and some pennies from my account.  In return (though not before Christmas if I was so parsimonious as to insist on the free 'super-saver' delivery) they would send me a new book, just out, by Mireille Guiliano - the renowned author of 'French Women Don't Get Fat.'

Those that know me know that I have been a fan of this tome ever since it appeared a few years back and have indeed personally accomplished the 'magical leek diet,' surviving a whole forty eight hours on leek broth.  Ever since reading it I have been leaving half bananas about the kitchen and watching (but sometimes only watching) my portion sizes.

Now retired from her position as CEO of the American end of the Champagne House Veuve Cliquot Mireille calls her new book 'Women, Work and the Art of Savoir-Faire,'  and she describes it as...

"........the sort of book I wish I had been given when starting out in the working world and had at hand along the way.......you'll find advice on getting ahead and getting promoted....but more than that, you'll find advice on being happy and living a good life, even while you are making the biggest contribution you can in the workplace.  That's why I dare to talk about style and clothes and food and wine and entertaining and life in a business book."

 How could I resist?  I clicked on Super-Saver Delivery and my friend Amazon must have taken pity for the book slid through my letterbox on Christmas Eve.  I read it almost at once.

There is a mountain of sensible information here:  set yourself achievable objectives; spend less time on trivia and more on planning and preparation; work out what is making you stressed, identify the elements and then attack each one in turn; invest in a good haircut.  The lifestyle and coping strategies are exciting, the pages on entertaining and preparing for business dinner parties at home could become a bible.  My only gripe is that she seems to overdo the chocolate - her first business menu, for instance, comprises Soup with Chocolate, Duck with Chocolate and then, as if that weren't enough, comes this glorious confection: Mousse Au Chocolat with Ginger with the following ingredients (for 4 people). 

12 ounces dark chocolate

8.5 ounces of heavy cream

2 ounces butter

2 egg whites

2 tablespoons sugar

2 ounces ginger confit, thinly minced.

(I worry that it might be a tad fattening, especially with chocolate in the two courses before.  I am trying to calculate how long one would need to live on leek broth to compensate).

Still - a remarkable book and illustrated by a personal anecdote.  As a young woman, just about to embark on a career, Mireille took a travelling holiday before commencing a dream job at the Council for Europe.  In Greece she met an American and fell in love with him (it helped they spoke each others languages).  After a very short time he returned to America while she was due to start at the Council of Europe.  He asked her to join him in New York.  Classic dilemma - job or man?  How many of us would have refused to be diverted, chosen the job, not believed that a holiday romance would work? What would our friends have advised?  But she chose the man and is still married to him, while starting a new career, from scratch in a new City and language, and on a new Continent. 

If she had been following the advice in her book she might have asked herself  'what's the downside?' She could have always come home.   But you have to hand it to her, choices like that are what constitute style and 'savoir-faire.'   I believe Amazon will happily supply you, too, with a copy of her book. Meanwhile my resolution is to re-read it and to celebrate losing a stone by making Mousse Au Chocolat with Ginger.