Eat Shrink And Be Merry

They’re here! Janet & I are so excited to announce a brand-new product that we’ve been “secretly” working on for the past six months: a line of very cool (even if we do say so ourselves!) grEATing cards that, yes, you guessed it, contain mouth-watering healthy recipes on the inside! They are bright and colorful and funny and UNIQUE and we we just know you’re going to love them as much as we do. Tonight is our big WORLD debut of grEATing cards on QVC, the big US shopping network. You can see us in action LIVE at 10 pm EST tonight, November 18th, from the QVC studios in West Chester, Pennsylvania, as we debut our long-awaited boxed set of holiday grEATing cards called “Seasoned Greetings.” Peas on Earth, anyone??? To our American friends, please tune in tonight and call us if you can get through!! You can talk to us “LIVE” on the air. We’re very proud of these unique cards and we’re so excited about tonight’s launch that neither one of us slept a wink last night.

Good news and bad news for Canadians: our complete line of grEATing cards (50 different cards in all categories!) will not be available until February 2009, but they’ll be sold all over Canada in partnership with Hallmark. Over 1000 stores will be carrying grEATing cards! Yippee!

I feel like I’m a parent writing a note to the principal, but here goes anyway:

Please excuse Janet & Greta from their blog-writing duties for the next week or so. You see, the sisters are off filming three more episodes of their Food Network TV series (Season 3) in the Toronto area. This time, the girls are faced with concocting healthier, yet still “knock-your-taste-buds-senseless” versions of three popular, high-calorie favorites: tiramisu, caesar salad, and banana cream pie. And the restauranteurs/chefs they’re up against are no slouches, either. Do the sisters have even a remote chance to win over taste buds with their lower-calorie, waist-friendlier versions? The odds are certainly stacked against them!

Long days and nights of preparation, followed by long days and nights of taping in various locations will leave Janet and Greta with little time for sleeping, let alone crafting witty and informative blogs. We hope you’ll forgive their absenteeism.

P.S.
Please, please, make sure you check back in around November 17th when Janet & Greta will be reporting a very exciting new development!

Too bad pumpkins are destined to spend their lives in patches or on porches rather than on dinner tables where they belong! Betcha didn’t know that a pumpkin is really a huge squash, and it’s the beta-carotene king, too. Like carrots and sweet potatoes, pumpkins are chock full of carotenoids. Why care about carotenoids? Well, these good-for-you plant chemicals fight nasty cellular damage that can make you sick or make you old before your time. Yes, eating pumpkin can help keep you young and healthy! And you don’t have to sharpen your carving knife, either. Canned pumpkin will do the trick (and it’s a treat!). A half-cup has about 200% of the daily amount of beta-carotene recommended by experts.

Plus, pumpkins have lots of fiber and a ton of iron, which is really important for women because we need to replenish the iron that we lose during monthly cycles. Pssst! Hey, guys! Don’t forget about the seeds! They’re brilliant for preventing men’s prostate issues.

My all-time favorite pumpkin recipe is from “Eat, Shrink & Be Merry” on page 163. It’s our famous no-bake pumpkin cheesecake called “Lovin’ My No-Oven Cheesecake.” Light, velvety, and scrumptious, and you can make it no sweat since you don’t use an oven. Mmmmm! If you haven’t tried it yet, ’tis the season.

Happy Halloween!

Phew!! Greta and I have just returned from a hectic, whirlwind four days in New York City where we took part in a really unique and exciting event called “The National Publicity Summit.” Basically, it was a conference where only 100 attendees were accepted, from authors to entrepreneurs, who were looking for the opportunity to get big-time, national publicity for their books or products or services. Nowadays, with the celebrity-centric culture in the US, and also with so much competition for “air time,” it’s harder than ever to get the attention of TV producers and magazine writers.

But at this Publicity Summit, you were given the chance to personally meet those top producers and journalists face-to-face, behind closed doors…guaranteed! Producers from The View, Live with Regis and Kelly, The Today Show, and CBS Early Morning were all going to be there, among others. Writers for Time Magazine, Woman’s World, Family Circle and other large mags were all slated to attend. There were about 100 different media types in all. Wow!

This seemed like a no-brainer for us. We’ve had a lot of success in Canada, but to be honest, breaking into the US market is like starting over again. Hey, when Jamie Oliver or Nigella came over to the US, they had to start somewhere, too, even though they were already huge stars in the UK, right? You just need a big break.

So we got to thinking, “If we could just get in front of producers and decision makers, if we could just meet them in person, and if they could get to know us and what we’re all about, if they could see that we were unique, that we’re funny, that we have tons of experience doing TV interviews, that we’re bundles of information, that we can help change people’s lives, that might make all the difference in the world.”

This is how it all shook down: Basically, it was like speed dating! You got two-and-a-half minutes to give your pitch at each “station” where a producer or writer was sitting. Someone was right there with a timer, and then you had to go! You had to plead your case, to convince that producer why they should have you on their show, or sell that journalist on why they should do a story on you. You had to sell, sell, sell! When your time was up, someone tapped you on the shoulder, or tugged on your shirt and or did whatever they had to do to pry you away. And then you moved on to the next one.

It was nuts! And really, really hard! For one thing, Greta and I are very humble, so for us to pitch ourselves–to toot our own horns (and aggressively, too!)–was one of the most difficult things we’ve ever had to do. And we had to do it for three days straight. It was exhausting, yet exhilarating. (I couldn’t fall asleep at night in the hotel because I was so “jacked up” on adrenaline from the day’s events. Conversations and faces just kept going around and around in my head. Monkey mind at its worst.)

The results of our publicity speed dating? Were there any matches made in heaven? Did anyone fall in love with us? Well, we hope so! We think it went really, really well. My sister and I put our best feet forward (all four of them), and felt like we did a good job convincing producers that Americans want to “Eat, Shrink & Be Merry” as much as Canadians. Maybe even more so! Nowadays, with these troubled economic times, everyone has been watching their bottom lines shrink. We’d like to show Americans how to shrink their “real” bottoms, without shrinking their bank accounts. We’d show them how cooking at home can not only save them money, but save their waistlines and their overall health, too. In addition to providing great-tasting food that won’t go from your lips to your hips, our book makes people laugh. It can brighten peoples’ days, and give them hope and inspiration at a time when they really need it. Frankly, Americans NEED to Eat, Shrink & Be Merry! Let’s hope those producers give us a chance to show them how.

Don’t worry, we’ll be sure to let you know if we’ll be performing an Extreme Recipe Makeover on Regis’ favorite comfort food, or chatting about “Shocklate Cheesecake” with the gals on The View, or making “The Roast of Christmas Past” for Matt Lauer. Keep your fingers and toes crossed for us!

P.S. If you’ve written a book or if you have a product or service, and you’re looking for national publicity, I highly recommend you attend this summit. For more information, check out www.NationalPublicitySummit.com

For those of you who’ve been writing about our “Eat, Shrink & Be Merry” TV series being temporarily off the air on Food Network, you’ll be happy to know that it’ll be airing on “E” Network (part of everyone’s basic cable package, I believe) on Friday mornings at 11 am, beginning either this Friday, the 24th or the following Friday. So set your PVR’s!

And the show will be back on Food Network Canada some time in January, just in time to help you burn off any extra holiday flab!

We’re still pinching ourselves! Two weeks ago, Greta and I were fortunate enough to have had a lunch meeting with Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York. Yes, Fergie! Royally cool! We found out that she was coming to Waterloo to do a speaking engagement, and a friend of ours knows her, so we begged him to get us a meeting with her. You know, so we could chat about Weight Watchers, what really happened to Princess Di, if Hugh Grant really is that charming in person, what the Queen serves for Thanksgiving dinner, etc. Lo and behold, our friend Rob managed to get us a meeting! (What does one wear to lunch with a Royal? A stylish hat, perhaps? Guess my Nike ballcap would not be appropriate.)

We met at a fantastic restaurant in Waterloo called Wildcraft, which we had recommended. Luckily, it was 2:30 in the afternoon, so we were tucked away into the far reaches of the near-empty restaurant. It was so great to meet her. At first, she didn’t say much. She had just flown in from Halifax and her schedule had been exhausting, so she seemed very tired. I’m sure the last thing she would have felt like doing was having lunch with a couple of perky, cookbook-writing strangers. We were grateful this was happening at all.

Our friend Rob asked us to tell Sarah “our story.” So we did. At first she just observed us, took it all in as we rambled on and on. She ate her lunch, (a scrumptious salmon salad), listening intently. Then we gave her a copy of Eat, Shrink & Be Merry. She really liked it! She flipped through it, giggling at some of the cartoons and recipe titles. Told Rob it was her sense of humour. Told us it was “very modern.” Told us that David Beckham is coming out with a line of food products and is using cute cartoons on his packaging. Then she told us she’s never cooked a meal in her entire life! Pity!

Next we shared with her our latest “secret project” we’ve been working on. (Can’t tell you what it is just yet. But someday you’ll hear about it!). Well, she really went ga-ga over it. (A good sign!) We also told her our saga about how we’ve been trying to break into the American market this fall with our book and our TV show, and how difficult it is. The US market is so celebrity-centric, much more so than Canada. It takes a mini-miracle to get anyone to return a phone call or email or to open a courier package. It’s very humbling. It’s like we’re back to our 1996 Looneyspoons days, with rejection after rejection after rejection. It doesn’t seem to matter that we’ve sold 1.8 million cookbooks (self-published to boot!) or that we have a successful show on Food Network Canada. Everyone keeps telling us we’re perfect for both Oprah and Ellen, yet getting their producers to listen is next to impossible. We have to find a creative way to rise above the noise. We told her that despite the rejections, we refused to give up. We wouldn’t give up because we truly believe that we can impact the lives of millions of Americans. We know we can get Americans on the healthy eating bandwagon. We just know it!

Well, after our impassioned sister-soliloquey, she generously offered to help us (even though we didn’t ask her for help.) She put her hands on our cookbook and said, “I’m a facilitator. I know a lot of people. I believe that you should be given a chance in the US. How can I help? What can I do? Is there someone you’d like me to call?” Greta and I were looking at each other, wide-eyed and in disbelief. How amazing can she possibly be?

What we discovered, is that she really IS amazing. She was full of interesting, innovative ideas in our meeting. One after another. She is tireless and dedicated and passionate in her charity work involving disadvantaged children. She is a fantastic storyteller. She is a fighter who’s had to bounce back from being pushed to the ground many times, and she’s always come out on top. And after listening to her speech the following day in front of 700 adoring women, what was most obvious to us is that she has a heart the size of Great Britain (and that’s pretty darn big!)

I have to admit that at one point in the meeting, I was sitting there listening to Sarah, The Duchess of York, and I sort of tuned out, my eyes glazing over, and my thought bubble was, “A BILLION people tuned in to watch your wedding on TV! You hung out with Lady Di all the time!” It was surreal. Was this really happening? Greta admitted later that she did the same thing. When she was in la-la land, her thought bubble said, “Your daughters would say things like, ‘Mummy, can we go to Grandma’s castle this weekend?’ This lunch was a lot for us commoners to digest!

After two hours, we shook hands, smiled and said our goodbyes. She said it was lovely to meet us and gave us her business card. (It was very regal-looking. I might put mine in a frame!) Then the Duchess asked for our contact information, because she said that perhaps we should work together some time. Imagine.

You know, even if nothing else ever comes of our Royal meeting, it’s an experience that made my sister and I feel like Queens for a day!

I ate a pork chop. Yes, it’s true. I ate a pork chop on Day 5. I couldn’t help myself. It was not my fault. I was just being polite. You see, I was invited to a dinner party and the gracious hosts cooked up these amazing, Fred-Flintstone-sizeed barbecued chops and, well, before I knew it, I was digging into one. So there. My vegetarianism lasted exactly 4.5 days.

Instead of quitting, instead of throwing in the towel and rushing out to buy the rotisserie chicken I’ve been craving, I decided to keep going til the 7 days are over. Day 6, Saturday, didn’t present any problems and I quite enjoyed my gigantic Greek salad with feta and olives and cucumbers and tomatoes and red onions and stuff. I also ate some omega eggs and a protein shake and a small bag of popcorn at the movie theater (don’t waste your money seeing Lakeview Terrace!).

That brings me to today, Day 7! Yahoo! With the exception of my pig-out (pun intended) on Friday night, I’m quite proud of myself for making it through the week with just that one slip-up, which was not my fault anyway. I definitely feel like I have tons of energy, but that may be because I finally got my new fancy espresso machine up and running and have been brewing up double-espresso-cinnamon-dolce lattes each morning (no meat in those!). Hmmm. Wonder if I could go 7 days without coffee……

Yes, I ate more carrot cake today, and lots of it. I really need to perfect this recipe SOON so that I can actually begin eating REAL vegetables and natural foods that are good for me! It’s kinda funny how people think carrot cake is healthy because it contains carrots. French fries contain potatoes and they aren’t healthy…chicken wings contain chicken and they aren’t healthy, banana cream pie contains bananas and it’s not healthy, hamburgers contain ham and they…well, you get my point.

The highlight of today’s vegetarian menu was my lunch: Mixed vegetables and tofu in a spicy Thai coconut sauce. I can’t give you the recipe, because it was from a Thai restaurant down the street from my office. There was enough food for two people but I ate it all!! Breakfast was vanilla yogurt with berries and pumpkin-flax granola and dinner was carrot cake. Unfortunatey, I’m not kidding. After several slices of carrot cake, there was no way I was actually cooking something ELSE for dinner. Blech (or however you spell it!). In fact, all that carrot cake sat in my stomach so long that I didn’t eat another morsel of anything all night.

I don’t think finding meatless meal ideas is really all that difficult, especially if I “allowed” myself to eat fish (I really like fish). My problem with this diet is that I don’t really feel satisfied. Something is missing. I think it’s the lack of protein. Eating protein makes me feel fuller longer, I think. Sure, I can eat tofu and chick peas and eggs and other beans and non-meat sources of protein, but somehow it doesn’t feel the same to me. Right now I wish that rotisserie chicken was a vegetable.

Day 3 was awful. Not because I was craving meat, because I wasn’t at all. And I even started the day with my favourite poached eggs. The problem came in the afternoon when I had to work on a carrot cake recipe. You should never bake carrot cake when you’re really hungry. I baked two different cakes (different formulas) and I swear I ate half of each cake to determine whether they needed more cinnamon, pineapple or no pineapple, moist enough? carrot-y enough? nuts or no nuts? etc. etc. So, I’m estimating I consumed about 2000 calories worth of carrot cake yesterday and I felt disgusting. It’s very difficult for someone without a sweet tooth to develop dessert recipes.  But, I realize that most people DO like desserts and sweets and so I think it’s important to teach those people how to make their desserts a bit healthier. Even if it means I gain 10 pounds in the process! My body has the strangest reaction to sugar. Remember when I said (on day 2) that I gained 5 pounds from eating a slice of carrot cake with cream-cheese icing? Well, I swear that happens to me. Honestly. Last night when I went to bed I looked at myself in the mirror and I looked 10 pounds heavier from eating carrot cake all afternoon. How is that possible?? It just instantly makes my body expand! That’s probably why I don’t crave sugar EVER. That’s my body’s way of telling me not to eat it. But, eat it I must. More carrot cake recipe trials today!

In case you’re wondering if I’m taking part in Greta’s “Meatless in Seattle” endeavour this week, I’m not. I’m just sitting back and taking it all in, nodding in approval. You see, going without meat is something that comes very easy to me. Although I wouldn’t call myself a vegetarian (I love homemade burgers off the bbq!), I could easily go that way and not miss meat one bit. Guess it’s a by-product of studying natural nutrition and having to read all those darn depressing Ecology textbooks that had me crying my eyes out for months straight. As a kid, I used to scarf back Brontosaurus-sized steaks that would do Fred Flintstone proud, then go back for seconds, and I could do it without any repercussions whatsoever to my hips or health in general. Not the case anymore. I’m reformed.

Actually, I’m one of THOSE people. You know. The gang at our office (including my sister!) makes fun of my slimy, green, raw concoctions that I whirl in the blender at lunchtime (mixed organic greens, a cucumber, a banana and a mango). Every day, I juice kale, parsley, carrots, beets and celery in my Omega juicer. I dig raw truffles and vegetarian chili and raw pizza crusts and gluten-free, sprouted-grains. I drive miles and miles out of my way to get organic fruits and veggies and when I stumble upon a new health food store, well, I get so excited, you’d think I’d just discovered the gym where Brad Pitt works out. Last summer, I went on a 40-day organic juice and broth cleanse where not one solid crossed my lips for that entire period. (It was the best thing I’ve ever done in my life, by the way.) Each day, I put chlorophyll in my drinking water. ‘nough said!

So I’m glad my sister’s doing what she’s doing. Good on her! It can only mean positive things for her health, and that makes me very happy. But she should know that just because she’s livin’ on the vedge does NOT mean that I’ll be sharing my raw truffles or making “green slime for two” anytime soon!