Remaining impossibly thin during the Christmas season

People have often asked me how I remain an impossibly thin during advent, the season to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  They talk about all the sweet foods and hearty dinners they attend at this time of year, basically indulging in gluttony during what was traditionally a penitential season.  As a supporter of reformed Christian doctrines, I have no time for all these imposition of fasts, penitential seasons etc by the Church of Rome (I don't like the term "catholic", as that word means "universal", which the pseudo-Christian Church of Rome is not). 

The reformed Christian readers of this blog might have heard of something called the Affair of the Sausages, where Ullrich Zwingli protested against the Roman Catholic fasting during lent as being an extra-scriptural obligation, following which Christoph Froschauer hosted an event to eat sausages during Lent in protest.  I don't know which type of sausages they used.  I hope they didn't use those disgusting sausages that one finds in British "fry-ups", say Lincolnshire sausages or chipolatas (that one feeds to dogs); yuck!

Sausages are something that we French know how to make far better than anyone else.  As a sophisticated Frenchwoman, I only eat French sausages.  Being from Provence, the type of sausage I view as being absolutely divine (in the non-religious sense of the word) is Saucisson d'Arles.  It is an absolutely delicious sausage that has some origins in Boulogne, a town in the far north of France.  However, it was brought to Arles (the home of Jeanne Calment, the longest-living person in the world) by a charcutier named Godart.  Traditionally, it was drunk with local rosé or white wine, though the people of Arles would accompany the sausage with pastis instead.  Yum!

Anyway, back to the topic.  As said earlier, being a subscriber to reformed Christianity, I don't do penitential seasons.  As a stylish Frenchwoman, I am always seeking to have as much pleasure as possible, hence another reason why I don't dig penitential seasons.  So how do I stay so skinny?  Simple.  The same way I have always done.  By eating extremely dainty portions and only of food of the highest quality.  I was once in the USA over Christmas and when I attended parties, I would see fatties munching their way through mediocre sweets (known as "caaaaaaaaaaayndy" there") and biscuits (known as "cookies" there).  Apart from my dislike of hearing Americans murder the English language, it made me feel physically sick, MDR.

So how did I stay thin?  Simple: - apart from the fact that most American confectionary is simply too disgusting to allow between my lips (often on account of being too sweet for a sophisticated Frenchwoman such as myself), the strategy I use is as follows.  Instead of spending the whole evening munching my way through substandard sweets and biscuits, I restrict myself to one or two chocolates tasting absolutely divine!  Often, such chocolates were hard to come by at American Christmas parties, so I often used to sneak a bar of very dark chocolate into the party in my handbag, or perhaps something posted over from Marseille from my local chocolatier in Marseille, MDR.

On one occasion, one of my hosts noticed me sneaking a chocolate from my handbag and she was 'avin' the 'ump with me, asking me, "Is my cooking not good enough for you?  Would you rather be at Buckingham Palace instead of here?"  I told her it wasn't my fault she didn't know how to cook and exercise proper discernment about food, which resulted in her having kittens (another interesting phrase my mother taught me), which resulted in me just turning my back to her and resuming my conversation from which I had been interrupted by her.  So rude!  Thankfully, some high-class people in the USA mercifully invited me to their parties and they were sophisticated enough to import Belgian chocolates, so that Christmas wasn't all bad.

So what to do if you are attending lots of Christmas parties?  Apologies for the late nature of this advice, but one can use it on Christmas Day I suppose.  As mentioned, only have one or two absolutely divine chocolates.  If you are going to have more, make sure the portion sizes are suitable for a dainty Frenchwoman and if not, say, "La moitié, s'il vous plaît" ("Half of that, please"), if halving it is what it would take to get it down to a suitable size.  Just in case your host doesn't know how to cook and you are in an unsophisticated country like the UK, I have done a quick price comparison for Lindt & Sprüngli 90% cocoa chocolate: - http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/asda-compare-prices/block_chocolate/lindt_excellence_dark_chocolate_supreme_90_cocoa_100g.html .  The comparison mercifully shows that Waitrose is selling it at the lowest price at present, so what I recommend is buying this and secretly keeping some in one's handbag in case all the food is low-quality.

All in all, anyone following my advice (not just here, but throughout my blog posts) should emerge from Christmas and New Year no less dainty than before.  Merry Christmas everyone!