Today is my birthday. I am not a big fan of celebrations in my honor or gifts, but this year I received one of the best presents from a very unlikely source.

Mireille Guiliano wrote a menu based on my blog!

For those of you who do not know her by name, Mireille is the internationally best-selling author of the French Women books: French Women Don’t Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure, French Women for All Seasons: A Year of Secrets, Recipes and Pleasure, and the new The French Women Don’t Get Fat Cookbook.

Aside from her cookbooks, Mireille is a trustee of the prestigious James Beard Foundation, dedicated to celebrating, preserving, and nurturing America’s culinary heritage and diversity in order to elevate the appreciation of our culinary excellence, and former president and CEO of premium champagne Veuve Clicquot’s American branch.

But more than the lofty biography, she is an avid entertainer herself.

It is an enormous honor.

Yesterday her website editor contacted me to say:

“Mireille loved your 30-min. meal idea when she came across the one inspired by *French Women For All Seasons.*”

On her site, she composed The 25 Minute Dinner Party, written in the same format as one of my dinner menus. As they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery.

I was truly touched by the great things that she had to say about the concept of a thirty minute dinner party:

I was delighted to see a blog post recently by a woman who (inspired by French Women For All Seasons) planned a dinner party with only 30 minutes of cooking time, using healthy, delicious, and simple recipes. In the spirit of her post, I thought it would be fun to do the same with a few of my recipes, and in looking for some good choices I saw that I could, in fact, plan a meal taking no more than 25 minutes. When you can cook a dinner for guests in only 25 or 30 minutes, there are truly no excuses! (And it’s worth noting you could easily use this menu for yourself/your family on a regular night, too.)

Please check out her post and the rest of her site. It is great resource not only for recipes, but entertaining tips.

Now off to my birthday lunch 🙂
Gabi