10 Things I Learned From...Nigella Lawson

I think I have pretty thoroughly proclaimed my Nigella love on the pages of this blog. This appears to be a bit redundant, but hopefully others will chime in or say I'm full of it. I can't help it, Nigella is so completely cool. She's witty, self deprecating, and appears to be totally genuine. No, stupid catchphrases for this English rose (Hah!), her personality comes from intelligent humor and revelatory insights as opposed to bizaare personality tics (we're looking at you Rayray).

10 Things I Learned From Nigella Lawson

1. The utterly divine Union Square mixed nuts. Absolutely perfect party food. The corollary revelation is that party food should be finger food and not rely on a fork and knife to be eaten.

2. To love myself. No really. In this fitness obsessed world, Nigella proudly proclaims her love of food and therefore affirms MY love of food. For example, she writes in How to Eat: The Pleasures and Principles of Good Food - "I don't disparage the shallow concerns of the ordinarily vain, which, after all, I share. What I hate is all this new-age voodoo about eating, the notion that foods are either harmful or healing, that a good diet makes a good person and that that person is necessarily lean, limber, toned and fit. Quite apart from anything else, I don't see the muscular morality argument. Why should a concern for your physical health be seen as a sign of virtue? Such a view seems to me in danger of fusing Nazism (with its ideological cult of physical perfection) and Puritanism (with its horror of the flesh and belief in salvation through denial)." Could she rock any harder? It's not like she hates dieting or healthy eating, it's just that she puts it in perspective.

3. With dewy skin and gorgeous hair, noone notices the junk in your trunk. Seriously, Nigella is pretty amply proportioned down there but does ANYONE notice? Hell no. Why? She and her stylist make sure that her skin is flawless and her hair is divine.

4. Cakes are not hard to make. I recommend making her chocolate cake from Nigella Bites.

5. Sweetened and flavored whipped cream, when frozen, turns into ice cream. See her recipe for Seville orange ice cream.

6. Embrace the concept of child labor. Nigella is constantly having her kids help with the cooking. And not in some stilted Stepford way, but with the kdis making a mess and bugging her about how to do things. But the result is that her kids, like Nigella herself, actually know how to cook.

7. There's a difference between food that takes a long time to cook (braised meats) and food that takes a long time to prepare. For example, while risotto may only take 20 minutes to cook, you are stuck behind a stove the entire 20 minutes. On the other hand, a stew make take four hours to cook, but it take ten minutes of prep.

8. Speaking of stews, you can change the recipe for a stew fairly dramatically and still end up with a delicious stew.

9. There's a firm place for junk food in your kitchen (i.e. cheap white bread for Mozarella en Carozza).

10. Roasting a chicken breast side down results in the moistest chicken EVER.