Skinny Italian by Teresa Giudice from The Real Housewives of New Jersey

Italian cooking the way Americans eat it isn’t really Italian cooking. As Teresa Giudice says it is “American Italian” and not really “Italian” at all. If you watch The Real Housewives of New Jersey on Bravo, you know that she is a fantastic cook, friend, fashionista, Mom and much more. Skinny Italian is her cookbook where she says that you can, “Eat spaghetti and still fit into your skinny jeans.”

Cookbook Description
“To many of us, “diet” is a four-letter word. And rightfully so. Starving yourself thin or keeping track of each bite like pennies in your checkbook is no way to live. So what’s a girl with skinny jean dreams supposed to do?

Teresa Giudice has the answer. In fact, she was born with it. The first-generation Italian-American mom of four and svelte star of The Real Housewives of New Jersey credits her knockout figure to her Old World upbringing. And now, in her fun, encouraging, and budget-friendly cookbook, she skewers the myth that looking fabulous has to be a chore.

In Skinny Italian, she reveals how to:
• substitute tedious meal plans with simple, flavorful recipes
• choose fresh, flavorful ingredients instead of counting calories
• slow down and enjoy a faster metabolism
• replace starvation with celebration by adopting an Italian attitude to cooking, eating, and entertaining
• love food, love eating, and still love your body afterward

Teresa shows how anyone can master the cornerstones of Italian cuisine. Learn how to make six different tomato sauces from scratch, how to choose and use the right olive oil, and how to prepare over sixty Giudice family recipes straight from Salerno. From Gorgeous Garlic Shrimp to Beautiful Biscotti, you’ll want to make these sumptuous recipes again and again. Discover how easy and economical wholesome, homemade cooking can be.

Skinny Italian is not a diet book. It’s an “eat it and enjoy it” book. Join Teresa and discover how gorgeous can be a sumptuous side effect to living la bella vita.” – Skinny Italian


My Thoughts
Teresa Giudice is one of my favorite NJ housewives. She is so funny and I just love her. Seriously, if you watch the show, how can you not be on her side and love her too?

This season one of the episodes featured her family’s annual tomato canning day at their home. As I was watching it, I realized this was something I really wanted to try to do, but I had really no idea how to start. So, I kind of just forgot about it… until I read Skinny Italian.

I read and reread how to do the tomato canning. My Mom and I researched it and decided that we could do it, with Teresa’s instructions (which honestly were much simpler than some of the ways to do it). We didn’t buy the extra canning stuff needed like the canning sanitizer thing or the vegetable strainer (though we wish we had those). We even went to a local farm and purchased tomatoes grown locally and organic.




We waited for the tomatoes to ripen and then plunged in and started our canning celebration. It was fun, sort of messy, and definitely memorable. Overall, we made 10 jars (which really doesn’t compare to the 160 Teresa makes on her canning day), but we were proud of ourselves – it was our first attempt after all.




Unfortunately, since I have celiac disease I couldn’t make some of the recipes in Skinny Italian exactly as described in the book since I can’t eat regular pasta or pizza dough. Gluten free pasta isn’t always the best, but there are some that are pretty good, so I just substituted that in.

Some of my favorite recipes in the book include:
• Gorgeous Garlic Shrimp
• Basic Tomato Sauce “The Quickie”
• Milania’s Marinara Sauce
• Bellissimo Bellinis
• Spaghetti All’Ubriaco “Drunken Spaghetti”


Skinny Italian is a full color cookbook featuring pictures of Teresa Giudice’s house, family and friends, and of course the food. The cookbook is written by Teresa and you can expect her sense of humor and witty tales in each and every section. My Mom and I love this cookbook and if you also love The Real Housewives of New Jersey, and/or Italian cooking you will too!


* Thank you to the publisher of Skinny Italian, Hyperion for providing me with a copy for this review. All opinions expressed are my own.