Mediterranean Food Quotes

To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean.

Watching Italians eat (especially men, I have to say) is a form of tourism the books don't tell you about. They close their eyes, raise their eyebrows into accent marks, and make sounds of acute appreciation. It's fairly sexy. Of course I don't know how these men behave at home, if they help with the cooking or are vain and boorish and mistreat their wives. I realized Mediterranean cultures have their issues. Fine, don't burst my bubble. I didn’t want to marry these guys, I just wanted to watch. (p. 247)

Rome was the only place in the ancient Mediterranean where the state took responsibility for the regular basic food supplies of its citizens.

Food of Love Eating is touch carried to the bitter end. -Samuel Butler II I'm going to murder you with love; I'm going to suffocate you with embraces; I'm going to hug you, bone by bone, Till you're dead all over. Then I will dine on your delectable marrow. You will become my personal Sahara; I'll sun myself in you, then with one swallow Drain you remaining brackish well. With my female blade I'll carve my name In your most aspiring palm Before I chop it down. Then I'll inhale your last oasis whole. But in the total desert you become You'll see me stretch, horizon to horizon, Opulent mirage! Wisteria balconies dripping cyclamen. Vistas ablaze with crystal, laced in gold. So you will summon each dry grain of sand And move towards me in undulating dunes Till you arrive at sudden ultramarine: A Mediterranean to stroke your dusty shores; Obstinate verdue, creeping inland, fast renudes Your barrens; succulents spring up everywhere, Surprising life! And I will be that green. When you are fed and watered, flourishing With shoots entwining trellis, dome and spire, Till you are resurrected field in bloom, I will devour you, my natural food, My host, my final supper on the earth, And you'll begin to die again.

There is evidence that you can improve your microbiota even in old age by adopting a Mediterranean-type diet and eating more fiber.

Two of the most nutritious plants in the world —lamb’s quarters and purslane—are weeds, and some of the healthiest traditional diets, like the Mediterranean, make frequent use of wild greens.

in English and Arabic. Clearly, even personal shoppers had him pegged as a complete geek. The shopper also managed to find some supplies for our magic bags—blocks of wax, twine, even some papyrus and ink—though I doubt Bes explained to her what they were for. After she left, Bes, Carter and I ordered more food from room service. We sat on the deck and watched the afternoon go by. The breeze from the Mediterranean was cool and pleasant. Modern Alexandria stretched out to our left—an odd mix of gleaming high-rises, shabby, crumbling buildings, and ancient ruins. The shoreline highway was dotted with palm trees and crowded with every sort of vehicle from BMWs to donkeys. From our penthouse suite, it all seemed a bit unreal—the raw energy of the city, the bustle and congestion below —while we sat on our veranda in the sky eating fresh fruit and the last melting bits of Lenin’s head.

HAPPENING APART FROM WHAT’S HAPPENING AROUND IT There is a vividness to eleven years of love because it is over. A clarity of Greece now because I live in Manhattan or New England. If what is happening is part of what’s going on around what’s occurring, it is impossible to know what is truly happening. If love is part of the passion, part of the fine food or the villa on the Mediterranean, it is not clear what the love is. When I was walking in the mountains with the Japanese man and began to hear the water, he said, “What is the sound of the waterfall?” “Silence,” he finally told me. The stillness I did not notice until the sound of water falling made apparent the silence I had been hearing long before. I ask myself what is the sound of women? What is the word for that still thing I have hunted inside them for so long? Deep inside the avalanche of joy, the thing deeper in the dark, and deeper still in the bed where we are lost. Deeper, deeper down where a woman’s heart is holding its breath, where something very far away in that body is becoming something we don’t have a name for.

a healthy diet consists of vegetables, fruit, fish, high-fiber grains, nuts, eggs, and quality vegetable oil. These are elements of both the Nordic and Mediterranean diets, known to add healthy years to your life.

Legume or bean intake is an important variable in the promotion of long life. An important longitudinal study showed that a higher legume intake is the most protective dietary factor affecting survival among the elderly, regardless of their ethnicity. The study found that legumes were associated with long-lived people in various food cultures, including the Japanese (soy, tofu, natto), the Swedes (brown beans, peas), and Mediterranean peoples (lentils, chickpeas, white beans).2 Beans and greens are the foods most closely linked in the scientific literature with protection against cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and dementia.

It was not food shortages that caused most of history’s wars and revolutions. The French Revolution was spearheaded by affluent lawyers, not by famished peasants. The Roman Republic reached the height of its power in the first century BC, when treasure fleets from throughout the Mediterranean enriched the Romans beyond their ancestors’ wildest dreams.

Two of the most nutritious plants in the world —lamb’s quarters and purslane—are weeds, and some of the healthiest traditional diets, like the Mediterranean, make frequent use of wild greens. The fields and forests are crowded with plants containing higher levels of various phytochemicals than their domesticated cousins. Why? Because these plants have to defend themselves against pests and diseases without any help from us,

To mark its global centrality, the French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi asked the Egyptian government to let him build a ninety-foot statue of an Arab peasant woman wearing robes and holding a torch above her head to welcome Eastern travelers to the Mediterranean. When Egypt declined on account of the project’s high cost, he took the idea to France, which financed the sculpture. Once the Muslim woman was refashioned into a Roman goddess, France gifted the statue to the United States, where the woman became a symbol of liberty for immigrants entering New York Harbor.

Claudia Roden, and Paula Wolfert (Mediterranean), Diana Kennedy and Maricel Presilla (Mexico), Andy Ricker and David Thompson (Thailand), Andrea Nguyen and Charles Phan (Vietnam). For general cooking: James Beard, April Bloomfield, Marion Cunningham, Suzanne Goin, Edna Lewis, Deborah Madison, Cal Peternell, David Tanis, Alice Waters, The Canal House, and The Joy of Cooking. For inspiring writing about food and cooking: Tamar Adler, Elizabeth David, MFK Fisher, Patience Gray, Jane Grigson, and Nigel Slater. For baking: Josey Baker, Flo Braker, Dorie Greenspan, David Lebovitz, Alice Medrich, Elisabeth Prueitt, Claire Ptak, Chad Robertson, and Lindsey Shere.

There were fireflies riding on the dark air and a dog baying on some low and far-away ledge of the cliff. The table seemed to have risen a little toward the sky like a mechanical dancing platform, giving the people around it a sense of being alone with each other in the dark universe, nourished by its only food, warmed by its only lights. And, as if a curious hushed laugh from Mrs. McKisco were a signal that such a detachment from the world had been attained, the two Divers began suddenly to warm and glow and expand, as if to make up to their guests, already so subtly assured of their importance, so flattered with politeness, for anything they might still miss from that country well left behind. Just for a moment they seemed to speak to every one at the table, singly and together, assuring them of their friendliness, their affection. And for a moment the faces turned up toward them were like the faces of poor children at a Christmas tree. Then abruptly the table broke up - the moment when the guests had been daringly lifted above conviviality into the rarer atmosphere of sentiment, was over before it could be irreverently breathed, before they had half realized it was there. But the diffused magic of the hot sweet South had withdrawn into them - the soft-pawed night and the ghostly wash of the Mediterranean far below - the magic left these things and melted into the two Divers and became part of them. Tender is the Night, Ch VII

Our Good for You portfolio was growing elsewhere, too. I got a call one day from Ofra Strauss, the CEO of Strauss-Elite Food, our snacks partner in Israel. She asked to see me in Purchase and showed up with a huge hamper of Mediterranean dips—hummus, baba ghanoush, you name it. She laid them all out with fresh pita bread on my conference table, and we enjoyed a picnic of products from Sabra, a New York–based company that Strauss had recently purchased. It was a delicious lineup—totally vegetarian—and a great potential mate to Stacy’s Pita Chips, which we’d acquired a couple of years earlier. Less than a year later, Sabra and Frito-Lay signed a joint venture, and Sabra now leads the US hummus market. More important for me, Ofra is one of my dearest friends.

Based on this data, Trichopoulou published a landmark article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in 2003, in which she concluded that adhering to a “traditional Mediterranean diet,” which includes “a high intake of olive oil” was associated with a “significant and substantial reduction in overall mortality.” It is therefore a shock to find out that in this study, Trichopoulou never actually measured the olive oil consumption of her subjects. It was not an item on the food-frequency questionnaire she used, either as a foodstuff eaten directly or as a fat used in cooking. Instead, she “estimated” its use from the questionnaire’s list of cooked dishes, making assumptions about how Greeks might cook them.XVII This shortcoming is not mentioned in the NEJM paper, however, and “olive oil” is listed in the paper without any explanation of its derivation.XVIII

Often, when I went out for breakfast on Sunday morning, at the Mediterranean place around the corner, I was seated by a dancer who’d been a year ahead of me at school and waited on by a painter who’d been two years ahead. At night, Don and I could meet Lauren for Thai food, or Leigh and Allison for gin and tonics at the Rat Pack–era bar on Bedford and watch an alternative circus, which involved one college friend of mine eating fire, another clowning in the style of Jacques Lecoq, another riding a unicycle and playing trombone. For me, this was heaven, heaven that could only be improved by Jenny moving in down the street. For Jenny, though, it turned out this was hell. She had cast off such childish things. Heaven was, she told me, eyes shining, driving to a large supermarket and unloading a week’s worth of groceries directly into her apartment from her designated parking spot.

No great nation is ever conquered until it has destroyed itself. Deforestation and the abuse of the soil, the depletion of precious metals, the migration of trade routes, the disturbance of economic life by political disorder, the corruption of democracy and the degeneration of dynasties, the decay of morals and patriotism, the decline or deterioration of the population, the replacement of citizen armies by mercenary troops, the human and physical wastage of fratricidal war, the guillotining of ability by murderous revolutions and counterrevolutions—all these had exhausted the resources of Hellas at the very time when the little state on the Tiber, ruled by a ruthless and farseeing aristocracy, was training hardy legions of landowners, conquering its neighbors and competitors, capturing the food and minerals of the western Mediterranean, and advancing year by year upon the Greek settlements in Italy.

It's eight, and it's time to prepare the filet mignons encrusted with pepper, sliced and served with an Israeli couscous salad with almonds, feta cheese, cherry tomatoes, roasted red peppers, preserved lemons, braised fennel, and artichoke bottoms. Funny, when I'd first made this meal for Caro, she didn't believe me when I'd presented the fine or medium grains at Moroccan or Algerian restaurants. Regardless of the name, Israeli couscous is more pasta-like and not crushed, but delicious all the same, and I love the texture---especially when making a Mediterranean-infused creation that celebrates the flavors of both spring and summer. While Oded preps the salad, I sear the steaks, and an aroma hits my nostrils---more potent than pepper---with a hint of floral notes, hazelnut, and citrus. I don't think anything of it, because my recipe is made up from a mix of many varieties of peppercorns---black, green, white, red, and pink. Maybe I'd added in a fruitier green?

Garnish soft comfort foods with crunchy crumbs, toasted nuts, or crisp bits of bacon to make things interesting. Serve rich meats with bright, acidic sauces and clean-tasting blanched or raw vegetables. Serve mouth-drying starches with mouthwatering sauces, and recognize that a well-dressed, juicy salad can serve as both a side dish and a sauce. On the other hand, pair simply cooked meats, such as grilled steak or poached chicken, with roasted, sautéed, or fried vegetables glazed with Maillard’s dark lacquer. Let the seasons inspire you; foods that are in season together naturally complement one another on the plate. For example, corn, beans, and squash grow as companions in the field, then the three sisters find their way together into succotash. Tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, and basil become ratatouille, tian, or caponata depending on where you are on the Mediterranean coast. Sage, a hardy winter herb, is a natural complement to winter squash because its leaves—and its flavor—stand up to the cold of winter.

A Mediterranean flatbread, the pita is baked at a high temperature so that puffy pockets form in the middle, which can then be stuffed with meat or beans. He did the same thing that Secretary Girl did with her turtle burger bun... ... picking something that would keep the meat juices from dripping out the bottom! Hmm. You used a handmade Tzatziki sauce to ameliorate the smelliness of the kebab meat and to create a mild base to make the spices stand out. And the burger patty... ... is kofta! A Middle Eastern meatloaf of ground beef and lamb mixed with onions and plentiful spices, its highly fragrant aroma hits the nose hard! Its scent and umami flavor are powerful enough to bring tears to the eyes!" W-what is going on here?! How could they eat all that greasy, heavy meat so quickly and easily?! "Here. Let me give you a lesson. Four things are required for a good burger. A bun, a patty, some kind of sauce and... ...pickles. The sharp smell and tart flavor of pickles is what highlights the meaty umami of the patty. Pickles are a hidden but key component of the best burgers! From what I could tell, you used ginger sticks as your pickle analogue... ... but that was a weak choice." "What?! Then what did you choose that's so much better?!" "The pickle type that I picked for my burger... ...is achaar." "Achaar?" "What kind of pickle is that?" ACHAAR South Asian in origin, achaar consists of fruits or vegetables pickled in mustard oil or brine, and then mixed with a variety of spices. Sometimes called Indian pickles, achaar is strongly tart and spicy. This is achaar I made with onions. The spicy scent of the mustard oil makes the meaty umami of the kofta patty really stands out. For the tartness, I used amchoor- also known as mango powder- a citrusy powder made from dried unripe mangoes. But that's just the base. I added lemon juice to bolster the citrusy flavor of the amchoor... ... and then some garlic, ginger and chili peppers to give it an aroma that tickles the nose. Cloves. Cumin seeds. Black pepper. Paprika. I even added a dab of honey to give it a hint of sweetness.

Soon, things were heating up in the kitchen. The first course was a variation on a French recipe that had been around since Escoffier, Baccala Brandade. Angelina created a silky forcemeat with milk, codfish, olive oil, pepper, and slow-roasted garlic, a drizzle of lemon juice, and a shower of fresh parsley, then served it as a dip with sliced sourdough and warmed pita-bread wedges, paired with glasses of bubbly Prosecco. The second course had been a favorite of her mother's called Angels on Horseback- freshly shucked oysters, wrapped in thin slices of prosciutto, then broiled on slices of herb-buttered bread. When the oysters cooked, they curled up to resemble tiny angels' wings. Angelina accented the freshness of the oyster with a dab of anchovy paste and wasabi on each hors d'oeuvre. She'd loved the Angels since she was a little girl; they were a heavenly mouthful. This was followed by a Caesar salad topped with hot, batter-dipped, deep-fried smelts. Angelina's father used to crunch his way through the small, silvery fish like French fries. Tonight, Angelina arranged them artfully around mounds of Caesar salad on each plate and ushered them out the door. For the fifth course, Angelina had prepared a big pot of her Mediterranean Clam Soup the night before, a lighter version of Manhattan clam chowder. The last two courses were Parmesan-Stuffed Poached Calamari over Linguine in Red Sauce, and the piece de resistance, Broiled Flounder with a Coriander Reduction.

When should you be skeptical? Any time you see a report that a single food, beverage, supplement, food product, or ingredient causes or reduces the risk for obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, or cancer, it is a good idea to envision a red warning flag flying high in the air. The studies may have identified associations between the food factor and the disease, but associations can be due to any number of other causes. Dietary patterns, not single factors, are what matter to health. Look out for words like “miracle” or “breakthrough.” Science tends to proceed in small increments and rarely works that way. And please be especially skeptical of “everything you thought you knew about nutrition is wrong.” Science does not work that way, either. Whenever you see “may” or “might”—as in “may reduce the risk of heart disease” or “might improve cognition in the elderly”—recognize that these also mean “may not” or “might not.” Overall, it is always a good idea to ask whether study results seem plausible in the light of everything else you know. As an eater, you should be wary of media hype about whether fat or sugar is a more important cause of health problems. This question ignores basic principles of nutrition: we eat foods, not nutrients, and how much we eat is often just as important as what we eat. Diets of enormous variety, from Asian diets traditionally based on rice (carbohydrates that convert to sugar in the body) to Mediterranean diets rich in olive oil (fat), can all promote long and healthy lives. The basic principles of eating healthfully have remained remarkably constant over the years: eat a wide variety of relatively unprocessed foods in reasonable amounts. Note that these same dietary principles apply to prevention of the entire range of diet-related chronic diseases. If an industry-funded study claims miraculous benefits from the sponsor’s products, think, “Advertising.

Autoimmune Disease—the “Leak” in Your Gut Autoimmune diseases are a disaster and there are no good medicines available (steroids work, but the treatment is worse than the disease). They’ve been around for centuries, but there’s been a clear uptick in the last fifty years. Why? Two hypotheses have been proffered to explain it: the barrier hypothesis (our skin or lungs are letting in antigens) and the hygiene hypothesis (we don’t eat dirt and are too hygienic). But in fact, in the gut, they’re the same thing; because the gut is the dirtiest place in the world—one hundred trillion bacteria to have to fend off at all times—you don’t need an intestine, you need a fortress. We’ve known for a while that leaky gut is akin to chinks in the walls of that fortress. Antigens, like enemy soldiers, escape through those chinks into the bloodstream, where T cells and antibodies react against them. But in a case of mistaken identity, these immune cells then accidentally identify parts of your body as foreign invaders and generate an immune response to kill them off, a process termed molecular mimicry. Then there are two new twists. First, it appears that one autoimmune disease, called ankylosing spondylitis, produces antibodies to a gut bacterium called Klebsiella pneumoniae. Conversely, a different autoimmune disease called rheumatoid arthritis produces antibodies to a second gut bacterium called Proteus mirabilis. Now, this might not seem that earth-shattering, but recent work has shown that the refined carbohydrates in processed food feed those two bacteria in particular, and that carbohydrate restriction improves both of these diseases. Indeed, a low-sugar, high-fiber Mediterranean diet has been shown to be efficacious at prevention and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Furthermore, introduction of fiber to the diet appears to improve asthma (frequently an autoimmune disease), likely by improving gut function and reducing inflammation.

God damn you!” Alfred said. “You belong in jail!” The turd wheezed with laughter as it slid very slowly down the wall, its viscous pseudopods threatening to drip on the sheets below. “Seems to me,” it said, “you anal retentive type personalities want everything in jail. Like, little kids, bad news, man, they pull your tchotchkes off your shelves, they drop food on the carpet, they cry in theaters, they miss the pot. Put ’em in the slammer! And Polynesians, man, they track sand in the house, get fish juice on the furniture, and all those pubescent chickies with their honkers exposed? Jail ’em! And how about ten to twenty, while we’re at it, for every horny little teenager, I mean talk about insolence, talk about no restraint. And Negroes (sore topic, Fred?), I’m hearing rambunctious shouting and interesting grammar, I’m smelling liquor of the malt variety and sweat that’s very rich and scalpy, and all that dancing and whoopee-making and singers that coo like body parts wetted with saliva and special jellies: what’s a jail for if not to toss a Negro in it? And your Caribbeans with their spliffs and their potbelly toddlers and their like daily barbecues and ratborne hanta viruses and sugary drinks with pig blood at the bottom? Slam the cell door, eat the key. And the Chinese, man, those creepy-ass weird-name vegetables like homegrown dildos somebody forgot to wash after using, one-dollah, one-dollah, and those slimy carps and skinned-alive songbirds, and come on, like, puppy-dog soup and pooty-tat dumplings and female infants are national delicacies, and pork bung, by which we’re referring here to the anus of a swine, presumably a sort of chewy and bristly type item, pork bung’s a thing Chinks pay money for to eat? What say we just nuke all billion point two of ’em, hey? Clean that part of the world up already. And let’s not forget about women generally, nothing but a trail of Kleenexes and Tampaxes everywhere they go. And your fairies with their doctor’s-office lubricants, and your Mediterraneans with their whiskers and their garlic, and your French with their garter belts and raunchy cheeses, and your blue-collar ball-scratchers with their hot rods and beer belches, and your Jews with their circumcised putzes and gefilte fish like pickled turds, and your Wasps with their Cigarette boats and runny-assed polo horses and go-to-hell cigars? Hey, funny thing, Fred, the only people that don’t belong in your jail are upper-middle-class northern European men. And you’re on my case for wanting

Glorious Food Italians are known the world over for their food. Each region of Italy enjoys its own kind of cooing. For example, in Naples, pasta is served with a tomato-based sauce, while in the north, it is more often served with a white cheese sauce. The people of Genoa often put pesto, a flavorful mixture of basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, and grated cheese, on their pasta. The grated cheese called Parmesan originated in the area around Parma. Italians also invented many other cheeses, including Gorgonzola, mozzarella, provolone, and ricotta. No one knows when pizza was invented, but the people of Naples made it popular. At first, pizza was a simple flatbread topped with tomato and garlic. Since then, it has evolved into countless variations, served all over Italy and the world. Italians tend to eat a light breakfast of coffee and perhaps a small bun. Lunch is often the main meal, while dinner tends to be lighter. Italian meals may include antipasti, an array of vegetables, cold cuts, and seafood; a pasta dish; a main course of meat or fish; a salad; and cheese and fruit. Bread is served with every meal. Italy is justly famous for its ice cream, which is called gelato. Fresh gelato is made regularly at ice cream shops called gelaterias. Italians are just as likely to gather, discussing sports and the world, in a gelateria as in a coffee shop. Many Italians drink a strong, dark coffee called espresso, which is served in tiny cups. Another type of Italian coffee, cappuccino, is espresso mixed with hot, frothed milk. Both espresso and cappuccino have become popular in North America. Meanwhile, many Italians are becoming increasingly fond of American-style fast food, a trend that bothers some Italians. In general, dinner is served later at night in southern Italy than in northern Italy. This is because many people in the south, as in most Mediterranean regions, traditionally took naps in the afternoon during the hottest part of the day. These naps are rapidly disappearing as a regular part of life, although many businesses still shut down for several hours in the early afternoon.

How Good Deeds Conquered an Empire Humanly speaking, no one would have thought it possible to bring the nations to the worship of God through simple good deeds. How on earth could “good deeds” change a realm as mighty as the Roman Empire, let alone the whole world? As unlikely as it may have sounded at the time, Jesus’ call to be the light of the world was taken seriously by his disciples. They devoted themselves to quite heroic acts of godliness. They loved their enemies, prayed for their persecutors and cared for the poor wherever they found them. We know that the Jerusalem church set up a large daily food roster for the destitute among them—no fewer than seven Christian leaders were assigned to the management of the program (Acts 6:1—7). The apostle Paul, perhaps the greatest missionary/evangelist ever, was utterly devoted to these kinds of good deeds. In response to a famine that ravaged Palestine between AD 46—48 Paul conducted his own decade-long international aid program earmarked for poverty-stricken Palestinians. Wherever he went, he asked the Gentile churches to contribute whatever they could to the poor in Jerusalem.23 Christian “good deeds” continued long after the New Testament era. We know, for instance, that by AD 250 the Christian community in Rome was supporting 1,500 destitute people every day.24 All around the Mediterranean churches were setting up food programs, hospitals and orphanages. These were available to believers and unbelievers alike. This was an innovation. Historians often point to ancient Israel as the first society to introduce a comprehensive welfare system that cared for the poor and marginalised within the community. Christians

The grape, of a variety known as sultanina, would ultimately grow best in the wet and temperate soil of California. America's region most climatically similar to the Mediterranean. Fairchild's sample from Italy was the Sultanina rosea seedless raisin grape, which was a stronger specimen than a green sultanina that had already made it to California as nursery stock. Regardless of who was first to lay eyes on the sultanina, the variety took little time to grow into the most popular grape in America, adored by winemakers, raisin producers, and people who ate grapes by the fistful.

Take lard, for example, which has long been considered the archetypal example of a killer fat. It was lard that bakeries and fast-food restaurants used in large quantities before they were pressured to replace it with the artificial trans fats that nutritionists have now decided might be a cause of heart disease after all. You can find the fat composition of lard easily enough, as you can for most foods, by going to a U.S. Department of Agriculture website called the National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference. You’ll find that nearly half the fat in lard (47 percent) is monounsaturated, which is almost universally considered a “good” fat. Monounsaturated fat raises HDL cholesterol and lowers LDL cholesterol (both good things, according to our doctors). Ninety percent of that monounsaturated fat is the same oleic acid that’s in the olive oil so highly touted by champions of the Mediterranean diet. Slightly more than 40 percent of the fat in lard is indeed saturated, but a third of that is the same stearic acid that’s in chocolate and is now also considered a “good fat,” because it will raise our HDL levels but have no effect on LDL (a good thing and a neutral thing). The remaining fat (about 12 percent of the total) is polyunsaturated, which actually lowers LDL cholesterol but has no effect on HDL (also a good thing and a neutral thing).

We are not afraid of meat or fat, but we are afraid of unnecessary ingredients and over-complicated technique. Put another way, the food on the plate is proud to be there without disguise or embellishment. And if you find the recipes in this book to be so diverse that they defy coherency as a collection, that’s fine too. Just think of Tuesday Nights Mediterranean as good home cooking from Gibraltar to Lebanon. A votre santé!

may confer additional benefit compared to limiting yourself to one. Fermented foods: When adding foods to a culture of microorganisms, the sugar in the food can be transformed into lactic acid that encourages the growth of helpful bacteria in the gut. These can include miso, kombucha, kefir, yogurt, and sauerkraut. Leafy greens: They contain folate, a B vitamin that aids neurotransmitter function. Included here are arugula, watercress, spinach, Swiss chard, dandelion greens, and lettuce. How best to incorporate these suggested foods into a healthy diet? A Mediterranean diet is high in vegetables, fruits, legumes, beans, nuts, cereals, grains, fish, and unsaturated fats, along with olive oil as a substitute for butter.

It was the most divinely comfortable, elegant, luxurious hotel in the world, with exquisite suites, fabulous food, private cabanas where you could spend the entire day and even eat lunch without ever seeing another guest, lying on mattresses and deck chairs to get a tan, or lounge under a big umbrella, while waiters served food and drinks. You could swim in the Mediterranean, or the infinity pool. There was a gym, beautiful gardens, and impeccable service.

Africa had free markets and a thriving entrepreneurial culture and tradition centuries before these became the animating ideas of the United States or Western Europe. Timbuktu, the legendary city in northern Mali, was a famous trading post and marketplace as far back as the twelfth century, as vital to the commerce of North and West Africa as ports on the Mediterranean were to Europe and the Levant. In Africa Unchained, George Ayittey offers myriad examples of industrial activity in precolonial Africa, from the indigo-dye cloth trade of fourteenth-century Kano, Nigeria, to the flourishing glass industry of precolonial Benin to the palm oil businesses of southern Nigeria to the Kente cotton trade of the Asante of Ghana in the 1800s: “Profit was never an alien concept to Africa. Throughout its history there have been numerous entrepreneurs. The aim of traders and numerous brokers or middlemen was profit and wealth.”2 The tragedy is what happened next. These skills and traditions were destroyed, damaged, eroded or forced underground, first during centuries of slave wars and colonialism and, later, through decades of corrupt postindependence rule, usually in service to foreign ideologies of socialism or communism. No postcolonial leader in Africa who fought for independence has ever adequately explained why liberation from colonial rule necessarily meant following the ideas and philosophies of Karl Marx, a gray-bearded nineteenth-century German academic who worked out of the British Library and never set foot in Africa. At the same time, neither should we have ever allowed ourselves to become beholden to paternalistic aid organizations that were sending their representatives to build our wells and plant our food for us. Nor, for that matter, should we have relied on the bureaucrats of the Western world telling us how to be proper capitalists or—as is happening now—to Party officials in Beijing telling us what they want in exchange for this or that project. It was this outside influence—starting with colonialism but later from our own terrible and corrupt policies and leaderships—that the stereotype of the lazy, helpless, unimaginative and dependent African developed. The point is that we Africans have to take charge of our own destiny, and to do this we can call on our own unique culture and traditions of innovation, free enterprise and free trade. We are a continent of entrepreneurs.

Adzuki beans are small, russet-colored beans. They have a thin white line on the ridge. They’re somewhat thick-skinned with a sweet, nutty flavor. Black beans or turtle beans have a beautiful matte black color. The flesh is cream-colored with a rich, earthy flavor. Cannellini or white beans are white and kidney-shaped. They have a creamy, smooth texture and are good in soups and salads. Chickpeas are round, cream-colored legumes. Extremely popular in the Mediterranean, India, and the Middle East, they have a nutlike flavor. Very high in fiber and nutrients, they’re great when tossed on a salad, mixed with some chopped onion and olive oil, or pureed into hummus. Fava beans or broad beans are usually available whole in their pods or peeled and split. They’re large and light brown with a nutty taste and a slightly grainy texture. Great Northern beans are large white beans with a creamy texture. Use them in baked bean dishes. Navy beans are small white beans and are so called because the U.S. Navy used to keep them aboard ships as a standard provision. Pinto beans are perhaps the most popular beans in the United States. Pale pink with streaks of brown, once cooked, they turn entirely pink. They have a rich, meaty taste.

In fact, one of the more disturbing aspects of the Mediterranean diet pyramid is that it has intensified America’s phobia about animal fats, accelerating our flight from these ancient foods to using vegetable oils instead. And this result may have harmed health in ways that appear serious

Obesity is so rampant that it seems contagious. It’s an epidemic now, and it’s spreading to other countries— the British are gaining, the Chinese are gaining, even the French are gaining— which makes it a pandemic. There are frantic efforts to make it stop. Weight Watchers and Overeaters Anonymous were just early tactics in a long war that would go on to include the Pritikin Principle, the Scarsdale Medical Diet, Slimfast, the Atkins Diet, the South Beach Diet, The Zone, Nutrisystem, Jenny Craig, the Blood Type Diet, the Mediterranean Diet, the Master Cleanse, the DASH diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Paleo Diet, and the Raw Diet. Americans have eaten fat- burning grapefruits, consumed cabbage soup for seven straight days, calculated their daily points target, followed the easy and customizable menu plan, dialed the 1- 800 number to speak to a live weight- loss counselor, taken cider vinegar pills, snacked strategically, eliminated high- glycemic vegetables during the fourteen- day induction phase, achieved a 40:30:30 calorie ratio, brought insulin and glucagon into balance, sought scientific guidance from celebrities, abstained from the deadly cultural practice known as cooking, tanned and then bled themselves to more fully mimic the caveman state, asked that the chef please prepare the omelet with no yolks, and attained the fat- burning metabolic nirvana known as ketosis. It has all been a terrible, amazing failure.

Under international trade laws, “sardine” covers almost two dozen species of fish (for U.S. products it exclusively means young herring), though the true sardine, from Portugal, Spain, France, Morocco, and Algeria, refers to the young pilchard (Sardina pilchardus) caught in Mediterranean or Atlantic waters.

fats. The Mediterranean diet includes foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids usually in the form of fatty fish and walnuts and has limited amount of red meat and other animal products such as dairy foods. Overall, the diet consists of not less than 30% of the daily calories from fats and not more than 50% of the daily calories from carbohydrates.

If your wine is more acidic than the dish you’re having with it, consider adding a squeeze of lemon or a drizzle of vinegar to the dish to balance the pairing.   If your dish is more acidic than your wine, consider adding salt (e.g., either from a salt shaker, or another salty element common to your dish’s region of the world — say, soy sauce for an Asian dish, or anchovies for a Mediterranean dish) to balance the pairing.

Mrs. Shepherd stood at the head of the table as she delivered her annual tutorial on "foods of the world." This was Italy day, and when Mrs. Shepherd said something about the "pungent power of Mediterranean spices," Mary Dawn leaned towards Rosie and wrinkled her nose "Your people like garlic, right?" she said. Rosie couldn't believe she was talking to her. "Yeah," she said, sliding her elbows off the table and sitting up straighter. "For sauce, mostly." "Uh-huh," Mary Dawn said, her voice growing louder. "My mother refuses to cook with it. Says garlic has a way of staying with you. Seeps out of your pores." She flashed an exaggerated frown of sympathy as the girls started exchanging glances. "You must be so embarrassed to smell like your mother's kitchen all the time." All of them started flapping their hands in front of their noses, pretending to wave away the stink. Rosie stared straight ahead. I will not cry. I will not cry. "Okay, girls," Mrs. Shepherd finally said. "Quiet down." No defense of Rosie. No detention for them. Why couldn't her mother cook ring around the chicken or Boston baked beans like the other mothers? Why didn't she ever use Crisco like they did in class, instead of smelly olive oil? At the sound of the bell, she dashed out of the room.

The Mediterranean diet, for example, which is higher in vegetables, beans, fruits, and nuts, and lower in meats and dairy products, has been associated with slower cognitive decline and lower risk of Alzheimer’s.

Increase your BDNF. Until recently, it was thought that no new brain cells could be grown. That changed with the discovery of a protein called BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor). When activated through epigenetics, neurons grow, as do connections between the nerve cells to repair damaged cells. Many things can stimulate the expression of BDNF, including: Aerobic exercise, weight lifting, and regular walking. Quality time in the sun. A traditional Mediterranean diet and foods high in polyphenols and flavonoids, including blueberries, green tea, olive oil, black pepper, turmeric, chocolate, and omega-3 fatty acids. Prebiotics (insoluble foods that good bacteria feed on), such as garlic, lentils, mustard greens, onions, tomatoes, bananas, asparagus, barley, and leeks.

Sicilians love meatballs so much there is no food they have not shaped into balls.

may say “extra-virgin olive oil.” The FDA, admittedly, does not have time to police truth in labeling. This is why many food shows instruct you not to cook with it—never tell a Greek that! Adulterated oils smoke at low temperatures and become toxic, but real extra-virgin oils have a smoke point of almost 400°F. Greek varietal kalamata and Koroneiki cold pressed extra virgin olive oils can be found at

Social roost was born when the two were in the mediterranean and had an idea to bring their world travel dining experiences back to the community in which they were born and raised. They joined forces with new york city’s executive chef, susan burdian and the three developed a globally inspired menu from a scratch kitchen that is now served at social roost. Of course, delicious food deserves delicious cocktails. Rob and jason tapped st. Petersburg native max blowers as their lead mixologist. Max developed cocktails around social themes provided by rob and jason to create the ultimate lavish cocktail menu.

The Portuguese explorers, astronauts of another time, used these winds and some educated guesswork to push European dominion out of the Mediterranean and into the world beyond. For the mahrineros of Lisbon, it was simple work on most days to sail south to places like Madeira and the Canary Islands, the first non-European stepping-stones of Iberian conquest. Getting home was harder, until someone took a gamble and found that if a sailor put his back to the land and sailed off far enough to the northwest, he might eventually make his way up into westerly winds and back to Portugal before the food ran out. Known to sailors as the volta do mar (return from the sea), this discovery—rather like the splitting of the atom five centuries later—would have irreversible consequences for all that came afterwards. Christopher Columbus used an expanded version of the volta to get his fleet from Spain to America and home again, but credit for a bolder leap goes to Bartolomeu Dias, who tested the concept on a global scale.

She'd had a useful morning studying turnip cultivation; however, in an indulgent moment she'd drifted into a daydream in which she was motoring around the Mediterranean with Michael, writing about salty hams and sweet Charentais melons, slicing into glistening apricot tarts, and cracking crab claws by glittering harbors.

In the survey released in February 2020 cited at the beginning of this book, one respondent noted the interrelatedness of the factors involved in our own current world situation, writing: “While extreme climate events are weakening the societal governance and infrastructure, food and water security will become more and more serious, causing large-scale immigration and further inequity. If several geopolitical crises occur in parallel, many states cannot handle the situation properly, due to lack of resources and with the internal conflict, it would cause catastrophic outcomes all over the world.”13 The parallels between events in our modern world and what happened during the Bronze Age Collapse in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean were already readily apparent, but now we need also to take into consideration the catastrophic direct effects of the COVID-19 virus and the ripple effects of the contagion on financial and economic systems that went global at about the same time as the release of the survey.

some historians call Sicily “the world’s island” because it has been conquered by so many peoples, owing to its location in the middle of the Mediterranean, valuable for trade and military reasons. Sicilians have been influenced by each culture, and the island’s amazingly diverse history is reflected in its dramatic architecture, ruggedly beautiful terrain, delicious food, sibilant language, even the faces of its people.

Food isn’t just fuel; it’s a means by which we can maintain our overall health and well-being. The countless vitamins and minerals in foods each have a purpose—they facilitate efficient operation of our body.

5 × 5 × 5 Daily Worksheet—Preferred Foods List Choose one item from each defense category to eat each day. Defense: Angiogenesis Antiangiogenic Almonds Anchovies Apple peel Apples (Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Reinette) Apricot Arctic char Arugula Bamboo shoots Barley Beer Belgian endive Bigeye tuna Black bass Black beans Black plums Black raspberries Black tea Blackberries Blueberries Blueberries (dried) Bluefin tuna Bluefish Bok choy Bottarga Broccoli Broccoli rabe Cabbage Camembert cheese Capers Carrots Cashews Cauliflower Caviar (sturgeon) Chamomile tea Cherries Cherries (dried) Cherry tomatoes Chestnuts Chia seeds Chicken (dark meat) Chile peppers Cinnamon Cloudy apple cider Cockles (clam) Coffee Cranberries Cranberries (dried) Dark chocolate Eastern oysters Edam cheese Eggplant Emmenthal cheese Escarole Fiddleheads Fish roe (salmon) Flax seeds Frisee Ginseng Gouda cheese Gray mullet Green tea Guava Hake Halibut Jamón iberico de bellota Jarlsberg cheese Jasmine green tea John Dory (fish) Kale Kimchi Kiwifruit Licorice root Lychee Macadamia nuts Mackerel Mangoes Manila clams Mediterranean sea bass Muenster cheese Navy beans Nectarine Olive oil (EVOO) Onions Oolong tea Oregano Pacific oysters Peaches Pecans Peppermint Pine nuts Pink grapefruit Pistachios Plums Pomegranates Pompano Proscuitto di Parma Pumpkin seeds Puntarelle Radicchio Rainbow trout Raspberries Red black-skin tomatoes Redfish Red-leaf lettuce Red mullet Red wine (Cabernet, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot) Romanesco Rosemary Rutabaga Salmon San Marzano tomatoes Sardine Sauerkraut Sea bream Sea cucumber Sencha green tea Sesame seeds Soy Spiny lobster Squash blossoms Squid ink Stilton cheese Strawberries Sultana raisins Sunflower seeds Swordfish Tangerine tomatoes Tardivo di Treviso Tieguanyin green tea Tuna Turmeric Turnips Walnuts Watermelon Yellowtail (fish)

So brisk! I can feel the fresh Mediterranean breeze... gently rustling the leaves of the lemon trees. I've had semifreddo desserts many times in my life. But this is unlike anything I've tasted before! And I know the taste of true Italian limoncello. Where on earth did this intense lemony flavor come from?! Is it that fourth layer? What is it?!" "That layer... ... is lemon curd." "Lemon curd?" "Lemon card?" "It isn't curd like curds of milk. It's a dessert spread made with citrus fruits." LEMON CURD A fruit spread originating in Britain, it was intended as an alternative to jams. Egg yolks, sugar, fruit juice and zest are mixed together with a blender and then cooked into a paste and chilled. A centuries-old, traditional dessert, there is even a royal version called Royal Curd. "That vibrant, citrusy tang of the curd has a fresh, refined aroma. Its smoothness combined with the satiny-soft Genoese cake melts in the mouth! What a light and downy texture. It touches the tongue like a feather! The grainy Biscuit Joconde could never be this soft!" "He turned it around! The Genoese cake was supposed to be a liability... but he turned it into an advantage by making it part of an elegant, mature taste experience!" "A British fruit spread, eh? And he put that together right on the spot?" "I'm shocked he had the ingredients." "Fruit curds don't need many ingredients. They use egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest... and butter." "Butter? I thought you barely had a scrap of butter left." "I substituted the butter with this." "Olive oil?!" "Oho! Is that even possible?" "He must certainly know all about it, having grown up in Italy!" "I handicapped myself by choosing Genoese for the sponge cake style. It doesn't have nearly the punch the almondy Biscuit Joconde has. So I turned to the citrusy flavor instead.

Nosta is a family-owned and operated restaurant. We serve authentic Mediterranean-Turkish cuisine daily. It's our passion to serve high-quality food and drink in a comfortable and friendly setting. We take pride in only using the finest local ingredients. Whether you're looking for a casual evening with friends, a special celebration, or a delicious and healthy meal, Nosta is here to make sure you have the best experience possible. We value our customers and hope to have the opportunity to serve you.

Extra virgin” is no guarantee, but its absence on a bottle is a guarantee of inferiority. Don’t ever buy anything labeled “virgin,” “pure,” “light,” “extra light,” “olive oil blend,” “Mediterranean blend,” or simply “olive oil.

The precept of Italian cooking is that the ingredient must always be respected and appreciated in its own right. Respect for ingredients is common to most Mediterranean cooking. It is also ancient, as can be seen by reading the Sicilian cookery writer Archestratus, who lived in the fourth century BC, when Sicily was part of the Greek empire. He writes: ‘Sauces of cheese or pickled herbs are added to inferior fish, but in general this cooking is not based on sauces, the preference being for the addition of oil and light herbs to the fish juices. Meats are prepared with equal simplicity. Ingredients are cooked with few flavourings.’ Such flavouring as there is comes from the beginning of the cooking, often in the form of a battuto or a soffritto, which together form the point of departure of most dishes. Many dishes from these northern regions are ‘slow food’, cooked at length to suit the long cold evenings by the fire.

Champagne arrived by the bottle, and the food came out of the kitchen à la carte on small plates. Roasted foie gras with passion fruit, saki-pine nut gazpacho with oysters and cherries, melted chestnut soup with salmon threads and celery root, and Mediterranean sea bass with Parmesan and charred lily bulb.

Then there are two new twists. First, it appears that one autoimmune disease, called ankylosing spondylitis, produces antibodies to a gut bacterium called Klebsiella pneumoniae. Conversely, a different autoimmune disease called rheumatoid arthritis produces antibodies to a second gut bacterium called Proteus mirabilis. Now, this might not seem that earth-shattering, but recent work has shown that the refined carbohydrates in processed food feed those two bacteria in particular, and that carbohydrate restriction improves both of these diseases. Indeed, a low-sugar, high-fiber Mediterranean diet has been shown to be efficacious at prevention and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Furthermore, introduction of fiber to the diet appears to improve asthma (frequently an autoimmune disease), likely by improving gut function and reducing inflammation.

Earthwatch Institute offers an opportunity to join research scientists around the globe, assisting with field studies and research. Most programs involve wildlife—for example, you can help track bottlenose dolphins off the Mediterranean coast of Greece (8 days, $2,350), or work with Kenya’s Samburu people to preserve the endangered Grevy’s zebra (13 days, $2,950)—but some are cultural: A program in Bordeaux, France, for instance, has volunteers working in vineyards helping to test and improve wine-growing practices (5 days, $3,395); accommodations are in a chalet and meals are prepared by a French chef. Prices do not include airfare, but can be considered tax-deductible contributions. Earthwatch Institute–U.S., 114 Western Ave., Boston, MA 02134, 800-776-0188 or 978-461-0081, www.earthwatch.org. For many volunteers, their favorite program is Sierran Footsteps. Volunteers spend four days with the Me-Wuk Indians in central California’s Stanislaus National Forest harvesting reeds and then making baskets. They also learn Indian legends and cook traditional foods. The project is designed to help keep these Indian traditions alive. It might sound like summer camp, but this program, and all the others, has a serious side.

Ancel Keys demonstrated that a diet low in saturated animal fat and processed food was associated with a low incidence of mortality from coronary heart disease and cancer. Beginning in the late 1950s, the study followed almost 13,000 men from seven different countries (Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, Netherlands, Finland, United States, and Japan). Men living in the Mediterranean region had the lowest incidence of heart disease and the longest life expectancy. And Greek men had a 90% lower likelihood of premature death from heart attack compared to American men!

In each portside town, enticing aromas waft from every harborside taverna, mountaintop inn, and home. Not only do the Greeks appreciate good food, it is central to their culture. Produce markets spill over with fragrant local provender: grapes, cucumbers, lemons, and tomatoes, as well as sardines, shellfish, and lamb. Lunch--usually the largest meal of the day--begins after 2 P.M., and is followed by an ample siesta. The long work day resumes, and dinner begins after 9 P.M. It may last well into the night among friends: a glass of ouzo--accompanied by singing, guitar playing, and dancing--often ends the evening meal, postponing bedtime until the wee hours. Laughter and conversation flavor the food at every meal. The Mediterranean climate is conductive to year-round outdoor eating. In each home, a table on the patio or terrace takes pride of place. Many home cooks build outdoor ovens and prepare succulent roasted meats and flavorful, herb-scented potatoes that soak up the juice of the meat and the spritz of a lemon. Tavernas, shaded by grape arbors, are synonymous with Greece and its outdoor culinary culture. One of the greatest pleasures of the Greek Isles is enjoying a relaxing meal while breathing the fresh sea air and gazing out on spectacular vistas and blue waters.

The products of the vine and olive tree played a great part in Mediterranean life. The first squeeze of the olive press gave oil fit for food, the second for ointment, the third for illumination, and what was left could be burned as fuel.