Mediterranean Women Stay Slim, Too: Eating to Be Sexy, Fit, and Fabulous! (7 page)

Variety keeps your body and mind well nourished, your meals interesting, and even helps your body reach its ideal weight. Variety is incredibly important for weight loss. Think about what you tend to eat or binge on. Maybe it’s chocolate or nachos or those salt-and-vinegar potato chips or even something seemingly in-nocuous such as protein shakes or one particular type of “diet”

frozen dinner. Do you eat one thing almost every day? If so, that’s too much. You’re in a rut and your body is suffering.

Recent studies have linked high fruit and vegetable consumption with stronger bones (greater bone density) and a reduced risk for a number of common chronic diseases such as many types of cancer, diabetes, problems with skin and joints, cataracts, and even senility. For example, women who ate nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day for many years showed a 20 percent lower risk of coronary artery disease compared with women who ate just two and a half servings of fruits and vegetables each day. Because fruits and vegetables contain hundreds and maybe thousands of cancer-fighting phytochemicals, the more types you eat, the more phytochemical action you get.

One of the most potent vegetables you can eat are calcium-rich dark leafy greens, a Mediterranean staple. I encourage you to enjoy them often, trying the many varieties, both raw and cooked.

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Another interesting study looked specifically at variety in the diets of lean and obese people. Both had a varied diet, but the overweight people had a much greater variety of sweets, snacks, and high-density, high-calorie foods. The lean people ate a much greater variety of fruits and vegetables. Eating fruits and vegetables every single day really is the ultimate strategy for a woman’s glowing health, long life, sharp mind, and slim, strong body.

In the Mediterranean, abundant fruit and vegetable variety is everywhere, but it is also local. You can’t get every single fruit and vegetable on every day of the year when you live in Sicily or coastal Spain or Tunisia. Food comes into season on a rotat-ing cycle according to when it grows, ripens, and is harvested.

Some foods are preserved—salted and marinated in vinegar and oil or packed in dry salt—but these foods are used to enhance certain dishes and aren’t the main focus of the meal. And even preserved locally grown food can be more nutritious than

“fresh” food shipped from a continent away.

Eating seasonally brings the women and their families living in the Mediterranean into harmony with nature because what they take into themselves comes directly from the earth at that particular time. They don’t fill up on preservatives, chemicals, processed food, old food . . . they eat what the earth offers during each season, when food tastes better and costs less.

American women and their families can eat like this, too. I do, and there is no reason you can’t. Eating primarily fresh, seasonal food will give you new energy and a clean feeling. You’ll begin to drop extra weight. You may even find that your thinking gets clearer and your outlook gets brighter.

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly

observed, will set off a revolution.

—Paul Cézanne, French painter

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√ A Closer Look at Variety

If you are reading this book, you may already be interested in eating fresher, better food and you may not eat a standard American diet, but let’s think about that diet for a minute. Many American women eat only a handful of vegetables on a regular basis—tomatoes in the form of salsa and ketchup (one study I’ve seen listed ketchup as one of the major sources of vegetables in the American diet—I couldn’t believe they considered it a vegetable!), along with potatoes (usually fried), lettuce (usually iceberg), carrots, and celery. American women also tend to eat a lot of processed food in the form of frozen, microwavable diet dinners that come with a side of vegetables. Those frozen dinners don’t look very tasty to me.

With vegetables like these, it’s no wonder that vegetables aren’t the centerpiece of most American meals. In the Mediterranean, however, vegetables are stars. From tomatoes and eggplant, to peppers and olives, to garlic and onions, to leafy greens such as escarole, kale, Swiss chard, and spinach—each of these in a multitude of varieties, colors, sizes, textures, and shapes—vegetables are the heart of the meal. You’ll even find fresh carrots, tasty potatoes, crisp celery, and Spanish salsa, but you would probably have a hard time finding ketchup. Then again, you’ll never miss it. (And considering ketchup’s high content of refined sugar—no wonder so many kids gobble it up—you are probably better off without it, anyway.)

If vegetables are the heart of Mediterranean cuisine, grains are the soul. Grains come in a similarly magnificent variety in the Mediterranean—farro, barley, wheat, semolina, and grain-like plant foods such as quinoa, amaranth, polenta, chickpeas, cannellini beans, black beans, and favas. Grains make up pilafs and cassoulets, add a depth of flavor and nutrient-dense fiber to
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soups, stews, and salads, and of course grains are what bread in all forms is all about.

What grains do most Americans eat? Packaged presliced bread, white rice, and lots of pasta. American women have so many grains available yet eat so few of them on a regular basis.

Why eat spongy white bread in a bag and elbow macaroni when you can eat freshly baked sourdough bread, whole-grain pita bread, tabbouleh salad, couscous with savory vegetables and bits of chicken, polenta with homemade marinara sauce, or risotto with wild mushrooms?

And what about fruit? America’s holy three—apples, bananas, and oranges—with the occasional handful of berries in a smoothie or cantaloupe or bunch of green grapes—seems mea-ger against the huge variety of Mediterranean fruits: sweet wild strawberries and blueberries, tart blackberries and raspberries, luscious melons of all types, perfect peaches and plums, plump pears and apples, pomegranates and figs, and everything from nearby rather than shipped from faraway countries.

You can begin to take advantage of the immense variety around you by getting out of your personal rut. Identify the fruits, vegetables, and grains that you tend to eat out of habit, then look around you. What haven’t you tried? What is available to you? This is one of the easiest and most enjoyable ways to begin nudging your diet toward a healthier and more Mediterranean style, to lose weight and feel better. How can you start adding more abundant variety to your diet?

Nothing great is produced suddenly, since not

even the grape or the fig is. If you say to me now

that you want a fig, I will answer to you that it

requires time: let it flower first, then put forth

fruit, and then ripen.

—Epictetus, ancient Greek philosopher

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√ Mediterranean Meal Making

To begin getting into the habit of eating Mediterranean style, let’s practice Mediterranean meal making. These four simple meals use Mediterranean techniques and recipes, but you can incorporate the vegetables, fruits, breads, and grains that are freshest and seasonally available to you. This is what will make these meals truly Mediterranean in spirit.

Meal 1: Meze Plate

A wonderful way to experience more tastes in small amounts is to eat in the style of the meze platter. This concept is the same as tapas in Spain or antipasto in Italy—little tastes to share. In the Mediterranean, the meze plate is traditionally snack food served with drinks in the afternoon to fortify until dinner. Americans can enjoy these same foods in the form of a great, quick lunch. Share these little dishes with your family.

One bruschetta, a scoop of tabbouleh salad, and two quarter pita wedges toasted—one spread with a dollop of hummus and the other with a spoonful of pepperonata—and you’ve got a healthy, low-fat, incredibly satisfying light meal or snack.

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Fava and Pecorino Bruschetta

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√This flavorful meze combines a crispy texture of toasted bread with tender fava beans and pecorino. You can double or triple this recipe for larger groups, or the recipe could serve two for lunch. Fava beans are popular in the Mediterranean, but they can be difficult to find in the United States. If you can’t find them, you can substitute freshly picked peas, lima beans, or even green beans snapped into 1-inch pieces. If you want to try another cheese, look for a tangy sheep’s cheese, or you can substitute a good Parmesan cheese.

4 baguette slices or other bread cut

1⁄2 cup fava beans (or substitute lima

about 1⁄4 inch thick

beans, fresh peas, or green beans)

1 tablespoon plus one teaspoon extra-

2 fresh mint leaves, roughly chopped

virgin olive oil

1 ounce fresh pecorino, sheep’s cheese,

Salt and pepper to taste

or Parmesan cheese, shaved into

1 garlic clove, peeled and halved

shards with a vegetable peeler

1.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Brush the baguette slices on both sides with the tablespoon of olive oil, then season with salt and pepper. Bake the baguette slices on a baking sheet for 8–10 minutes, or until lightly golden. This turns them into crostini.

2.
Rub the crostini with the garlic clove halves. Set aside.

3.
Shuck the fava beans from the pods and immerse them in boiling salted water for about 2 minutes (put them in a colander to do this, so you can easily lift them back out). Rinse and peel the beans from their jackets.

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4.
Put the prepared fava beans in a bowl and drizzle with the remaining teaspoon of olive oil. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper and the chopped mint. Mix thoroughly to combine.

5.
Place a spoonful of the bean mixture onto each crostini and top with pecorino, sheep’s cheese, or Parmesan and serve.

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Pepperonata all’Abruzzese

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√This is pepperonata, or pepper relish, in the style of Abruzzo, a region east of Rome that often uses peppers in cooking. It is a fantastic meze to have around—it has hardly any fat or calories, but it is so full of flavor that you may never want to eat jarred salsa again. I like to keep this in a glass jar in the refrigerator for a snack. You can put the pepperonata on a crisp piece of toasted baguette or a toasted pita wedge, or you can just eat it with a spoon. It’s that good. It also makes an excellent component of an antipasti platter, or it can be a topping for fish. To have more around, you can double this recipe.

Note:
For the tomato puree, you can use a good-quality canned or jarred puree (I like Muir Glen), or just liquefy an extra tomato in a blender and freeze what you don’t use, for future recipes.

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

3 whole peeled plum tomatoes with

1 medium red onion, peeled and

their juice, crushed (see below)

coarsely chopped

1 tablespoon chopped garlic

2 red bell peppers, cored, seeded, and

1 teaspoon ground cumin

cut into 1⁄4-inch strips

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and

1 tablespoon tomato puree

cut into 1⁄4-inch strips

1 tablespoon honey

1 jalapeño pepper, cored, seeded, and

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

minced

Salt and pepper to taste

1 red chile, such as Thai, cherry bomb,

Fresh oregano to taste

or pepperoncino, cored, seeded, and

minced

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1.
Heat two small sauté pans on the stove, one on medium heat with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, the other on high heat with 2

tablespoons of the olive oil.

2.
In the first pan over medium heat, cook the onions until they are moist and translucent, stirring occasionally.

3.
In the second pan over high heat, sear the red and green bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, and red chiles, stirring constantly until softened.

4.
When the peppers and chiles are cooked, add the tomatoes and toss for a minute, then remove this pan from the heat and set aside.

5.
When the onions are soft, add the garlic and cook 2 more minutes. Then add the cumin and coriander, stirring to combine. Stir in the tomato puree and cook 4 more minutes. Add the honey and vinegar.

6.
In a large bowl, combine the pepper mixture and the onion mixture, stirring until both mixtures are incorporated. Taste and add the salt, pepper, and oregano, according to what tastes good to you. Serve at room temperature as part of an antipasti platter or warm as a topping on fish. For variation, stir in chopped fresh basil just before serving.

PEELING FRESH TOMATOES

To peel tomatoes: Using a slotted spoon, dunk the tomatoes into boiling water for about a minute, then dunk them in cold water. The skins should peel right off. In a pinch, you can use good-quality whole canned tomatoes, but when tomatoes are in season near you, there is no substitute for fresh.

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Hummus

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√With the increasing popularity of Middle Eastern restaurants, most Americans have at least heard of this protein-rich chickpea spread. Hummus is delicious “fast food” and you can even buy mixes in health food stores to make your own quickly (“just add water”), but this homemade version is almost as fast and the taste is much deeper and more interesting. In a pinch, you can substitute peanut butter or almond butter for the tahini.