Tag: Mediterranean

It Was a Mediterranean Kind of Day

I’ve been on a diet for two weeks and all I’ve lost is fourteen days.—Totie Fields

So yesterday was kind of a Mediterranean day.

No I wasn’t on a Greek Island, or on the Italian Coast, or the south of France, or dining in a Tunisian cafe, or on beach in Turkey…I was home in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. My wife and I had just returned from the closest thing we have to the Mediterranean, the Gulf Coast of Florida.

So, yesterday I decided to reinstitute a new dedication to the Mediterranean Diet. I don’t know if it was the sea, the salty air, the breeze, or the fact that I ate everything in sight for a week and it hurt to bend over and tie my shoes.

Beginning with breakfast, a Greek yogurt with honey, walnuts, and berries.

For lunch (pictured above), a salad of fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, scallions, olives, mozzarella, and topped with tuna. It was dressed with olive oil, red wine vinegar and oregano.

For supper (pictured below), Big Surf’s stuffed peppers. The peppers were roasted and stuffed with a vegetarian chili of crushed tomatoes, quinoa, cannelloni beans, and topped with cheese.

All of these dishes were very good and I loved them all. And the bonus, I felt so good about myself.

Until…

For lunch today, I made myself a bologna sandwich and chips. Hard to get away from that Eastern Kentucky DNA.

Hey!! Wait a minute, Bologna is in Italy, right? So Italy is on the Mediterranean…

So come on self esteem, get back over here. You can’t go anywhere yet.

Roasted Mushroom, Pepper, and Red Onion Salad

Too many green salads suffer from a lack of imagination—James Beard

I am currently looking out my window at the ice and snow that was dumped on us in the last few days and awaiting for the electrical currents to return from their temporary respite.

In these cold days, most normal folks think of eating something hot such as chili, soups, stews and whatnot. Not me. I am thinking of the delicious salad from last night. I love salads and can eat them at any time.

Since Mrs. Big Surf and I are trying to reform our diets to the warmer winds of the Mediterranean, I am always foraging through Mrs. BS’s many cookbooks, internet, and YouTube. But sometimes a person just wants to do something their own way. This is a constant tete-e-tete with her and I. She cooks really good food from really good recipes and I do way too much experimenting, and I am not a good enough cook to experiment as of yet.

This salad was one of my successes. I sauteed red onions, mushrooms, and a yellow pepper in extra virgin olive oil. After these vegetables cooled, I tossed them with grape tomatoes, scallions, spinach, and feta cheese. I dressed the salad with red wine vinegar, more extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper and dried oregano.

I will make this again, maybe tonight if the electric stays on holiday.