Mediterranean Living

Ahhhhh!! I can’t believe it! I forgot to update my blog after Thanksgiving. Traditionally this holiday is centered around the inevitiable or in my case, inedible TURKEY! Since I have committed myself to this new diet and have been trying earnestly to stay away from eating meats, I knew  Thanksgiving would be an interesting holiday this year. This was the first year I did not enjoy turkey during the holiday feast! I enjoyed mashed potatoes, stuffing, corn, bread, pumpkin pie, brocoli salad, and everything else, but no turkey. I thought that this might take away from the holiday, but to my surprise, my holiday was just as enjoyable as it has been in past years.

The real test will be at Christmas. Every year we always have a big, delicious holiday ham to feast on.

 I guess since I have technically labeled myself as a flexetarian, I have the ability to consume meats at my own discression — lucky for me this even exists

I am not a fan of winter, but I do enjoy soup when it is cold outside. Lucky for me, there are plenty of soup recipes that do not include meat. However, I will never give up my love for a nice, hot bowl of chili! Anyways, as I have mentioned before this new diet of mine is all about creativity — being open and trying new things. In this state of mind I began looking for different recipes of soups I could try to make. Vegetable beef stew was always one of my favorites, so I decided I would start here and exclude the beef. In my search I found a really awesome recipe for Chunky Mediterranean Vegetable Soup. I really liked this recipe, because the recipe did not call for any pre-made stock flavorings and it is also FAT FREE!! The recipe I found was very easy and it was helpful, because it included pictures as well (as you can see)

Now add all your hard vegetables – celery, carrots and green beans. Add more water to your pan, you need just enough to cover your vegetables (if you press the vegetables down with the back of a spoon you will see there is enough water).

Now after 15 minutes simmering add salt and a pinch of pepper to taste and a large pinch of dried parsley. Stir well.

then add your chopped zucchini/courgettes and egg plant/bringal. It will look like you need to add more water but you should not have too.

Your our soup is ready.

Enjoy Chunky Mediterranean Soup.

I followed this recipe and my soup turned out really great — it might not have looked as good as it does in these pictures, but it was flavorful and filling. I am excited to take this recipe home and let my family try it too!

I have been having a lot of fun trying new recipes and different entrees, but my next goal is to experiment with desserts by finding a delicious, but healthy recipe to make. Healthy eaters need sweets too!!!

 

 

The vegetables you are adding here turn into water once they start to cook. Stir well again and bring to the boil with a lid on, simmer for 10 minutes.

 

Bring to the boil and then simmer with a lid on for 15 minutes.

Before I decided to change my diet, which was also before the food poisoning incident, going to the grocery store was never a struggle. My diet was pretty consistent, so I could go in, get what I need, and leave — no problem. After, however, going to the grocery store became more and more dreadful each time. I’d go into the store, not have a clue what I should get, and then end up aimlessly cruising the aisles, hoping something would jump into my cart and make it easy for me. Since that never happened, I had to get creative. I started going to the grocery store with an open mind and ended up finding more and more good food each time! I discovered that shopping at different places also helped finding new things. Some stores just have a better selection of certain items…

In my creative times I discovered I could make salad with different ingredients. My favorite salad I made was made with bok choy instead of lettuce and used dressing instead of my usual oil and vinegar. Here are the ingredients I used: Bok Choy, Red Peppers, pine nuts, almonds, onion, carrots, Bountiful Hearty Italian dressing. After gathering all the ingredients I wanted, I just chopped everything up, mixed it all together, and then stirred in the dressing! You could use any combination of vegetables, nuts, and leafy greens to make something like this. It was so easy and ended up being really good. It also gave me something different to eat than a regular salad.

Another experiment that turned out to be pretty tastey was a pita sandwich. I just got roasted red pepper hummus, taboule salad, feta cheese crumbles, and olive oil and put it all into a pita. The result was a delicous sandwich that was surprisingly filling for not having any meat.

So far, my experimentation has turned out pretty good. Now that it is getting colder I have been wanting to try to make different soups, but I will save those for my next post. Until then… happy days!

Welcome to Mediterranean Living for Beginners by Beginners. This blog is intended to be a place for people to come and share thoughts, ideas, and knowledge on various aspects of Mediterranean living. There are many aspects that make up the Mediterranean lifestyle; however this blog will be focusing mainly on the Mediterranean diet and other relative aspects. It is not easy to change such a large aspect of your lifestyle, such as your diet. However, after much thought and consideration I decided that the long term benefits of centering my lifestyle around a healthy diet will far outweigh the costs. Since I am a Mediterranean Dieting neophyte I hope to gain a new wealth of knowledge on the subject and hope there are others who would like to do the same. I also hope that the experienced Mediterranean dieters will offer their experiences and inputs to further help those new to the diet. I would also like to make clear that my decision to live by a Mediterranean diet is not at all influenced by a desire to lose weight. It is, however, influenced by my decision to live a happy, healthy lifestyle. I believe that what goes into your body is very important in determining what your body can be capable of. The event that sparked my decision to change my diet came about after contracting food poisoning from eating a grilled chicken salad. Since then I have had a hard time deciding what to eat since the staple food in my old diet is what made me sick. After doing some research I decided a combination of a flexetarian diet (a vegetarian who eats meat at less than 20% of their meals) and a Mediterranean diet would be the perfect combination to achieve my goal to live a healthy life. I still eat chicken occasionally, but not nearly as much as I did before getting sick. This is the beginning of my journey into living and learning about the Mediterranean diet and I hope you enjoy!