Mediterranean Diet

This is a photo of what the Spanish call collejo (co-yea-ho) I can’t find an English equivalent or name for it.

It’s called poor man’s spinach as it returns every year no need for sowing - I like that, but it does have a tendency to spread, which if you have the space is fine as there is more to pick.

It has a taste quite similar to spinach and if you pick out the top few pairs of leaves it keeps on producing for quite a long season.

Once it starts to flower the taste becomes quite bitter. The seeds may be collected to replant but I’ve never had to do that it just keeps on coming back!

That’s the sort of gardening I like. In our holiday home I have a variety of artichokes that just come back and produce food year after year - fresh food for free.

It’s amazing how many more people I see out in the countryside picking setas - wild mushrooms, asparagus and the other local delicacies like cojellas, caldo and alcelga the spinach beet equivalent.

And after the downpour of today there’ll be carrier bags full of writhing snails being collected too!

I don’t mind the greens but draw the line at picking my own and cooking my own snails.

Ugh! A neighbour of mine once invited me in to witness the live snails being cooked then offered me some on a plate straight from the foaming frothy pan.

I declined - none to politely while my stomach was doing unmentionable revolutions.

So pick your own fresh greens - me I eat the asparagus from my garden raw, it’s crunchy and delicious like freshly picked peas. And they’re free.

Call me weird - my hubby does.

Check back later and I’ll post some photo’s of the wild plants that you can pick and eat.

Eating fresh produce is part and parcel of the Mediterranean Diet. The only foods that my neighbours used to buy were those they could not produce themselves:

The rest they did without or grew themselves. They had a pig in the cellar, a mule for transport, chickens for meat and eggs, rabbits for meat and they went trapping, shooting and gleaning to survive.

They had olive oil, either because they owned trees or went gleaning after the harvest to ensure their years supply of oil.

They grew food crops in their land or the land they worked, so their diet was freshly picked and/or killed or a product of their preservation of a glut of produce.

Well not exactly but rainbow colours should be an important part in our diet every day.

From fresh white cauliflowers to deep almost black figs or plums, the better the rainbow effect on your plate the larger the range of vitamins and nutrients you’re getting to help you stay fighting fit.

Choose a bright rainbow diet, try and include the whole spectrum of colours. The colour groups do actually provide different nutritional benefits - but eat them all and you’ll get them all!

Red and yellow and pink and green,
Purple and orange and blue,
I can eat a rainbow,
eat a rainbow,
eat a rainbow too!

It’s all very well saying include nuts in your daily diet but how. It’s rather boring to eat them just as they are all the time so try these ideas:

Nuts play an important part in the Mediterranean Diet, especially almonds and walnuts which grow prolifically around the sunsoaked countries of the Med.

Add a handful of nuts to your daily diet to help protect yourself against heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

Choose raw or slightly roasted nuts and you’ll be increasing your daily fibre intake and magnesium too. Try to avoid the commercially roasted and salted nuts - go raw!

Yes nuts are high in calories, around 1000 per cup, but don’t let that put you off them. In moderation they are not only very good  - but very good for you.

Hello all

or

Hola a todos

from sunny Mediterranean Spain

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