Greek Night

Lately we've been eating Greek salads. We generally eat a low-sodium diet, so kalamatas and feta are a treat. To round out the meal, I typically marinate & grill a butterflied chicken breast, that we split, and add a small grilled potato or some brown rice. It's a simple meal that uses ingredients we usually have on hand and takes about an hour to prepare.

From a workflow perspective, first I prepare the chicken and get it marinating in the refrigerator. Then I cut the veggies for the Greek salad and get them marinating. While those sit, I prepare lettuce for the salad and halve a couple of small potatoes. I preheat the grill and start the potatoes grilling over high indirect head, turning them every 5 minutes. After 10-15 min, I add the chicken to the grill. While they cook, I set the table, toss the Greek salad and get the plates ready.


Here are the recipes:

Greek Salad for 4:
5 tablespoons olive oil
2-1/2 tablespoons white wine and/or balsamic vinegar
1-1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel

1/2 organic cucumber (about 1 cup), halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
2 medium tomatoes (about 1 cup), cut into wedges
1/2 organic yellow¹ bell pepper (about 1 cup), sliced into thin strips
1/4 cup red onion, thinly sliced
1 cup pitted kalmata olives
5 cups organic Romaine lettuce, torn into bite-sized pieces

1/2 cup feta cheese, crumbled

Use vegetable and cheese proportions to your taste. Don't be afraid to vary them or make substitutions, based on what you have in your refrigerator and pantry.

Whisk olive oil, vinegar, oregano and lemon peel in a bowl to blend. Add cucumber, tomatoes, pepper, onion and olives, and allow to marinate for 1/2 hour. Add lettuce and toss to mix and coat. Serve and sprinkle with the feta.
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¹The pepper in the salad doesn't have to be yellow, but the salad will look more colorful and appetizing if it's yellow or orange.


Greek Chicken for 4
1/2 cup low fat plain yogurt
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoons dried oregano
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, butterflied

In a shallow baking dish, mix the yogurt, lemon zest, lemon juice, and oregano. Place the chicken in the dish, and turn to coat. Cover, and marinate in the refrigerator for 1/2 hr to 3 hrs. Grill the chicken over high indirect heat until it's done (5 min per side for our grill). Slice into strips and serve.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

This catchphrase from Unhappy Meals, a 2007 essay by Michael Pollan of the New York Times, really speaks to me. Focus on eating a diverse balanced whole-food-oriented diet, rather than human-designed food products. Moderate the amount eaten. Finally, eat the way our ancestors did – a plant-based diet, rich in leaves, treating meat à la Thomas Jefferson -- “as a condiment to the vegetables which constitute my principal diet.”

In his article, Pollan describes how a 1977 US Senate committee drafted guidelines calling for a reduction of meat and dairy product consumption to reduce coronary heart disease that resulted in a political firestorm propelling the US down the path to a new dietary language -- one that shunned plain talk about whole foods, in favor of terms like cholesterol and saturated fats that were guaranteed not to offend powerful food lobbies. He argues that our growing view of food as a “delivery system for nutrients” is responsible for the rise of processed designer foods and resultant health problems like obesity and diabetes.

Pollan goes on to talk about how the things we think we know about the relationship between diet and health are often based on bad science. Food science studies ignore complex interactions -- they don't study nutrients in the context of food or food in the context of diet or diet in the context of lifestyle. And some of the most rigorous, extensive, long-term studies are based on people self-reporting every 3 months what they remember eating -- who can remember what they ate 3 months ago? who knows how it was prepared? and who will admit to eating more than a maintenance-level of calories or greater than a 4 oz. "medium serving size" of meat at a meal?

He discusses principles of healthy eating and ends with some rules of thumb, collected in the course of preparing the article:

1. Don't eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.
2. Avoid food products that come bearing health claims - they're apt to be heavily processed.
3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable, c) more than five in number -- or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.
4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible; go to the farmer's market.
5. Eat better quality food and eat less.
6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves.
7. Eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture. If it weren't a healthy diet, the culture wouldn't still be around.
8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden.
9. Eat like an omnivore. Add new species to your diet.

I found Pollan's article a compelling read, and it's made me look at my diet differently. Having successfully lost 30 lbs in the late 1990s following the Zone Diet, I came to view food as fats, proteins, and high- or low-glycemic carbs. I'm going to try getting away from that and viewing food as, well, food again. Give the article a try and see what you think!