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Thank you for sending me a message. Although I do read them all, I am not always able to answer them right away. Thank you for your patience! – Elena

 

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144 Comments

  1. Great site! Was wondering… on the post for five vegetarian dishes to try, the horatiki salad had caper leaves. Have any idea where the caper leaves can be bought or how to be made?

    Thanks

    Reply

  2. Dear Elena
    I really enjoy your blog and have tried some of your delicious recipes. I would like to move to eating a mediterranean diet as after years of yo-yo dieting I just want to eat healthily. What should a typical day or week look like? I am not sure how to put the components together. Books/articles I can read would also be great.

    Reply

  4. Dear Elena,
    Your site has inspired me so much !!! ,NA SE KALA ,
    many years in ago in Tripoli were we are from
    I had the best moustokouloura I’ve ever eaten.
    I have searched for these in Greek cake shops,
    here in Sydney were I live , I can only get
    the imported Greek ones, they are ok
    but by the time they get to Australia I
    feel they’ve lost some bite and taste.
    If you have any ideas or recipes
    on how to make these gems ,for me the queen of koulouria
    I would be eternally grateful for all your help
    thanks so so much Elena
    Regards
    George xoxoxoxo
    P.S. Have you published a cook book yet?

    Reply

  5. Dear Elena

    I have been following your website for some time now and absolutely love all your recipes and articles.

    What are you thoughts on using olive oil for frying? I have been reading everywhere that olive oil has a low smoke point and is a carcinogenic when it gets too hot.

    I use olive oil for pretty much everything – stews, frying, dressings etc.

    I would appreciate your thoughts on this subject.

    Kind regards
    Katherine

    Reply

    2. I always think to myself that people have been frying with olive oil for decades, but I doubted myself from time to time because, especially in the last few years, you keep hearing the opposite.

      I will stick to my guns!

      Thank you Elena!

  6. Hi Elana, I am interested to know if reheating food in a microwave has an impact on the health benefits? Does it have any impact on the anti-oxidant benefits of the olive oil?
    Thanks

    Reply

  8. Hi Elena, I love your passion for the mediterranean diet and your drive to promote it to the world authentically. After a lifetime of being sucked into every diet fad and nutritional knowledge based on scientific findings of how I should eat, I have finally come back to my roots and am following the mediterranean diet. Why would I want to eat any other way when this is how my ancestors ate for centuries. This diet also supports my genetic make up. My only problem is I am coeliac and the only healthy alternative I have to bread is making my own Socca bread, using chickpea flour which is also low glycaemic indexed. Am I on track here? I also have diverticulosis which rules out nuts but i am considering adding them into smoothies and using a ninja blender to break them down. Do you have any suggestions for people suffering from coeliac disease and diverticulosis?

    Reply

    1. Hi Alanna,
      Thank you for your message! In regard to avoiding gluten, making the replacement with the flour is fine. I wouldn’t say that there is a need to make any special changes. The most important components of the mediterranean diet are the vegetables, olive, herbs and the small fatty fish. You can easily follow a mediterranean diet without much change other than the bread and pasta (which is not that prominent in the Greek diet).As for the diverticulosis, latest guidelines say that not nuts and seeds can be tolerated when there is no inflammation.

    2. Thank you Elena. I just want to clarify when you say ‘flour is fine’, you mean chickpea flour? The new guidelines for diverticulosis is that nuts and seeds should only be avoided when there is flare up, otherwise they can be eaten?

  9. Hi Elena – Great website! I spent 2 weeks in Greece in August and I had a wonderful time. I ate whatever I wanted to eat and lost a couple of pounds! One thing I noticed while I was there was that I could enjoy bread there without feeling bloated afterwards the way I often do here in the USA. Hunting around on the internet, it seems that Greece grows their own wheat on smaller farms, possibly with less pesticides than what we use in the USA? Also one of the thing the big agriculture companies do here when they harvest wheat is practically soak it in glyphosate, which is very toxic. Since the ’70s and ’80s here in the USA we’ve been using a hybrid form of wheat that produces 10 times as much wheat per acre than the wheat I grew up with in the 50s and 60s as it is higher in gluten and other things. Any or all of these things might be making Americans uncomfortable when they eat it. In Greece I could eat it with no discomfort and I’m wondering if you know anything about modern day Greek agricultural practices, i.e., GMO, pesticides, Round Up ready crops, the kind of wheat Greeks eat, etc. Thanks!

    Reply

    1. Thank you Amrita! It may have to do with the fact that bread here is often made with natural leaven which may make digestion easier.I cannot comment on whether Greek grains have less pesticide or if Greek bakeries use only Greek flour (I don’t think so).

  10. Dear Elena,

    I am very happy to come across your blog, from the article “If the Greek diet is so healthy, why are so many Greeks overweight”? As you said, the same applies to Southern Italians (and even to some degree, to central Italians who ate a basically Med diet with very little butter or other animal fats).

    What you say about diet is true and essential, but the other side of the picture is “everyday exercise” – I don’t mean working out at the gym, but walking a lot, daily physical labour (even housewives and office workers moved a lot more fifty years ago) and relying on bicycles where possible more than cars (and those horrific SUVs).

    For example, the Dutch and the Danes don’t eat a very good diet at all – they don’t eat as much junk food as North Americans, but far too much red meat, dairy fat and sugar – but they are lifelong cyclists and walkers, which is a big help (compare them to British people, for example, with a similar genotype but far less daily exercise).

    In hilly Greek and southern Italian areas, perhaps electric ASSIST bicycles could be a help for people who are no longer able to climb steep hills using just their muscles. But these would have to require the said bicycles to have only an assist – I’ve seen far too many people coasting on flat terrain with electric bicycles.

    And of course town planning is a factor. I was horrified, upon returning to Perugia in central Italy in 2006, by the extent of carccentric sprawl around the original medieval city and its early walkable extensions.

    I look forward to perusing your blog!

    Reply

  12. Hi, Elena,

    Just to clarify- According to the recipe, I would need 2 lb. of de-salted fish for Bakaliaro Plaki. Approximately how much dried fish would equate to 2 lb. desalted cod? Or, should I start with 2 lb. dried fish and then de-salt it?

    Thank you for your work! I can see and feel that you do it with love for your heritage and for your profession!

    Rochelle

    Reply

    1. Hi Rochelle,
      Thanks for the question. You would need about 2 lbs dried fish to start with, and then de-salt it. Thanks for pointing that out, I’ll clarify that on the recipe too.

  13. Hi Elena,

    My wife and I live in Fairfax County, Virginia in the USA and I really like your website. I have begun to post your messages on Facebook, including your roasted chicken recipe which was just fantastic. So thank you! I began to cook the Mediterranean Diet at home about 8 years ago and have used a lot of cookbooks from Nancy Harmon Jenkins who does outstanding work.

    I have a question for you. My daughter and I made your apple strudel recipe and it was also excellent. But what puzzled me was the quantity of what I could make. I was able to make four apple strudels from your recipe and I felt like I needed to add more raisins, walnuts, brown sugar and cinnamon to get the proportions I saw in the picture you posted. Did you use small apples? The apples we buy tend to be very big.

    Anyway, thanks for your great website!

    David

    Reply

    1. Hi David, Yes, I use smallish apples, I wouldn’t say they are very small, but we buy them organic and they tend to be smaller. If they are really big, I would use half the amount. But if you have extra, you can always add to some yogurt for a topping.

  14. Hi Elena, I just wanted to comment and say I think your blog is lovely. I have just started researching the Greek and especially Cretan diet as I recently completed some metabolic diet tests which resulted in me being told I was a group 1 carbohydrate, meditteranean type. I had some preconceived ideas about what the Greeks ate, but looking closer into it I found that it was actually not at all what I had thought, I have a Greek friend and she gave me some tips on what the Greeks traditionally eat, which includes many more pulses and beans than I had first thought. It seems that this diet actually DOES suit me perfectly, if I limit my white meat, egg and fish consumption to two or three times and week and eat pulses, fruit, veg and goats milk products the rest of the time, I have my own bees so I am including honey in this diet too 🙂 I am at this moment sensitive to wheat, so I am tying to limit my wheat consumption to a few times a week, but my metabolic nutritionist tells me that once I have been on this diet for a while, my wheat sensitivity should lessen.
    Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for such an interesting blog, I am going to be trying out some of the recipes in it very soon. Have you ever thought of writing a cookery/nutrition book? I looked on amazon to try and find a Greek specific cook book but it seems that there is quite a gap in the market at the moment, I certainly would be interested in buying a book of your recipes and health tips if you ever decide to write one 🙂
    Have a great day,
    Louisa

    Reply

  15. Hi Elena,

    Thanks for information about how to buy olive oil. Do you know if on US labels that “Harvest Dates” are listed–my 2 bottles of different brands did not list it, both were extra virgin olive oils–one was 100% olives of Italy and the other was a blend from Spain, Italy or Greece but it was also from Italy. Both did have “Best by dates”. So I learned a lot from your post and will enjoy the hunt for the good oils. Thanks for sharing and any more information on the topic would be much appreciated.

    Reply