DASH and Mediterranean Diets: Healthy Living, My Weekly DASH Recipes

What are the three magical cures for healthy living?

How can you follow the DASH and Mediterranean diets recommended by so many doctors and dieticians? What are some practical recipes?

How can we be moderate when partaking of our daily meals? Is moderate eating a type of fasting?

I long ago discarded my Julia Childs, Betty Crocker, and Better Home and Gardens cookbooks, so we will instead show you the sources for my Ladder of Divine Ascent reflections, where we also discussed the DASH diet. The Betty Crocker cookbook may be bland, using few spices, but it does have good advice on how to cook the basic recipes.

YouTube video for this blog: https://youtu.be/7Unic4BqrpU
The video has content that is not included in this blog.

DASH AND MEDITERRANEAN DIET: RECIPE FOR HEALTHY LIVING

What are the three magical cures for healthy living? The big three are: Diet, exercise, and sleep until you are refreshed. Exercise is best when you get our heart beating faster, but any type of exercise is healthy. Many doctors say: Set your alarm for seven or eight hours of sleep, and if you wake up an hour or so early, that is okay. This requires personal discipline and mindfulness. Most people do not want to change their daily habits so they can adopt a regimen of healthy living, they want the doctor to prescribe them a magic pill to cure them. Plus, others would say having an active social life is the fourth magical cure.

Take charge of your health! Ask your doctor not for magical pills, but how changing your habits can improve your health! It is true that magical pills can provide instant relief, and that medications are sometimes essential to recover your health by balancing your body chemistry. But lasting improvements in health are better achieved by changing your daily habits. Often, you need to be patient, you need to realize that an improved regimen of diet, exercise, and sleep can take six months or longer to dramatically improve your health.

About twenty years ago, during my biannual checkup, the doctor informed me that my triglyceride count was sky high, which also meant that my cholesterol was too high, since they go hand in hand. This meant that I was borderline diabetic, and his major advice was to avoid fruit juices. Eating an orange or grapefruit is good for most, but drinking fruit juice is like consuming a dozen oranges or grapefruit, which is way too much sugar. He also counseled that I cut down on bread and starches, and told me, by the way, here is your new prescription.

But I did not want to take the drugs, so I asked Dr Googe for more advice, and learned that the DASH diet, which is similar to the Mediterranean diet and the various diabetic diets, is the recommended diet to reduce my triglyceride and cholesterol levels. When following this diet I also lost thirty pounds, even though I was not watching my weight. After six months, I visited the doctor again, and the nurse asked how I was doing with my prescription. I told her I didn’t fill the prescription, and she left the room in a huff.

My blood tests revealed that my triglyceride and cholesterol count had plummeted to more normal levels as a result of my strictly following the DASH and Mediterranean diets. I told him that I didn’t fill the prescription, because if my blood tests showed dramatic improvements, that we would not know if it was the result of the diet or the drugs. He said I was quite right in this assumption, and that most people just would not drastically change their diet, especially since meals are so culturally bound in family life.

That was twenty years ago, and I have not needed to take the anti-cholesterol drugs since. Now I am nearing seventy, and my blood test results are creeping into the high end of borderline diabetes. Like many people who are aging, my weight is slowly increasing. On my doctor’s advice, I have cut out beer entirely and have cut down on the amount of berries that I enjoy. But since I exercise and sweat, I cannot cut out carbohydrates and sugars entirely, since sugar helps your body hydrate. Eventually, as I age further, I may need to take the anti-cholesterol drugs, but then they will work better than if I had been taking them for twenty years already.

Everyone is different, some people need to fill the anti-cholesterol prescriptions even when they carefully watch their diet. But everyone will be healthier if they follow the DASH and Mediterranean diets, although a few people will need to modify it to their body chemistry. And dietary supplements such as vitamins are just that: supplements. These work best when added to a healthy diet. Perhaps the most widely recommended supplement is fish oil, since it is really concentrated fish oil, which is food, and fish is a key component of DASH and Mediterranean diets.

HEALTHY LIVING: DASH AND MEDITERRANEAN DIET

The purpose of the DASH diet is not to lose weight, the purpose of the DASH diet is to become and remain healthy, which means you should keep the DASH diet until the end of your days, it is a permanent change of habit. Eating in moderation is essential. You should consult your physician and dietician for advice on modifying your diet if your medical situation differs. Personally, when I was younger, I could lose weight solely by eating right, but as the years fall behind me, I have had to control both the portions and the healthiness of what I eat. But if you think the DASH diet is too strict, I warn you: Everyone, without exception, who chooses not to follow the DASH diet, eventually dies.

DASH DIET: My summary:

Eat mostly fish, chicken, and turkey. Avoid beef, and most especially, avoid lamb. Lamb is so rich you gain weight by just smelling the aroma.
Replace bread and starches with vegetables and brown rice. Avoid sandwiches.
Eat fruit for dessert, berries are best. Avoid fruit juice and soda pop. Now I only eat berries.
Eat a capful of mixed nuts or peanuts every day.
Limit sweets and salt, but if you sweat and exercise, or bike long distances as I do, Gatorade and salt help you hydrate. [1]

And also, in addition to the DASH diet,

Constantly sip bottles of water, this helps prevent leg cramps,[2] kidney stones,[3] and urinary tract infections.[4]
But: most people can eat what they like once a week, except for dessert, in moderation. Drink alcohol in moderation.
If you can’t do without ice cream and sweets, splurge once a month. Flavored yogurt is better than ice cream, not so much because of its probiotics,[5] but because yogurt is sold in smaller containers.

We also discuss the DASH diet in our reflection on gluttony and fasting. As practiced in the modern Orthodox Church, fasting is not depriving yourself of food, but rather eating in moderation, and watching what you eat. Eat for sustenance first, you should not eat primarily for pleasure.

Jesus and the early church exhort us that fasting should be a part of Christian life. The early church did not emphasize healthy eating, but this is emphasized more in the modern church because of our vastly improved medical knowledge. We should take care of our body, since it is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

St John Climacus on Gluttony and Fasting, Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 14, and Eating for Health: DASH diet
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/eating-for-health-dash-diet-st-john-climacus-on-gluttony-and-fasting-in-ladder-of-divine-ascent/
https://youtu.be/KM0eMjE1fXc

DASH SALAD, WITH CHICKEN, BROWN RICE, AND BLACK BEANS

This will be my only cooking video, because this is basically my lunch and dinner.

Chicken Cycle: Eight drumsticks, one can of black beans, about two cups of brown rice, cooked in broth from cooking drumsticks, plus white meat from chicken.

Fish Cycle: Shrimp, assorted seafood, several pieces of fish, plus cup of brown rice cooked in cooking broth, plus a small can of chicken and rice soup.

Both Cycles: I cook separately a package of brussel sprouts, two small boxes of sliced mushrooms, and a package of okra. Then I slice then cook a mixture of four bunches of green onions, asparagus, one zucchini, one squash, and one Chinese eggplant, and then add a sliced head of broccoli. Each day I cut up a small tomato and a colored pepper, since they keep better whole, and I add mixed nuts measured in a deep peanut jar lid.

Later, we will discuss how you can change this recipe to make a delicious Thanksgiving Day side dish and turkey stuffing.

I cook my meals in an ordinary electric skillet. My chicken is purchased from an independent Latin market in Southeast Florida. Their meat and produce are often cheaper than larger grocery stores, including Walmart, because they sell a lower grade of meat and produce. For produce, there is little difference in actual quality, the only difference is the appearance, grade A produce looks prettier. For chicken, I usually cook it as soon as I arrive home from the store, chicken goes bad quickly.

I cook my chicken in a thin coat of olive oil, since it cooks in its own juices. What is the difference between five-dollar olive oil and twenty-dollar olive oil? For me, about fifteen dollars. For spices I use salt, pepper, and rosemary, and have settled on cooking it about forty minutes at about 330 degrees on each side. I like to cook it with the cover on, so it doesn’t splatter all over the kitchen.

How healthy are these skillets? Dr Google informs us that Teflon skillets purchased after 2013 are generally safe,[6] but last time I shopped, I could not find any. But a recent Atlantic article advised that if you have a coated black spatula, to discard it to be on the safe side.[7]

A friend who is a cook says that adding salt and pepper to most anything will give it flavor, plus we add rosemary, my favorite spice.

I learned my minimal cooking techniques first from the Julia Childs cookbooks many years ago, and her first rule of cooking is to never throw away the cooking juices, which includes the spices left in the pan. Julia Childs loves gravies, which can be thickened with a bit of flour. We are not going to make any gravy, but after we are finished cooking the chicken, we are going to pour in a bit of water and cook it for about ten minutes to make some broth, using our spatula to scrape off the cooked chicken off the skillet. But don’t immediately wash the skillet! What little is left will not go to waste, it will flavor the vegetables we will soon cook.

Instead, we will add our broth to the brown rice in our rice cooker, at the ratio of three measures of liquid to one measure of rice. This cooked rice will really add to the taste of our chicken and vegetable salad. You might ask: Aren’t starches harmful for your diet? We are going to cook up a portion that is served at one meal at many Latin restaurants, but we are going to apportion it among six meals.

All you Latin ladies out there, you really need to abandon the white rice and instead use brown rice, which is just as tasty when you cook it in broth. The difference is that the brown rice is a whole grain recommended by dieticians because it does not have the nutrients processed out of it like white rice. Besides, it is well known that everyone who eats white rice eventually dies.

Also, brown rice is considered a whole grain, but not white rice. Besides, your body does need starches and carbohydrates, but in more modest portions than the average American diet.

Another housekeeping detail: especially if you have a mice problem, you do not want to keep your bags of rice in your cupboards, it is better to keep them in the refrigerator. We like to store our rice in the plastic peanut jars, again in the refrigerator.

COOKING THE HEALTHY VEGETABLES

While the rice is cooking, we can now cook the vegetables. Recently I have acquired a taste for brussel sprouts,[8] which I cook by themselves in my trusty electric skillet, which we did not clean after cooking our chicken. First, I slice the brussel sprouts in half, and the larger sprouts in thirds, and I like to initially place them face down in our skillet, still set for 330 degrees, and cook them for five or ten minutes or so until they brown, mixing them up a bit. Don’t cook them so much that you kill them, you want them to stay crunchy. Everyone hates mushy vegetables. And I set them aside in a bowl.

Then I cook my sliced mushrooms, usually two small packs, since they don’t brown nicely when you cook them with the other vegetables. One fun question to ask your friends: Are mushrooms fruits, or vegetables? The answer, surprisingly, is neither, mushrooms are fungus. But they are surprisingly nutritious. But don’t eat the mushrooms growing in your yard, quite often they are poisonous. And we set our cooked mushrooms aside.[9]

Next, I cook my okra, which I think adds to the flavor of the salad. Fried okra is also very good.[10] Okra plants are tough and need to be cooked a bit more than our other vegetables, so I cook them by themselves. But they need to stay crunchy, don’t cook them until they are dead. And I set them aside as well.

The rice is still cooking, so now we will cut our vegetables. With the brussel sprouts, mushrooms, and okra set aside, we have more room in our trusty electric skillet to cook the remaining vegetables.

Julia Child’s other major rule is to cook everything with green onions, or scallions, and garlic. Properly slicing up garlic is very tedious, and since I do not have a pronounced sense of smell or taste, even before COVID, I quit cooking with garlic. I don’t like the taste of contents of the small jars of crushed garlic. Personally, I cut up the entire plant, the white bulbs, the roots, and the green stems. I buy three bunches of green onions and one bunch of this onion with larger bulbs.[11]

I then cut up a bunch of asparagus, which Dr Wikipedia says is also quite nutritious,[12] and usually cut up the entire bunch, just like I do the green onions. I also cut up the smallest piece of squash[13] in the store, and the smallest piece of zucchini,[14] plus one Chinese eggplant, which I prefer to regular eggplant. I cook all of these in my trusty electric skillet, adding a generous portion of rosemary, pepper, and salt, stirring after each spice. Don’t kill the vegetables! And we mix them up in our big serving bowl, and pour them into our trusty electric skillet, and add generous portions of rosemary, salt, and pepper, mixing them up after each spice.

Last, I cut up a head of broccoli that is added last, after the other vegetables are done.[15] Don’t kill the broccoli! Mushy broccoli is dead broccoli. Could you cut up the entire plant? You could, but I don’t have room to cook the stalk, so I put it in the fridge and eat it as a snack during the week. I don’t want to cook it thoroughly, so I add it just before splitting up these vegetables into six Pyrex bowls for my meals for this week.

Next, since we set aside our okra, mushrooms, and brussel sprouts in their own six Tupperware containers, along with the chicken we separated from the drumsticks and cut up, and also the brown rice. I like to heat them up each day before adding them to the salad. All you bachelors, beware that when you cut up the drumsticks, be sure to find and discard the small sharp bone first.

We also split up a can of Conchita soupy black beans among the six Tupperware containers. The DASH diet loves black beans, which is a very nutritious legume. You can soak and cook the black beans, but it takes a long time, and I prefer the canned beans anyway.[16]

Now for the daily preparation of my salad: Each day I cut up that day’s tomato, [17] and half of a colored bell pepper,[18] as I don’t think the green bell peppers have much of a taste. They go bad the quickest. Then I heat up that day’s chicken, rice, mushrooms, and brussel sprouts.

So now I assemble my daily salad, first the vegetables, then I heat up in a small Pyrex container the chicken, rice, beans, and tougher vegetables, and add them. The DASH diet is adamant that you should eat nuts each day. Nuts are incredibly calorie dense, so I apportion out a peanut jar capful, which is a mix of peanuts and mixed nuts. I like to add them to my salad. And I usually add any of the smaller berries to my salad, topping it off with my sliced plum tomato and half a sliced up colored pepper. I am not fond of green bell peppers.

The DASH diet says you need fruit. My doctor says that since I am borderline diabetic, and have been for over ten years, he recommended that I eat mostly berries. So, I apportion out strawberries,[19] blueberries,[20] raspberries,[21] and/or blackberries,[22] favoring those that are on sale, plus sometimes grapes. I apportion them in six or seven Tupperware containers, and after eating the grapes and strawberries, add them to my salad as well.

I have a relative who claims they are allergic to tomatoes. What is interesting is that tomatoes and bell peppers are members of the nightshade family of plants, as are eggplants, potatoes, and some medicinal plants. There are thousands of species of nightshades, including many ornamental flowering plants, and many species are highly toxic, or have medicinal properties, because of their high alkaloid contents. One alkaloid is the nicotine in tobacco, another nightshade variety. These nightshades are native to South America and were introduced to Europe as part of the Columbian Exchange after Columbus stumbled into the New World. It is amazing how many crops that we consume every day were exchanged between the New World and the Old World as part of this Columbian Exchange.[23]

Recently my doctor told me my cholesterol numbers were drifting too high, so I will now cut out the daily lite beer, and cut in half the berries I consume.

VEGETABLE, FISH, AND BROWN RICE DASH SALAD

For my DASH fish salad, I cook the vegetables as I did for my DASH chicken and rice salad. However, cooking fish does not leave cooking juices like chicken does, though the spices are left over. Add this to rice is acceptable, but this week I am going to experiment by adding a can of chicken and rice instead, using as little water as possible to recover the leftover spices from my trusty electric skillet. If there is too much, we can always freeze a portion to cook with later.

The fish I cook varies from week to week, and you can select your favorite fish to substitute. Since I am a bear of little money, I always use a piece or two of tilapia, plus whatever is on sale. I really am pleased with using salmon, but this week mahi-mahi was on sale. Whiting has the most pronounced taste. I cook them in my inexpensive olive oil with the customary spices: rosemary, salt, and pepper. I also like to cook half a bag of uncooked shrimp, flipping them over when they turn pink.

Whether you wish to store the six portions of brown rice, brussel sprouts, mushrooms, and okra separately, heating them up each day, is according to your preference. If you are preparing six days of meals at once, I would keep half the shrimp frozen, and cook them mid-week. I also add half a bag of cooked shrimp at the end. If you want to add cooked shrimp, keep a quarter of the bag frozen, and add them after you have eaten three of the six meals you prepared.

THANKSGIVING DINNER SUGGESTIONS

You can also prepare these salads as holiday dishes, with or without the meat or fish, and with or without the rice and beans. You can also add corn, preferably corn you cut off the cooked cobs, to add more flavor. We don’t include corn in our weekly salads since corn is incredibly starchy.

For the turkey stuffing, you can also mix all or some of the vegetables in this salad, plus celery, to breadcrumbs to make turkey stuffing. IMHO, an essential ingredient Jimmy Dean sausage, which is definitely an un-DASHy ingredient. Rice would likely not be good for stuffing. I have seen recipes for seafood stuffing for turkeys, but you should try some stronger tasting fish, such as whiting, mahi-mahi, or salmon, in place of the sausage.

Adopting a Better Homes and Garden recipe from several decades ago, you can create a basting sauce for the turkey by melting a stick of butter, adding tangerine juice, plus some sliced tangerine peel, plus a small bottle of orange liqueur. You can also cook the juices from the turkey basting pan in the skillet, plus flour, to cook a delicious gravy.

[1] https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/education/dash-eating-plan and https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/dash-diet/art-20048456 and https://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/dash-diet and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH_diet and https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/beyond-blood-pressure-added-benefits-from-the-dash-diet

[2] https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/remedies-for-muscle-cramps

[3] https://www.urologyhealth.org/healthy-living/care-blog/2019/hydrate-to-help-prevent-kidney-stones

[4] https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/5-tips-to-prevent-a-urinary-tract-infection

[5] https://www.npr.org/2011/10/28/141800414/does-probiotic-yogurt-really-affect-digestion There are some Great Courses lectures on this topic.

[6] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/nonstick-cookware-safety#teflon-and-pfoa

[7] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/10/black-plastic-spatula-flame-retardants/680452/

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_sprout

[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edible_mushroom

[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okra

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scallion

[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asparagus