The Foods and Wines of
Spain – A Review Focused on Food Self-Sufficiency – Part 2 – by Savvy Mom Ruth
Paget
Ruth Paget’s
Mediterranean Diet – Spanish Style
I
am not selling this diet, but this is what I have developed for myself as a
nexus of budget and personal preference over 3 decades.
I
look for recipes that fit the following pattern when I look through Spanish
cookbooks:
-Monday
through Thursday:
I
eat protein combinations from 3 to 4 appetizer dishes and at least one pantry
meal made from rice, beans, or pasta. I
snack on homemade popcorn with sea salt.
-Friday:
Baked
fish plus baked, potato wedges with Italian seasoning are my favorite.
-Saturday
A
chicken or pork dish
-Sunday
A
seafood dish three times a month and beef once a month.
Sometimes
the order is reversed on the weekends.
In
Monterey (California) where I live now, I tend to eat chicken and seafood at
Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean restaurants.
I
like Spanish food, because the basic ingredients can grow in almost all 50
states during summer and in greenhouses during winter. Hydroponic irrigation/agriculture systems in greenhouses might make this possible.
Reading
Casas’ cookbook at a young age made me think that many American states could be
self-sufficient in food and have a surplus to sell or store in the form of
gazpacho.
Gazpacho
is like V8 with the addition of garlic toast all blended and chilled. You can store some brands at room temperature
and refrigerate them after opening.
Purdue
University or Cal Poly need to test if gazpacho is a complete protein. Bread is made from wheat grains, but do seeds
in tomatoes, cucumbers, and pepper constitute the “grain plus seed” formula to
make a full protein? Fact check needed
for a delicious and nutritious cold soup drink or salad in a bottle.
Using
my region as an example, South Monterey County is also ranching country for
beef, the coasts can provide fish and seafood, Idaho is close for chickens, and
lamb for Easter can be shipped in from New Mexico or New Zealand.
Monterey
County might even be able to make a surplus for storage or sales to other
places of some items.
We
already have crops growing in our county like lettuce that is the size of
Vermont and New Hampshire put together.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
