Olive pate

Olive pate is surely the easiest of all pastes to make and with its delicious piquant flavour certainly one of the healthiest and best.

Because of a substance called oleocanthal it makes up an important part of any chiropractic website.

(Pâté, of course)

And, because of its purely Mediterranean vegetarian origins there is no way you might confuse it with dog food which certainly goes for liver pâté for example.

Sometimes I hate the web; it won't allow me to spell pâté properly with the little do dahs on the a and the e in the headline; Googs gives me the two's up. Apologies to the purists.

Olive pate

Olive pate is surely the simplest of all condiments to make and with its piquant flavour certainly one of the healthiest.

De-pitting olives

Using a strong glass, squash the olives. The pits come out easily, pop them into the jar and the flesh into the blender. Careful not to muddle them up!

INGREDIENTS

1. A cup of pitted black olives
2. A quarter of a clove of raw garlic (and better still drop two or three cloves of garlic into a drop of water and bring to the boil for half a minute - it takes out the bite of raw garlic, but of course you lose some of the nutrient value of raw food)
3. A couple tablespoons of olive oil.
4. A couple slices of peeled lemon, pulp and all. Watch out for pips.
   
5. Optional: A teaspoon of cream or feta cheese. But then you must enjoy it within a day or two.
   
6. Optional: Tapenade. Simply add in a couple of teaspoons of capers and perhaps a half a teaspoon of anchovy paste.

Simply throw together and use this blender. The conventional one is too messy and the ingredients will hardly reach the blades. A stick blender is a must for every kitchen. I like this one, around $35 because it's more powerful than el-cheapo has comes with a plastic mixing jug. The underpowered blenders are too weak for making hummus.

• Authentic hummus recipe ...
  

Rinse the olives and capers before chopping.

Normally I don't keep pitted olives. They're not half so nice as whole fruit but sometimes I cheat. Or, if I am feeling virtuous or the huge 6 lb can we buy needs finishing then I do it properly; pit the black beauties and suck the pits dry.

If you cut the olive once and give it a good press with a strong glass, the pit usually pops out. It takes about 10 minutes to do a whole cup. But if you miss just one pip, you run the risk of breaking a tooth, or smashing your blender.

If you decide not to use the pitted, carefully go through the flesh a second time with a fork. Today I was ultra careful, and one pip still got through.

If you want your pâté on bread just add less olive oil; makes great lunch sandwiches. If you want it to go on a salad than add more extra virgin.

Keep your olive pate in a small bottle covered with a thin layer of olive oil to stop it oxidising and then refrigerate. It doesn't keep indefinitely, but it's so delicious it won't last anyway.

Half the work is cleaning the blender afterwards. I usually go right on and make another dip. Tonight I first made the olive pâté, and then Baba Ghanoush; so easy, using eggplant's anti cholesterol properties.

When you're in the swing of things, it's easy to keep going. Took no more than another 10 minutes to make up a bottle of our favourite Olive Garden Salad dressing. You've already got the lemon slices , and I usually add a slither of hot pepper to my Olive pate, and the rest into the olive oil dressing. Olive Garden Salad dressing ...

Honest Injun, all three took no more than an hour to make, though I haven't washed the blender yet. Make sure you pull the plug first. It will make fine work of your fingers should you inadvertently touch the ON button.

So, why is a chiropractic website fascinated with a olive pate recipe. They contain a substance called oleocanthal which is a natural anti-inflammatory and oxidant. It's what we call in medical terms a COX inhibitor.

Whilst the main cause of osteoarthritis is joint fixations which provoke immobilisation degenerative change, there are over 100 forms of arthritis. IA is just the most common; almost no one escapes it.

Any natural anti-inflammatories that we can consume, particularly when in it's in food so delicious as olives, should form part and parcel of the healthy living tips on any Chiropractic website; think olive oil benefits.

Thought: Tragically so many men drop dead within two years of retiring. The reasons are complex, but loving healthy food I'm absolutely convinced is one of the ways we men can look forward to reaching a happy, healthy eighty.

• HEALTHY LIVING TIPS ...
• Immobilisation arthritis
  
  

Pickling olives

Pickling olives is really easy, and you can choose your own ingredients. Make sure there's a jalapeno amongst them.

If you have a smallish family the idea of a large tin of olives may be daunting. The answer is pickling olives. Really very easy... only olives with pits, remember. PICKLING OLIVES ...

What's for lunch?

Tapenade, of course.

Tapenade is just as easy to make. Don't buy it because they have to add a huge amount of chemicals to preserve it.

If you love healthy Mediterranean food then this simple recipe is right up your street. Perfect for a tapas if you're having guests for lunch, or just on a sandwich as a side dish to your ratatouille; made in a jiffy.

• Olive Garden Menu TAPENADE ...
  
• EASY LUNCH RECIPES ...

All that hype about olive oil

To find links to the topics in bold copy and paste them into the site search function in the navigation bar above.

Oleocanthal

Oleocanthal in olive oil is what gets chiropractors excited.

Olive oil has many healthy properties. Let's mention just two.

Firstly it contains a compound called oleocanthal which is a natural anti inflammatory and anti oxidant.

Not very strong, true, but oleocanthal is a Cox inhibitor like the best NSAIDs. So eating olives and olive pate and having olive oil daily in your diet means you can are continually giving your joints and blood vessels small, safe doses of anti-inflammatory substances.

Anti inflammatory drugs

Oleocanthal won't cause heart disease or make a hole in your stomach like anti inflammatory drugs taken daily might. Did you know that around 14,000 Americans die EVERY YEAR from a bleeding ulcer directly caused by drugs like ibuprofen?

Oleocanthal blocks the inflammatory prostaglandin cycle by a completely different mechanism to ibuprofen, not affecting the heart and gut adversely in the way that Cox inhibitor drugs do.

Read more about this in this research article on Dual antiinflammatory drugs from the Journal of Rheum and Arthritis.

The trick is to consume the extra virgin olive oil daily. The anti-inflammatory effect of oleocanthal is really quite weak; you'd have to consume about half a bottle of olive oil to get the same effect as a prescription dose of ibuprofen.

One sixth of a bottle to get the same effect as a single over the counter dose. But consumed daily, the continuous benefits are enormous.

And that's where making olive pate or tapenade, having a Greek salad,  and so on, comes in; enjoy the fruit of the Mediterranean in one way or another daily.

Secondly, it's been well established that a high ratio of omega 6/ omega 3 in the diet is strongly inflammatory. In short if you consume too much omega 6 and too little omega 3.

So, to have less inflammation in your muscles, joints and blood vessels, consume more omega-3 foods like fatty fish and freshly ground flaxseed, and consume less omega-6 foods like sunflower oil.

Read more about the omega-3 in fish oil and the flax seed nutrition information ...

• Anti inflammatory omega 3 ...

More from powerful anti inflammatory benefits of olive oil from the Olive Oil Times.

Delicious useful LINKS

• Go to Olive Oil benefits ...
• PESTO - so easy to make in a jiffy at home.
• Just for LAUGHS ... LOL! 
• Return to OLIVE GARDEN NUTRITION …
  
• Go from OLIVE PATE to arthritis pain in knee - did you know that olives are good for arthritis? More about OLEOCANTHAL.