Recipe for tabouli tabouleh

This recipe for tabouli tabouleh, is slow food, made fast at its best. The dish uses parsley, mint and tomatoes; and spring onions with extra virgin olive oil. No kidding, you can throw this salad together in ten minutes.

Having said that, I don't slavishly follow recipes and I don't recommend you do either; in today's tabouli, I am using parsley, mint and tomatoes, that is traditional, but in addition chives and rocket.

Dishes like this are simply an attempt to enjoy your ten coloured foods every day in a delicious and healthy way; is doing your damnedest to avoid getting malignant tumours just blowing in the wind?

This wonderful tasty dish, taught to me by my Lebanese nanny some sixty years ago, combines the wonder of dark-green leafy vegetables, the amazing leukopene protection against prostate tumours, and the anti viral properties of allicin in the onion family.

We have all three in one way or another every single day. That might be the leeks or chives grown in our garden, and garlic, in our eggs Florentine enjoyed for breakfast; or the tomatoes simply with cheese on our homemade low GI bread. Tonight we're supping on steamed kale on a bed of onions with a couple slithers of jalapeno to spice it up.

Here's the deal; greens, reds and onions. It is the coloured foods that provide the phytochemicals that protect our bodies from tumours and inflammation; is it a coincidence that my PSI is 0.9, astonishingly low at 73?

Simply add a protein like free-range eggs, cold water fish like salmon or mackerel and occasionally red meat, and a starch like fresh corn from the garden, low GI bread, or the new potatoes that I lifted this morning, and you have the all round balanced diet.

It's such a pleasure not having to worry about measuring and weighing your food; eat like this and your weight will be perfect; the word diet will never be mentioned in conversation or even thought about; such a relief.

Recipe for tabouli tabouleh

Recipe for tabouli tabouleh is a slow food made fast dish using parsley, tomatoes and spring onions.

These ingredients are enough for four very lucky people, if it's a side dish.

1. Two very ripe tomatoes, choose nice sweet ones. Pay a bit extra and use quality tomatoes.
2. Two spring onions, shallots, green onions or whatever you like to call them.
3. A very large handful of fresh parsley. Do you grow your own? So easy, fresh from the garden really makes a salad. I like a few sprigs of Mint too. Parsley benefits.
   
4. A freshly squeezed lemon, please not out of a bottle squeezed 6 months ago! Freshly squeezed. 
   
5. A large handful of bulghur wheat, or just freshly chopped bread crumbs.
6. Olive oil.

You don't believe me that you can make a tabouli salad in ten minutes? Just watch.

Minute 1

To start your recipe for Tabouli Tabouleh pour a handful of bulghur wheat (or bread crumbs) into a small bowl, and cover with boiling water. Allow to soak.

PS. Make your own bulghar if you want, I've done it, but it's quite a lot of PT for no nutritional benefit to my mind. Tabbouleh Bulgar wheat ... and you need a wheat grinder.

Minutes 2 - 6

Wash your tomatoes, spring onions and parsley thoroughly. Chop. In particular, I like the parsley finely chopped, and without the stalks, but that's just me. Fussy!

Pull out any slugs or snails you may find in the parsley. Smarter than humans, they know what's good for them; they love parsley, and don't just use it for a garnish!

Minute 7

Squeeze the lemon and add immediately to the tomato mix. I include the lemon pulp (why?), but careful to get the pips out.

Minutes 8 - 9

Now to finish your recipe for tabouli tabouleh throw together the tomatoes, spring onions, parsley, bulghur, lemon juice, and salt. Mix thoroughly. If you want to make it pretty-pretty, spread it on a bed of lettuce. Or, onto a little bowl made from an iceberg lettuce leaf.

Why all the emphasis on tomatoes, particularly for men?

TOMATO PROSTATE ...

Minute 10

Dribble a generous amount of olive oil over your tabouleh recipe. Never seed oils like sunflower or corn oil. Why? Foods to reduce inflammation ...

See? Ten minutes and you're done! If you like add chopped pieces of chicken, even Feta cheese or TOFU (What's that?), ( Tofu Nutrition ) and of course olives to your recipe for Tabouli Tabouleh. We often enjoy eating it with bread, smeared with a generous layer of tahini. There's lots of juice, so it's a bit messy, but never mind. Food to satisfy the tastebuds of a king.

I don't specify quantities, because really it doesn't matter. A bit more of this, a bit less of that, who cares.

Today I'm enjoying it with avocado and hummus; if you enjoy food like this, with 100% wholemeal bread, you can lavish the butter and still have perfect cholesterol, and a modest waistline; dinkum.

Olive oil benefits

The healthiest people on the planet live around the Mediterranean sea. Amongst other things, it's the olive oil benefits that they enjoy. Your recipe for tabouli tabouleh uses extra virgin, the only kind to use unless you are cooking.

Having said that, only one of the blue zones for longevity is found in the Mediterranean; in Sardinia.

Soured milk products like yoghurt and kefir, unsweetened, of course, contribute too, and perhaps also the midday siesta. Do you take a ten minute power nap after lunch? You should.

If you like us, buy large tins of olives, try your hand at pickling olives. It's dead easy...

• PICKLING OLIVES ...

• What's potting in the winter garden ... you can eat like this too. Spend time growing, preparing and cooking good food, or spend far more time in the doctors' rooms. Your choice...
• OLIVE OIL BENEFITS ...

Lemon pulp, and limes

I alluded above to include the pulp of your lemon. Why? There is so much extra nutrition in that pulp as you can see here at this orange juice page. OJ is junk food! Orange juice facts ... applies to lemons too, obviously.

Better still try making your recipe for tabouli tabouleh with limes; it's always good to experiment with different herbs and spices and why not the citrus too?

Chiropractic

Why a page on recipe for tabouli tabouleh on a chiropractic help site, you may be thinking? It's simple really; inflammation in the body inhibits the body's response to our adjustments. All the phytosterols in the olive oil, lemon juice, parsley and mint reduce the temperature in your joints and muscles.

And the tomato gives the prostate protection against the most nasty of afflictions that chiropractors always have to keep in mind; metastases to the bones of the pelvis certainly do occur and can mimic regular low back pain.

What are phytosterols?

What are phytosterols? They are compounds found the cell walls of plants, nuts and seeds. They are essential in the human body in the prevention of cancer, raised cholesterol and prostate problems, and probably 10 million other conditions. The bulghur wheat used in this recipe for tabouli tabouleh is a particular rich source of phytosterols.

If you refuse to eat salads and fruit, nuts and seeds then you will be deficient in phytosterols. Ever wonder why there's an epidemic of heart disease, cancer and autoimmune diseases in the last fifty years?

The Western diet has a serious phytosterol deficiency, one of the foremost reasons for our declining health. What are phytosterols is a subject we should all be interested in if we want to live long in the land.