To say that I am an olive oil fanatic would be an understatement…I even own a copy of the one and only official textbook of olive oil production used in agriculture schools around the world.

There is no “best”olive oil just as there is no “best” wine. There are however good and bad olive oils, the latter usually because they are either old and oxidized, or blended with inferior oils in order to increase profitability. But apart from this crap, and so long as the oil is fresh and from a “first cold pressing” , olive oil preference is a matter of personal taste. My own favorite is Ravida olive oil from Sicily. The Discovery channel did a special some years ago on the great olive oils of the world and Ravida was featured as a particularly fine example. They were right. It is however, extremely difficult to find, although only moderately expensive around $50 per liter (there are many more expensive than this).

Natalia Ravida is President of the Ravida olive oil family estate, following in the footsteps of her father, Nicolo. We have exchanged emails over the last few years and I guess I made it to her mailing list, because last year she sent me a recipe for sunny-side up eggs. A recipe for sunny-side up eggs you say?  Crazy. What could be simpler? But most good cooks will tell you that the simplest things are often the hardest to do extraordinarily well. And eggs are especially vulnerable because of their sensitivity to heat. My previous favorite method for their preparation was courtesy of chef Pol Martin in the 1970’s. He uses extremely low heat in a covered pan with a couple tablespoons of water. The water steams the egg, cooking the top without needing to flip it over. But I’ve always found the white somewhat rubbery using this method.

Natalia’s method (slightly adapted and paraphrased by me) produces the most amazing sunny-side up eggs you will ever taste. Here it is:

1. Warm a tablespoon of Ravida (or other) olive oil over medium heat in a pan.

2. Crack each egg into a small bowl so that you can pick out any errant pieces of shell that would otherwise set into the flesh of the egg if you cracked it directly into the hot pan.

3. Slide the first egg into the olive oil and repeat with each additional egg that you are using. The time in-between will allow the egg white to set and avoid the eggs from crossing into each other’s “turf”.

4. As the eggs begin to set, tip the pan and scoop some olive oil into a tablespoon. Baste the eggs with this hot oil, which will cook the tops at the same time as the pan is cooking the bottoms. Keep doing this basting until the top of each egg no longer has that slimy look. The yolks should still be clear and yellow/orange.

5. Slide the egg onto a plate, drizzle with extra oil if desired, season with a coarse sea-salt and freshly ground black pepper, and serve with a good French baguette for dipping into the yolk.

Natalia’s cookbook Seasons of Sicily: Recipes from the South of Italy can be found on Amazon, here. I just ordered a copy.

One of the most powerful, yet least publicized and understood psychological concepts, is Locus-of-Control (LOC). LOC identifies the various differences in how people experience the world, based on the extent to which an individual believes he has control over what goes on his life. People with low LOC may experience more depression and anxiety, as well as be more defensive and blaming of others for their misfortunes.

LOC isn’t fixed in stone and may be amenable to positive change. Certainly we can see the negative changes that often happen to high LOC people as they move through the life-span: It isn’t unusual for people who were high in LOC during their working lives, to become low LOC as they get older and experience various changes associated with aging such as retirement, illness, etc. The use of anti-depressants in later life is quite staggering, something the medical establishment likes to link to “chemical imbalance” because they can then prescribe their way out of a psychogenic predicament for which they really have no time, knowledge, nor alternative solutions.

Most of us function best with high, but not too high LOC, i.e. it is best to believe we have some control over our destiny, yet the maturity to also know that “bad things do happen to good people” as part of a normal life.

LOC is of particular significance to weight-loss and health. The overwhelming reason that all diets fail is that they externalize LOC to a  “diet”, “program”, or other external tool such as calorie-counting, points, etc. The idea of using such tools in the first place makes some sense (at least intellectually), i.e. the tools may help us “learn” how to be more aware of what and how much we’re eating. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way, evidenced by the now absolute scientific fact that diets do not work at sustainable weight loss.

The problem is that the moment you allow a dietary “tool” into your life, your psyche automatically shifts LOC to the tool! The psyche says to itself, “Whew, what a relief, I no longer have to worry about losing weight because this ‘program’ will do it for me”.

There is no question that it is useful to have an eating and lifestyle philosophy or model that can serve as a platform for what and how you eat. The diabetic and/or cardiac patient needs to understand Metabolic Syndrome and how that affects his disease and how he must eat to control it. The vegetarian has made a commitment to a certain ethical or health paradigm and more power to him. Whatever floats your boat!

But at the end of the day, unless you develop the LOC to know when to start and when to stop eating…the game is over before it has begun. One thing is for sure: Unless your eating fits in with your environment, you are doomed to failure or to becoming a social pariah whom no one wants to be around. Then you’ll really be depressed and need anti-depressants!

Devout Muslims are encouraged to make the Haj to Mecca at least once in their lives. But where does a devout Canadian foodie go for his holiest pilgrimage in his own country? The Cheese Boutique in Toronto, that’s where! I first learned about the Cheese Boutique from Peter Minakis, the genius behind Kalofagas (www.kalofagas.ca), a blog site dedicated to fine food, especially Greek. I won’t bother trying to better Peter’s pictures of the Cheese Boutique, which you can see here. Unfortunately, as good a photographer as Peter is, his pictures cannot do justice to what should rightly be a religious shrine to Foodism.

Mapquest reveals a curious route into a basically residential area where one would not imagine any kind of business. As you turn the corner onto Ripley Avenue, looking for #45, your thoughts are likely around the vagaries of GPS and computer mapping, which sometimes lead one astray.  But it turns out that Ripley Avenue is an anomaly; a strange little street of what appear to be small manufacturers, machine shops, and garages. Suddenly, you’re almost on top of #45…a rambling building with a somewhat tacky sign up front; an image of a mouse in artist’s garb standing in front of a cheese wedge.

Wander inside and you find room after room stocked from floor to ceiling with the most exotic imaginable comestibles. Pastas of every variety, scores of balsamic vinegars, olive oils I’ve never even heard of, including many single varietals. Bottarga (dried fish roe)? Of course, two kinds, even the rare and highly prized tuna. The clerks are maniacs, trained in the infinitesimal minutiae of their craft. Ask for advice and you will surely be steered to a new version of culinary Heaven. The high point is the aging room where they age cheeses an additional 2, 4, 6, years or more.

I bought two kinds of bottarga, plus a selection of hyper-aged raw-milk cheeses; one Gouda from Thunder Bay aged 4 additional years, and a Quebec cheddar aged an extra six! Two bottles of organic olive oil from Greece, as well as Greek balsamic vinegar (wonderful!), and a couple of hand-made pastas rounded off the mix. Oh, yeah, and the home-made sausages…how could I forget those?.

I wrote to thank Peter for the heads-up….’cause I really need yet another place to drop $500 on food in 15 minutes.

Einstein said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.

One of the dubious benefits of working from a home office is that you can catch occasional glimpses into daytime television, a very special world serving a unique demographic. Oprah is the undisputed ruler of the daytime talk-show genre, and she has even been quite successful in spinning off guests into their own shows, most notably Dr. Phil. Her most recent spin-off has been Dr. Mehmet Oz, the cardiologist and frequent medical contributor to the Oprah show.

I caught the first episode of Dr. Oz a couple of weeks ago and it was absolutely awful. As good as Oz was in simplifying medical concepts to Oprah’s audience, clearly his own demographic must require an almost infantile distillation to the equivalent of Pablum. I’ve caught the show now several times and it hasn’t gotten any better. It is split into essentially two types of topics: Scare tactics intended to make you fearful of just about everything and everyone you come into contact with, and obesity.

Yesterday’s guest was a former supermodel who had opened a cookie business and ballooned to 385 lbs. Dr. Oz had a psychologist guest expert, who apparently specializes in obesity treatment. First, being called an obesity treatment expert is an oxymoron akin to jumbo shrimp. There may be experts on what causes obesity, but there are no experts on its treatment since the research conclusively shows failure rates in the 95-98% range within 2-3 years of losing weight. And frankly, unsustainable weight loss is a worse failure than never having started, since weight-cycling is now known to be a greater risk factor for disease than overweight itself.

I laughed out loud when I saw Oz’s prescription for this lady: He showed her a variety of healthful and low-fat dishes that she could use to reduce her calorie consumption. This while showing video clips of her in near-orgasmic ecstasy as she was sampling the cookie dough and end-products of her business. Jeez, Dr. Oz, you’re right, she probably didn’t have a clue that eating cookies all day and huge platters of pasta and meatballs at night was making her put on weight.

But the killer was the perpetuation of the six-small-meals-per-day recommendation that has reached near mythic status in the modern world. I love how thin people who’ve never been fat love giving recommendations to fat people: “Eat less”, “Stop when you’re full”, Exercise more”, “Never go hungry…eat six or more small meals a day”. Don’t you get it, Dr. Oz? There is no such thing as a small meal for a fat person. Every meal is a big meal….telling them to eat six times instead of three is a license to kill! Hell, if I could eat a small meal of any kind, I wouldn’t be fat!!!!

And to really gauge the true hopelessness of the whole endeavor, just take a look at Oprah herself. She has more money that God, Bob Greene is her personal coach, she can have a crew of personal chefs designing and preparing any diet-conscious meal she wants, she can have an entire Nautilus gym in her house…..and she’s still obese!!!!

There is no hope until someone comes up with a radically new perspective on the problem, and frankly most of the research these days is on drugs rather than behavioral change.

I just caught Bob Blumer’s 2005 documentary, Thirst for Life, on the Discovery Health channel. This is a must-see if you are interested in eating well, living well, and enjoying life. It explores the French Paradox, the phenomenon whereby the French (and many other cultures) achieve outstanding health and longevity by eating and drinking close to their cultural roots rather than attending to the guidelines of Nutritionism (the focus on specific components of food such as Omega-3’s, fiber, fat, etc.).

The funny thing though is that we call it the French Paradox, rather than the American Paradox. The real paradox is how Americans (and Canadians) pay so much attention to diet and yet have the highest obesity and heart-disease rates. I think that we are on the verge of uncovering perhaps the greatest “conspiracy” of all time: Driving an entire nation into obesity and ill-health so that we can offer them a vast array of services and products to “cure them”. Now that’s a great business!

Mr. Dario, our inveterate New York correspondent and brilliant photographer (even though he uses a DSLR and huge telephoto lenses ) asked me a question via email today. It had to do with the safety of coconut oil as a regular part of the diet. He pointed me to a web site extolling its virtues and asked what I thought.

For some months, I’ve been struggling to crystallize a 4th addition to my “Axioms”….small universal human truths that I’ve observed and that are useful caveats in the pursuit of life. Most of you are well familiar with my 3rd Axiom: “You cannot protect yourself part-time, from people committed to taking advantage of you full-time”.

In crafting an answer to Mr. Dario, the terms of my 4th Axiom suddenly came readily to mind, and I thought I might share my answer with readers:

Coconut oil, as well as butter, and even lard are probably preferable to synthetic fats such as Crisco, margarine, etc., especially because of the trans-fat issue which is directly linked to the chemical process used to harden unsaturated oils into more chemically stable (read: long-shelf life) “shortening” types of fats.

That being said, one shouldn’t go crazy and start freely using coconut oil as if it were harmless. Most of the evidence still points to olive oil as probably as close to a “perfect” fat as you can get. That plus some fresh butter is likely an ideal dietary combination. If something you crave has coconut oil, go ahead and enjoy it. The same cannot be said of shortenings and margarine which are among the first truly “synthetic” foods and probably harmful in the long run. Make sure the coconut oil used hasn’t been processed though…then it’s pretty much the same shit.

On the other hand, be wary of “missionary” sources that point to any one thing as a miracle food with “extraordinary” healing properties, etc. I tend to be very suspicious of vested interest information sources where the source has something to gain by convincing you of its benefits. “Money and truth make very incompatible bedfellows”.

A close friend of mine was recently diagnosed with cholangiocarcinoma, or cancer of the bile ducts. He became ill very quickly and doctors thought it was a case of Hepatitis-B which is often food-borne, but usually resolves on its own without treatment. But he kept getting yellower and yellower, and sicker by the day, as the bile built up in his system. Advanced tests, scans, and exploratory surgery revealed inoperable cancer of the bile ducts (inoperable because one tumor is so large and right on the artery), as well as several other tumors on both lobes of the liver. “Go home and prepare for the end” the doctor said, “you have between six months and a year”.

On my intense urging, my friend agreed to contact an M.D. associate of mine who brokers a “second opinion” service that refers your entire file to Harvard for review and assessment as to what else can possibly be done. The doctors there were intrigued by the fact that all his tumor biopsies were negative for cancer, but the tumors looked and behaved as if they were cancerous.

Canadian doctors agreed to re-open his case and now suspect that he has a benign form of the disease caused by, get this…..eating sushi in Asia (my friend had been to Asia some months previously)! It turns out that a liver fluke parasite found in fish in Asia (but not in North America) has the ability to cause tumors to grow in the biliary system. Here is a fascinating abstract from the American Journal of Gastroenterology, dating back more than 20 years, that talks about how many Asian immigrants to North America actually have the fluke resident in their livers.

“In the Far East infection with the liver flukes Clonorchis sinensis and Opisthorchis viverrini is the most frequently documented cause of cholangiocarcinoma. Liver fluke infection in the United States remains a health problem for more than 500,000 Southeast Asian refugees who have immigrated to this country since 1975. Recent surveys have revealed that up to 26% of Asian immigrants have an active liver fluke infection. However, the common clinical manifestations of this condition, as well as the possibility of developing such long-term sequelae as cholangiocarcinoma, remain unknown to many physicians providing care for this population. This report describes a clinically unsuspected C. sinensis infection associated with cholangiocarcinoma in an elderly Chinese immigrant, and emphasizes the importance of early diagnosis and treatment of all liver fluke infections in the prevention of bile duct neoplasms in high risk populations”.

Anyway…..I know that I won’t be touching sushi next time I visit Asia! I am unfortunately addicted to the stuff here and will continue eating it since there are very few cases of any infections (of any kind) reported in North America.

References:

Am J Gastroenterol. 1986 Jan;81(1):76-9.// <![CDATA[//

Speaking of popcorn. What the Hell is going on with this supersizing phenomenon? At the movie theater last night I ordered a regular popcorn and a regular Diet Coke. The popcorn was about the size of two large microwave bags and the cola must have been at least 36 oz.! I said to the counter person: “No you must have made a mistake, I asked for regular size on both”…to which he replied, “Eh, this is regular size, sir”. My daughter glibly commented, “If I’d known it was this big I would have invited a family of five to join us!”.

Anyway, popcorn’s association with a movie is wired into my brain like Pavlov’s dog…I literally cannot watch a movie-theater movie without popcorn. Terrible habit really, considering the calories and amount of synthetic crap this stuff contains….not to mention the diet cola! And with respect to last night’s movie, Julia and Julie, it was of course the antithesis of the homage to good food that the movie represents.

Here is nutritionist Ellyn Satter’s  definition of normal eating. I’m very good at most of it, especially the parts about eating when you’re happy, sad, or bored, and eating more [cookies] because they taste so wonderful:

“Normal eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied. It is being able to choose food you like and eat it and truly get enough of it—not just stop eating because you think you should. Normal eating is being able to give some thought to your food selection so you get nutritious food, but not being so wary and restrictive that you miss out on enjoyable food. Normal eating is giving yourself permission to eat sometimes because you are happy, sad or bored, or just because it feels good. Normal eating is mostly three meals a day, or four or five, or it can be choosing to munch along the way. It is leaving some cookies on the plate because you know you can have some again tomorrow, or it is eating more now because they taste so wonderful. Normal eating is overeating at times, feeling stuffed and uncomfortable. And it can be undereating at times and wishing you had more. Normal eating is trusting your body to make up for your mistakes in eating. Normal eating takes up some of your time and attention, but keeps its place as only one important area of your life.

In short, normal eating is flexible. It varies in response to your hunger, your schedule, your proximity to food and your feelings”.

Copyright © 2009 by Ellyn Satter. Published at www.EllynSatter.com. For more eating competently (and for research backing up this advice), see Ellyn Satter’s Secrets of Feeding a Healthy Family: How to Eat, How to Raise Good Eaters, How to Cook, Kelcy Press, 2008. Also see www.EllynSatter.com/shopping to purchase books and to review other resources.

500 gms (over 1 lb) in 24 hours! What, are people mainlining it around here?