Olive Garden Menu Tapenade

Olive Garden Menu tapenade with crackers never tasted better but since we started to avoid all refined carbohydrate, we have rather been enjoying it on our pan-fried toast^[1]. Really it is much nicer and of course more nutritious; and less fattening.

Crackers are gone for ever in our family, despite their convenience. We are making every effort to replicate the lifestyle of the Blue Zone people where ten-times as many folk live into happy, zestful old age.

Blue zone longevity is achievable with a bit of effort; this olive garden menu tapenade actually requires very little. Five or ten minutes is all it takes.

This page was last updated by Bernard Preston on 4th April, 2024.

If you buy olives in a large can, you will soon find they do not keep too long once it has been opened and they are exposed to air; so you will be pickling them or making pâté. However you eat them the benefits of the fruit of the Mediterranean are simply immense.

Olive garden menu tapenade is just another of my many favourites. May you too live to be a hundred.

So first we make pâté and then simply by adding capers turn it into tapenade.

Olive pâté

Easy. Let's do it.

Easy but do it mindfully; no olive pits.

• Wash the olives thoroughly to get the brine and any preservatives off of them.
  
• Remove the pips or use pitted olives. I squeeze them out and go through the pulp again. Only one snuck through this time. It would have ruined my blender.
• Cut a couple slithers of lime or lemon, slice off the rind and removed the pips.
• Raw or blanched, add the clove of garlic.
• A good slosh of olive-oil.
• Blend.
• Spoon into a small bottle and cover with olive-oil so that it doesn't oxidise; refrigerate.

Life is a journey and we keep updating and changing how we do things. Pitting olives is so simple using a strong-glass and you are far less likely to get a surprise crack in your tooth.

You've no idea how this pâté and tapenade will add to your cocktail parties. On bread for lunch, or biscuits with a salad they are gems; when you have friends around, it really makes the meal. And it takes only ten-minutes to prepare.

With the new understanding that it's not fats primarily that make us obese but high glycemic index carbohydrate, we should be considering every attempt to eat less crackers and especially white-bread; adding olive oil and protein lowers the GI.

Enter the humble olive which is packed with both fat and protein. 

Be generous with the spread on your bread and, yes butter is back too; then a delicious helping of pate or our olive garden menu tapenade. Again, you are smearing fat and protein to your slice; contrary to what Medicine once thought you are adding years to your life.

There remains debate in the keto-circles; the emphasis is not to go totally overboard with fat as advised earlier, and rather to choose vegetable sources like olive oil and avocados. Where everyone agrees is to keep all refined carbs to an absolute minimum; crackers must go if you want to reach zestful old age.

There is a strong lobby to retain whole-grains; the research is unequivocal. That is where the fibre and many beneficial vitamins and phytochemicals are to be found. But they are hard to find. Corn on the cob is one simple example.

If you're obese, absolutely avoid white flour products and that includes most crackers and bread rolls, but if your BMI is less than say 27 you can certainly occasionally enjoy such less nutritious foods provided you add plenty of fat and protein.

It is odd, not so? You don't want to put on weight but you are being advised to enjoy plenty of fat. There's a proviso; assuming you are also having lots of green leafy vegetables to provide the B-vitamins which keep your homocysteine down. That is toxic stuff.

Olive Garden Menu Tapenade

Olive Garden Menu tapenade is really just a variation of our pâté with added capers.

Capers

A delicious variant is to add a dessertspoon of capers; they're in that bottle labelled Drossa. And then let your imagination run wild; feta-cheese, for example. Or a few bits of chopped celery would provide another dimension. A radish and a few slithers of red chili are amongst my favourite ingredients; the sky is the limit. Use your own creativity and never be limited by recipes.

One of our favourites is called a peppadew; it's spicy but without the extreme heat of chilies and jalapenos.

Growing peppadews is a breeze once you've located the seed.

A good way to separate the fruit for the pate, or olive garden menu tapenade, is to use a good strong glass to squash them all quickly; and then, one at a time, drop the flesh into your blending-bowl, and the pits into the tumbler.

There is no mess, fuss or pits; they pop right out.

Italians and Greeks scorn commercially pitted-olives; they taste different. You must do it yourself.

I'm experimenting with adding a pecan-nut today. It complements the nutrition, but I confess the tapenade flavour is too strong.

We keep a bowl of pecans at the ready. Three is my daily regimen. Never buy shelled-nuts; you'll eat too many. They are nutritious but fattening, but more important they oxidise once exposed to air and becomes tasteless, and even rancid.

Pecans and almonds in South Africa are easier to get, just like we ate three-walnuts a day in Holland.

• Walnuts blood pressure ...
  

Again put your tapenade into a bottle and cover with olive-oil and refrigerate. Don't make too much, it does not keep for more than a few days, and it takes only a few minutes to rustle it up.

We're having friends over to celebrate our new eco-friendly home, so it will be finished tonight anyway.

You will notice that some recipes call for lemon juice. The flavour will be exactly the same, fantastic, but as you know this site isn't so much about great-tasting nosh as slow food, made fast.

I've never made a comparison with a lemon, but I am certain it is the same with all citrus; OJ from a carton is vastly different. Wherever possible use the pulp too.

The beauty of our olive garden menu tapenade is just how quickly and simply your can throw it together.

If it's sparkling well-being you are after just read the orange juice facts and use the whole lemon; pulp and the some of the zest too. And absolutely avoid commercial OJ; it is a very high GI carbohydrate which means it is extremely fattening and taxing on your pancreas. 

Interesting research indicates that all tastes are acquired, except that for mother's milk; that means you can re-educate your tongue. It takes about three weeks.

• Orange juice facts
• Lime nutrition
  

Salt

The amount of salt in our food remains controversial. Both too much and not enough are detrimental to our well-being. Generally processed foods are loaded, and this is true of your tapenade too. For this reason we soak and rinse both the olives and capers in water to remove any excess.

And for the same reason I would hesitate to add feta-cheese, delicious though it is.

If interested and in fact we all should be, read more about salt and high blood-pressure.

What's for supper?

Something simple with of course our tapenade; I like it on artisan bread, perhaps with a couple slices of sweet paprika but the others will want biscuits or crackers. The good wife has rustled up some ratatouille and butternut soup; and I'm always trying to convert the world to the virtues of hummus, number-two on the list of foods that lower cholesterol so you can off those nasty statins.

I just heard a lecture by a diabetes specialist that statins are one of the causes of seriously cracked-skin on the feet and especially the heels.

• AUTHENTIC HUMMUS RECIPE
  
• EGGPLANT RECIPES; ratatouille.
  

And then turn your hand to making this very simple but elegant easy spicy olives recipe; you'll need a little bottle of fennel-seeds.

Benefits of Olive Oil

For every extra tablespoon (13g) of olive oil you enjoy each day there is more than a 10% reduced risk of cardiovascular disease^[6]. Be generous and enjoy the benefits of making tapenade regularly; you might live to be a hundred.

Pickling olives

Pickling olives is really a piece of cake. Just drop the rest of the tin into a good quality brown vinegar for a few days, strain it off and cover with olive oil; add a few goodies like lemon, chilies and black-pepper.

Actually since penning this page we have started pickling olives from scratch. It's not difficult but you need to find a farmer who will sell them directly to you. You start by rinsing them several times for 24-hours.

The first and perhaps foremost benefit is that olive oil really makes the salad go down; the children will eat it. But more important, nutritionists complain that our Western diet is so heavily biased in favour of seed oils, rich in PUFAs; poly-unsaturated fatty acids.

• Linoleic acid in sunflower and soybean oil promotes inflammation
  

Really we should have roughly equal amounts of PUFAs and MUFAs in our diets.

The fruit-based oils from olives and avocados are rich in Mono Unsaturated Fatty Acids, bringing that critical ratio back into balance.

Thirdly seed-based oils are in the main solvent extracted. But that's not necessary with olives so there are no traces of chemicals; nor have they been heated to a very high temperature.

A healthy diet for prediabetes means limiting all refined carbs and enjoying more fat, not from animal sources but those in dishes like this olive garden menu tapenade.

USEFUL LINKS

• Return from Olive Garden Menu TAPENADE to NUTRITIOUS CHOICE FOODS
  
• A day in the life of Bernard Preston DC
• Can I make Dijon mustard?
  

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