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Imagine the Mediterranean Sea, where the water and the land are big parts of life. Picture people eating fresh foods and relaxing with friends and family. That image is the essence of the traditional Mediterranean diet. In other words, the Mediterranean diet is part of certain lifestyle habits, including diet, physical activity, stress management, and fun, used in various regions of the Mediterranean coast. Research has shown that people who live in these areas have less heart disease and better longevity. Throughout this book, you uncover more about the details of these habits and how they affect your health and well-being. You can dive in and use all these concepts as a way of life or adopt a few of the strategies that work for you.

No matter what inspired you to pick up this second edition of Mediterranean Diet Cookbook For Dummies, we know that changing habits isn’t always easy. These particular life strategies can be challenging because they all focus on one main trend – slowing down – that’s at odds with many people’s busy lifestyles. Our goal in this book is to show you that implementing a Mediterranean diet and lifestyle can be simple and flavorful. You don’t have to follow a strict dietary plan or omit any foods; in fact, the Mediterranean diet is more about adding than taking away. This book is here to help you make small changes so you can find more balance in your life.

About This Book

If you’re curious about using the Mediterranean style of cooking in your life, Mediterranean Diet Cookbook For Dummies, 2nd Edition, is the perfect book for you. In the following pages, you can find historical information about the region, the balance of foods the people there eat, the health benefits of this style of eating, and more than 160 recipes full of delicious flavor. You also find some cooking tips and meal-planning tools to help make your transition simple.

You can use this book as a resource, and you don’t have to read it from cover to cover. Instead, you can find that perfect recipe you’ve been looking for or head straight to the chapter on meal planning (that’d be Chapter 4) to get examples of how to pull meals together easily. You find everything you need to begin making changes toward a Mediterranean style of life.

Conventions Used in This Book

Like with all cookbooks, we recommend that you read all the way through each recipe before you start making it. That way, you can account for any necessary refrigeration time, marinating time, and so on and for any special tools, such as a stick blender, that the recipe may require.

Here are a few other guidelines to keep in mind about the recipes in this book:

❯❯ All butter is unsalted unless otherwise stated. Margarine isn’t a suitable substitute for butter.

❯❯ All eggs are large.

❯❯ All onions are yellow unless otherwise specified.

❯❯ All pepper is freshly ground black pepper unless otherwise specified.

❯❯ All salt is kosher.

❯❯ All dry ingredient measurements are level.

❯❯ All temperatures are Fahrenheit (see the appendix to convert Fahrenheit temperatures to Celsius).

❯❯ All lemon and lime juice is freshly squeezed.

❯❯ All sugar is white granulated sugar unless otherwise noted.

❯❯ All flour is all-purpose white flour unless otherwise noted.

❯❯ All Greek yogurt is full-fat yogurt.

❯❯ When a recipe says to steam a vegetable, the amount of water you need to use in your pot or steamer depends on your steaming method, so we don’t include the water in the ingredients list. As a general rule, if you’re using a basket in a pot, the water level should be just below the basket.

Although most of the recipes in this book require relatively few ingredients, we include a few classics that have longer ingredient lists; a culinary tour of the Mediterranean just wouldn’t be complete without these dishes. Don’t be intimidated by the longer lists of ingredients. They may look overwhelming, but the recipes themselves are still pretty simple.

Finally, we include the following basic conventions throughout the rest of the book:

❯❯ For the purposes of this book, a Mediterranean lifestyle and dietary pattern focuses on the traditional habits seen at least 50 years ago in Crete, Greece, and, southern Italy.

❯❯ Text in shaded sidebars or marked with a Technical Stuff icon is nonessential. We encourage you to read the information anyway, but you can skip it without missing anything crucial to the point at hand.

We use this little tomato icon to highlight the vegetarian recipes in this book.

Foolish Assumptions

When writing this book, we made the following few assumptions about you, our dear reader:

❯❯ You’re looking for meal-planning tips that will help you succeed with your health and weight-loss goals.

❯❯ You want to incorporate these recipes into your lifestyle.

❯❯ You have an understanding of cooking basics. In other words, you know your way around a kitchen and know how to use a knife without cutting your finger. If you need to brush up on your cooking skills, check out the latest edition of Cooking Basics For Dummies by Bryan Miller and Marie Rama (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) before you get rolling.

❯❯ You’re used to the standard American way of eating and wonder whether anything called a “diet” can be yummy and satisfying.

❯❯ You aren’t afraid to embrace a lifestyle that goes against the grain of what many around you may be doing.

❯❯ You’re looking for ways to get more vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants into your diet.

❯❯ You’re genuinely willing to make changes and stick to them until they become habits.

Icons Used in This Book

The icons in this book are like bookmarks, pointing out information that we think is especially important. Here are the icons we use and the kind of information they point out:

Even if you forget everything else in this book, remember the paragraphs marked with this icon. They help you make good choices and stay on track with your health goals.

The information marked with this icon is interesting to know, but it goes beyond what’s essential for your basic understanding. If you’re the type of person who likes to know more about any particular topic, you’ll enjoy these tidbits. If not, feel free to skip ’em.

This helpful icon marks important information that can save you time and energy, so make sure you don’t overlook it.

Watch out for this icon; it warns you about potential problems and common pitfalls of implementing a Mediterranean diet into your lifestyle.

Where to Go from Here

Where to go from here depends on your immediate needs. Ready to start cooking and want to make some fabulous seafood tonight? Head over to Chapter 18. Interested in finding out more about the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet? Sit back and read Chapter 2.

For an online Cheat Sheet with helpful information that you can refer to again and again, head to www.dummies.com/cheatsheet/mediterraneandietcookbook.

If you’re not sure where you want to begin, peruse the table of contents, pick out the topics that mean the most to you, and start there. Mediterranean Diet Cookbook For Dummies, 2nd Edition, contains a wide variety of recipes, so we encourage you try as many as you can at your own pace. We hope that you end up with lots of smudge marks on this book because you use it so lovingly and frequently in your kitchen.