Oh, it’s a fine thing to eat the. Mediterranean Diet! To eat bread with tomatoes and cucumbers for breakfast, tossed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar! To eat focaccia for lunch from Panificio Fiori, the very bag shiny with oil, and your fingers afterwards able to grease your legs up in lieu of lotion! To have more focaccia as a snack midday at the beach, with a little sand in the bread and in your water bottle! To stop off for a double gelato in a waffle cone on the way home! To order a misto bolsa of fried dough balls, half polenta and half white flour, deep fried in 12 inches of bubbling oil, greasing the bag on the way home! Eating those dough balls with our lentil soup with pasta from the Addantes, sprinkled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar!
How much olive oil can one consume in a day? How much carbohydrate clothed in oil? How much bread, focaccia, fried dough? Have I been working all day in the Italian sun, hoeing artichokes? Maybe I was harvesting lemons, climbing up and down a ladder? Or maybe I was picking arugula and basil and grinding them for pesto? Well, no. I was lying at the beach. The most demanding thing I did was to walk around looking for an ATM.
