Growing up in the Egyptian city of Port Said, Suzy Karadsheh and her dad would head to the local market after school every day to pick up fresh produce for dinner.
Once at home, she would do her homework in the kitchen, inhaling the fragrant garlicky, spicy, or tomatoey aromas as her mom cooked dinner. The port city borders the Mediterranean Sea, making its local cuisine a melting pot of flavors from Egypt as well as nearby countries, including Greece, Turkey, and Italy.
“I was taking it in without realizing,” Karadsheh, the founder of The Mediterranean Dish, a recipe website, told Business Insider. Now based in Atlanta and a busy mom of two, Karadsheh no longer has time to visit the local market every day, but she applies the principles of the Mediterranean diet to the 45-minute meals she makes for her and her family each day.
The Mediterranean diet is widely considered the healthiest way to eat. It prioritizes seasonal fruit and vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fish, and extra-virgin olive oil, but isn’t rigid.
“It’s a joyful way to eat. It is not a restrictive way to eat. And I think people miss that when they hear the word diet in Mediterranean diet,” she said.
She does have one rule, though: “not spending more than a half-hour prepping on a weeknight,” she said.
Karadsheh shared what she eats on a typical day following the Mediterranean diet.
Savory breakfast
“I grew up with a savory breakfast. So we don’t do sugary breakfast in this house very much,” Karadsheh said.
For breakfast, she often eats sweet potatoes, which she roasts in advance and stores in the fridge, with fried eggs.
To make the breakfast, she cuts a pre-cooked sweet potato in half, grills both halves on a skillet with a bit of olive oil, and sears them for about three minutes until they are warmed throughout. In the same skillet, she fries two eggs. She plates them up and usually pairs them with some chopped cucumber and tomatoes, and feta cheese.
“It is just so filling,” she said.
Mediterranean grain bowl for lunch
Lunch is a low-key affair for Karadsheh because she often has a late breakfast. She typically has leftovers or uses the precooked grains and roasted veggies she keeps in her fridge to make a Mediterranean grain bowl. She often has some hummus and a piece of bread on the side.
Whole grains are central to the Mediterranean diet, and a great source of fiber. One cup of cooked quinoa, for example, contains five grams of fiber. Karadsheh’s favorite grains are freekeh, a roasted durum wheat with a “savory and smoky flavor” popular in Egypt, and farro, an ancient Italian grain.
Winner winner chicken (or fish) dinner
This summer, Karadsheh has mostly been eating fish or chicken with a Greek salad, containing bell peppers, tomato, cucumber, good feta cheese, onions, and olives, plus some grains, and sometimes tzatziki, a yogurt sauce.
Her go-to fish recipe is an oven-baked lemon, garlic cod. To make it, she dips the cod in a lemon, olive oil, and butter sauce, then coats it in flour seasoned with paprika, cumin, coriander, and salt. Next, she sears the fish in an iron cast skillet to give it some color, pours over the rest of the lemon sauce with some minced garlic, and cooks it in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes at 400 °F.
She loves trying out marinades for grilled chicken too, taking inspiration from different Mediterranean countries. Sometimes it’s harissa, a Tunisian hot chili paste, she said, other times it might be Greek oregano, lemon juice, and olive oil.
Gut health experts recommend aiming to eat 30 different types of plant foods a week, as research suggests this number promotes healthy diversity in the gut microbiome, the trillions of microbes that live in the colon lining and impact overall health. Using plenty of herbs and spices, which all count as different plants, is an easy way to get closer to the coveted 30 plants a week.
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