My Mediterranean Village Lifestyle: Traveling Back to My Village to Discover Optimal Health Naturally

By Rena Ayyelina

The search for optimal health and longevity remains confusing for many individuals and can result in individuals chasing nutrient pills, medications, or new diets. My Mediterranean Village Lifestyle connects the dots between old-world simplicity and newly understood knowledge about nutrition and lifestyle in a simple, common-sense narrative inspired by the tiny village of Lafka, Korinthias, in the Greek mountains. Nutrition remains the key focus of the book; however, lifestyle choices, stress, relationships with others, physical activity, and relationship with the Creator are also topics of discussion. The author demonstrates, through examining life in the village, how all of these factors can work together in synergy to boost your immune system, promote overall well-being, and provide the health/wealth needed for a fulfilling life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781512766523

Rena Ayyelina

Rena Ayyelina immigrated to the United States at the age of eleven. Mrs. Ayyelina ate an American fast food diet while working in the family restaurant as a teenager. Compelled to ensure the health of her first child she was carrying, she began to improve her food selections and cooking methods. At first, this meant cooking more at home and adding fruits and vegetables, but later, it meant examining the diet and lifestyle of her native village, Lafka, in Greece. She remembered how rare illness around her seemed as a child and was troubled by how common disease around her was in America. Mrs. Ayyelina decided to learn more about nutrition and became a Certified Nutritional Consultant. As she made more changes to food selection and preparation, she remained sensitive to the challenges of consistently cooking real, unprocessed food for the family and still working outside the home. After publishing her first book, My Mediterranean Village Lifestyle, she was compelled to share her cooking experiences with others. Her passion is to help others improve their health and longevity through eating real, God-created food. My Mediterranean-Greek Cookbook shares many easy to prepare dishes that are doable for both two-income families and single-parent families. Mrs. Ayyelina remains convinced that the answer to America’s epidemic of chronic diseases begins with preparing unprocessed, God-created food.

Book preview

MY MEDITERRANEAN VILLAGE

LIFESTYLE

TRAVELING BACK TO MY VILLAGE TO DISCOVER

OPTIMAL HEALTH NATURALLY

RENA AYYELINA

Copyright © 2017 Rena Ayyelina.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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ISBN: 978-1-5127-6652-3 (e)

WestBow Press rev. date: 2/1/2017

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This book contains the opinions and ideas of its author. It is sold with the understanding that the author is not giving medical advice or any form of medical treatment. You should always consult with your physician before altering or changing any aspect of your medical treatment. Do not stop or change any prescription medications without the guidance and advice of your physician. Any use of the information in this book is the reader’s responsibility. The author specifically disclaims all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

CONTENTS

Chapter 1   Discovering The Health Secrets of my Mediterranean Village

Chapter 2   Quick and easy does not Work

Chapter 3   Common Myths About a Healthy Lifestyle

Chapter 4   Healthy Children

Chapter 5   Your Health is Your Wealth!

Chapter 6   Dine Out Without Pigging-Out

Chapter 7   The Labels of Processed Foods Should Have to List Side Effects

Chapter 8   Gift Wrapping Wonderland

Chapter 9   Misleading Food Labels

Chapter 10   Redefining Home Cooked Meals

Chapter 11   Healthy Food does not Mean Boring, Tasteless Food

Chapter 12   Is Organic Food Expensive?

Chapter 13   Olive Oil

Chapter 14   Red Meat, Sugar, and Salt Consumption in the Village

Chapter 15   Minimal Processing

Chapter 16   Healthy Solutions to a Healthy Weight

Chapter 17   Colon Health

Chapter 18   What are You Doing After a Serious Illness?

Chapter 19   Happy and Healthy

Chapter 20   Animal Therapy

Chapter 21   Give, and it will be Given Unto You

Chapter 22   Learning from Other Cultures

Chapter 23   Nutrition Analysis

Chapter 24   Recipes for Health

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

Discovering The Health Secrets of my Mediterranean Village

A man crosses a busy street and continues by foot several blocks to his favorite coffee shop, as has been his custom for the thirty-six years he has been retired; the man is 97 and takes no routine medicine. Who would not desire this degree of health at 97? How is it achieved? Is it a secret herb, a miracle pill, an ancient exercise secret or diet, or simply luck? Well, let’s examine the man’s life for clues.

My father rarely uses medicine and walked several blocks to his favorite καφενιο (coffee shop) even well into his nineties. Having grown up in a small village in Greece until the age of 52, my dad ate home cooked food that was fresh and seasonal. Eating seasonal food, as nature intended, provides maximum health benefits. Nearly everyone in the village had farmland to cultivate their crops including wheat. Most of what was eaten by the Lafkiotes (Λαυκιοτεs, residents of Lafka, Λαυκα) was grown or raised in Lafka—out of necessity I might add.

Sheep and goats for milk, cheese, and occasional meat, and vegetables, fruit, wheat and olives were all produced locally. Rice and some pasta items that were easy to store and transport made their way to the village general store. Other exceptions were coffee, sugar, and fish when the fishermen made an occasional trip to the village with their fresh catch to sell. Herbs such as oregano, parsley, bay leaf, and mint were used daily in cooking, as well as garlic, onion, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves; some were also used as medicine! Although nearly everyone had farmland, everyone gathered wild-growing items when they were available. Whatever was in season became the priority! I remember the women in the village would also gather wild dandelions for dinner. Picking dandelions remains common; we just witnessed the preparation of gathered dandelion greens on a recent trip back to Stymfalia (Στυµφαλια), which is a nearby village of some relatives. My father once took my husband and I up the mountain to pick oregano and tea. We walked up for about two hours and were well above the timberline when we arrived at the picking place. The aroma of both the tea and the oregano was quite robust. I also remember my family gathering snails after a good rain—you know, the escargot kind of snails! Financial necessity remained the main motivation for harvesting and gathering what was in season locally; however, as we will discuss further, it was a key component of the healthy Lafka village lifestyle.

Yianni (Γιαννη) lived in Greece his whole life, with the exception of nine years in America. Until age 52 he lived in Lafka, a mountain village. As I look back at my father’s life, I can clearly see that circumstances changed in his life, but he did not change his diet that much. The most common work in Lafka was farming and raising sheep high in the mountains. Transportation was nearly all by foot, donkey or mule. Physical activity was a required part of daily living. No exercise class was necessary.

Because Greece is mostly rocky, the valuable flat land was used only for farming. The homes were built at the foot of the mountains. The traditional way to cultivate the land was with a plow and two mules. I still remember my parents walking to the fields at sun up to get as much done as possible before the midday heat. At around 11a.m. my parents would begin their walk back home to prepare and eat lunch, and they would take a nap until about 3p.m.

In addition to farming, everyone had small gardens at their house. Everyone grew food for his or her own family, and it was picked fresh and prepared in season without commercial processing. Because of this, it was packed with optimal nutrition! A significant portion of the village diet was fresh in-season items. What was coming in to season determined the menu. If you did not grow it, you probably would not have enough to survive. Unprocessed foods grown by someone else will give you the same benefits. Many families had a small vineyard and made their own wine. When I was growing up in Greece it was the norm for adults to have wine with dinner every night.

I was eleven when our family moved to the United States. The first few years of our restaurant business were very difficult financially. My parents worked tirelessly during this time, and my mother didn’t have time to teach me what she knew about Greek home-cooked meals. Most of our time was spent making pizzas, which was our main business. As a result, I did not know how to cook when I got married. The first Greek dish I cooked, pasticho, was horrible so we gave it to our dog Touko (an outside dog) to eat. My husband still makes fun of the fact that Touko barked at the dish that I slaved over to prepare! Lucky for me that after I had my children, an older Greek man that was a close friend of my parents, started visiting me. My parents had gone back to Greece by then, and he wanted to maintain friendships with Greek-speaking people—that would be me.

He often gave me advice on Greek cooking. The first cooking lesson was about oil. He said, "Greeks cook with extra virgin olive oil, not vegetable oils and lard! Of course, for citizens of Greece, cooking with olive oil is a no-brainer. Olives and olive oil have been a major industry of Greece and readily available for a very long time. Fortunate for the Greeks, and other Mediterranean countries, olive oil has been discovered to be the best, as recognized by almost all published experts. Among other qualities, it is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids and is mono-unsaturated fat.

The water supply for the village came from deep inside the mountain. It was gathered in a reservoir and piped to all the homes. Unlike our chlorinated and fluoridated water, Lafka’s water was clean and naturally full of minerals and absent of chemical runoff. I remember when I was a little girl, I used to go to the mountain to help with the sheep. There is also a fresh water spring there, called Kroeli (Κροελι), where I would bend over