Olive Oil

Part of our healthy eating plan is cutting back on dairy, which means reducing our intake of some of the things that make life worth living, namely ice cream and butter. As much as I love the stuff, ice cream is actually not that hard to avoid because it’s not something any normal person eats on a regular basis. Being the abnormal person that I am, I consumed it on a regular basis, but haven’t had it regularly for about a year. For anyone who knows me well enough, this is pretty amazing. It helps that ice cream is something you know you’re not supposed to eat a lot of.

Not like butter, at least. It’s hard to find a substitute for butter. Margarine is in my opinion a worse alternative, and it doesn’t taste as good. Butter, unlike ice cream, is something that a person could conceivably use all the time, for breakfast, lunch, and/or dinner. We have found, however, that in many instances, olive oil works well, particularly on pasta, bread and most vegetables. In fact, if you buy good olive oil, it has a great flavor that can really enhance the food. We never ate olive oil when I was growing up, my parents didn’t like it, and it was expensive. There wasn’t as much of an awareness about health back then, either.

I feel better about eating olive oil over butter, and the kids like it. In certain instances you can’t replace butter, for instance in a baked potato, but we’re not eating potatoes anyway, so it’s not an issue.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to Van Zai for the pic.