You hear you’re supposed to eat like you live at the Mediterranean—but fresh fish and produce can be pricey, and need prompt preparation before they go bad. Because I cherished my grandpa’s heritage, I spent a year living in Italy and learned first-hand that many Italians also often eat a food you might think of as being more of an American staple: the incredible, edible egg.
More than 100 years ago when my great-grandparents moved from outside Rome to the United States, they brought that tradition with them. To feed their dozen children in Pennsylvania, my great-grandpa wisely settled them on a farm in the Allegheny Mountains, not a terribly different landscape from their mountain village back in the old country. My grandpa once told me he and his siblings had grown up living “off the fat of the land.”
KRISTINE GASBARRE FOR THE HEALTHY2006 photo from my great-grandparents’ birthplace, Castelnuovo in Abruzzo, Italy.
I’d always admired my great-grandparents’ adaptability to establish a new life and raise a family here. Back in Abruzzo, Italy, they say their people are strong like the mountains.
KRISTINE GASBARRE QADERI FOR THE HEALTHYZaccharia and Angeladea Gasbarre in the United States in the 1930s
Their diet might contribute to that. I was in my twenties, living on my own for the first time, when my grandpa shared something I’d never known about my great-grandma: her go-to meal. She needed energy to raise all those kids, tend to the house, and work the farm—but as new immigrants, they lived on a very tight budget. When she died at age 101 in 1997, I was in high school and hadn’t had enough foresight to ask her the ways she’d taken such good care of her health. This dish, as Grandpa revealed, may have been a contributor.
The ingredients are:
Grandma Gasbarre was known for sticking to Italian customs, so it’s also likely she cooked the eggs with a little olive oil in the pan.
To price out a helping, this week we visited Walmart.com and calculated a total of $1 per serving. This may not be exact, as prices will vary between locations and other variables, but it may help you develop a budget-friendly grocery list for well-balanced meal planning.
A dozen eggs, per our research, priced between $1.97 and $3.22, coming out to $0.15 and $0.27 per egg.
Frozen peas priced at $1.00 for a 10- to 12-ounce bag, but in my grad school years I often opted for canned—which Walmart Great Value sells for $0.76, containing three half-cup servings. Whichever you choose, this works out to around $0.25 per serving.
One family secret I learned from my grandpa is that when he needed to supplement our family’s “spaghetti sauce” recipe, he added Ragu Old World Style. (I recall him responding with laughter to my incredulity. I’d thought our recipe was sacred.) Priced today at $1.48 for a 24-ounce jar, that works out to $0.25 according to the label’s suggested serving size of a half-cup.
This calculates to about a dollar per meal, if you use two eggs. Here’s why it’s so healthy:
Eggs aren’t only one of the perfect proteins, delivering around seven grams each; one egg also provides 30% of daily recommended choline—beneficial to metabolism, neurological health, and fertility—along with vitamin B12 and caretenoids, which are good for eye health. No longer forbidden for cholesterol, eggs have many health benefits. To amp up the protein content of this dish, pour in some egg whites.
Marinara can be chock-full of goodness if you shop for one made with natural ingredients. Ragu lists its own as the following: Tomato puree, soybean oil, salt, sugar, dried onions, dried garlic, spices, garlic powder, onion powder.
What this means for you: tomatoes provide antioxidants, and garlic can offer some anti-inflammation benefits. Soybean oil can be a little iffy, according to some sources, but it’s also shown to contain omega-6 fats, which are unsaturated and may show cancer-preventing properties. Also, the 1.5-gram fat content per Ragu serving suggests the amount of soybean oil is low. As for salt, the 480 milligrams in a half-cup of this sauce allots about 20% of the 2,300-gram recommended daily sodium allowance.
Peas are a legume, which is one of the categories of food most commonly linked with longevity. Peas have been praised by the Harvard Medical School for their “protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals (especially iron, potassium, and vitamins A and K).” The university adds that a half-cup of cooked green peas contains four grams of protein, and 12 grams of complex carbohydrates—with one-third of that carb content coming in as fiber, netting just eight grams of natural sugars under that carbohydrate count.
Both my great-grandma and my grandpa have passed on, so it’s not possible for me to be entirely sure how she cooked her eggs. For some reason I’ve always envisioned them scrambled; whether that’s because my grandpa might have suggested this, or because both in my twenties and today, I need the quickest way to get a meal made. (How I long for an old-world pace.)
My great-grandma was also known to start her day with coffee from the percolator, and the occasional, very small glass of red wine—sometimes for breakfast, but only as a celebration when we stopped by after church to visit. She was also known for lots of laughter, which has been shown to scientifically contribute to more years.
If, in fact, you’re inspired to adopt a more Mediterranean approach, a Mayo Clinic expert gave us six budget-friendly staples that fit into this powerful diet.
KRISTINE GASBARRE FOR THE HEALTHYGreat-Grandma Gasbarre with nine of her children on her 100th birthday in March 1996.
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Dining and Cooking