Tea at Trianon: Frying with Olive Oil

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, April 7, 2018

Frying with Olive Oil

From Tree Hugger:

There is no need to compromise flavor for health! A new study out of the University of Granada, Spain, has found that frying vegetables in extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO) can be healthier than boiling. Since olive oil is used so extensively in Mediterranean cuisine, the researchers decided to take a closer look at what really happens when vegetables are cooked. There is a common assumption that less oil is better when cooking, and that vegetables are healthiest when raw (or closest to a raw state). From the press release:

"It is often thought that when we cook raw vegetables in certain ways and using certain cooking techniques, their antioxidant properties, such as the phenolic compounds, are to some degree lost or destroyed."
The researchers took four popular vegetables -- eggplant, tomato, potato, and pumpkin -- and cooked them three ways. One method was frying in extra-virgin olive oil, another was boiling in water, and a third was boiling in a mixture of water and olive oil.

"The vegetables were also kept in optimum conditions in order to accurately measure their moisture, fat, dry matter, and phenol contents, along with their antioxidant capacity, before and after each cooking method was employed."
What they found was surprising. The fried vegetables had higher level of natural phenols, which are antioxidants that have been linked to the prevention of chronic degenerative diseases such as cancer, diabetes and macular degeneration. The reason for this was that the olive oil essentially transferred its phenols to the vegetables, enriching their nutritional value. (Read more.)