Warm baked olives with rosemary and lemon

Snack food is where this way of eating gets lonely fastest. Almost everything in a vending machine, a gas station rack, or a friend's chip bowl at a gathering is built from seed oil, corn, or soy, with nothing there that works for you. These olives take 5 minutes to put together and then the oven does the rest, and what comes out is warm, salty, and entirely yours to eat without reading a single label.

What olives give you here is monounsaturated fat and polyphenols, plant compounds studied for their role in calming inflammation. Warming them in coconut oil and broth with rosemary and lemon softens them enough to take on all of it. A little ground ginger, which is a rhizome rather than a seed, adds warmth without pulling in anything the elimination phase asks you to set aside.

Olives come from trees some families tend for generations, which is its own kind of patience worth a thought while you eat. Warm olives in a small dish, green onion scattered over the top: a real snack deserves 5 minutes at a table, not 5 minutes standing over the sink.

Ingredients

• 16 oz black olives
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1/4 cup coconut oil
• 1/8 cup green onion, chopped
• 1 tbsp dried rosemary
• 1/2 tbsp lemon juice (omit for interstitial cystitis)
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger

Method

Heat the oven to 350 F.

Combine the olives, chicken broth, coconut oil, green onion, rosemary, lemon juice, and ground ginger in an 8x8 baking dish and stir to coat. The black pepper from the original is left out here, since seed-based spices are set aside during the elimination phase.

Bake for 30 minutes, stirring once or twice as they go, until the olives are warmed through and have taken on the herbs and oil. Serve warm on their own, or spooned over a salad or baked fish.

*Adapted from acleanplate.com*