For the Love of Olive Oil

The last few days seem like a crazy blur, so much was going on around here. On Friday, I had my training day at work, and it was a lot of fun and I acclimated quite well! As easy as it is to roll your eyes at celebrity magazines, I have to say that working for them sure is a hoot--I'm getting paid to read about Miley Cyrus' birthday bash and Hayden Panettiere's love for whales... seriously.

But this weekend was filled with lots of excitement in addition to that. Most notably, the wonderful boyfriend came in for the weekend, and with great timing! I won a raffle for a free olive oil tasting party at the Olive Oil & Co. store in the West Village, and, knowing that the boy's family has been collecting olive oil for decades, I planned the event around his visit.


We learned about the production of olive oil, and were surprised to hear that there's a huge problem with olive oil fraud in the states. Believe it or not, the cheap bottles you see in the supermarket are oftentimes filled with mostly canola oil! According to our super-cool olive oil professor, the profits of fake olive oil trade are equal to (or even exceed!) that of the cocaine market!


We tasted a variety of olive oils and learned about the different tasting notes to look for, which was really unusual and fun! Then we learned about balsamic vinegar, and were equally surprised to hear that it's not really balsamic unless it's certified by the Modena Council (in Modena, Italy). As it seems, balsamic isn't balsamic unless is comes from Modena (much like Champagne and Parmesan are specific to their own regions) and it must be aged in a very specific way as it reduces down to its wonderful, syrupy goodness. Who knew?

After so much learning (and tasting!), we got a chance to eat appetizers made with store products, such as wonderful goat cheese crostini topped with mandarin olive oil and parmesan cheese with cherry-infused balsamic.




I immediately felt inspired and imagined baking a chocolate cake with mandarin olive oil or grilling thai shrimp skewers with chili-infused oil--despite the logical impulse to not spend money on such luxury goods, I ended up bringing both home.

But strangely, what I may have loved most was this clever and beautiful oil lamp... it's a little bit Judah Macabee, but I'm a huge fan!