Extra Virginity
The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

I've been using store bought extra virgin olive oil ever since Food Network introduced Rachael Ray's cooking show: 30-Minute Meals in 2001. Nearly every one of her savory recipes has EVOO in the ingredients list. I bought whatever extra virgin olive oil was on sale at any given time and this quickly......more

Everyone around speaks about the Mediterian diet benefits. But what is so different about it? Of course, the consumption of olive oil. I was surprised to learn from the book how much olive oil is consumed by Italians and Greeks. It is nearly 1 litre of oil per week. But if you think to go now to the......more

Updating 7/11 to add link to ongoing controversy of author's evaluation methods and relationship with Veronica Foods. Draw your own conclusions. Last week I crossed paths with two food-centric non-fiction books. One, a memoir, written by a famous chef, was set in my favorite place on the planet: Par......more

This is the kind of book I usually adore: food, science, history, politics, people. I also adore olive oil. Mueller does a pretty good job of giving the reader (or listener, in my case) a good overview of the world of olive oil. Here are the things I learned from this book. One, there are many, many......more

As someone with the most rudimentary knowledge of olive oil and its history(or any kind of oil history for that matter) and the naive long-cherished assumption that an Extra Virgin label and an Italian origin were markers of the highest quality and justified the high prices, this book was pretty har......more