I love you, olive oil.

I had a revelation last week while sitting down to my regular lunch salad. I was spooning out olive oil from a plastic portion cup that I'd filled upstairs in the company cafeteria when I thought to myself, "I should bring in my own olive oil." It was that simple. For some reason it had never occurred to me to buy a nice tasting olive oil and keep it at my desk. Duh.

On Saturday morning, I found myself at The Garden, a food market in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I needed to pick up some grainy mustard for my braised Easter rabbit and right next to the mustards was a lovely selection of oils. I scanned the shelves and picked one based on it's size (small,) it's price (affordable,) and it's container (convenient.) I liked that it came in a tin, but just 500 ml not a giant 5 liter size. It was a Sicilian olive oil and the tin specifically mentioned that it was "Top Quality" and would have a "Fruity Taste."

Perfect.

When I sat down with my salad today for lunch, I reached for my tin of Partanna Extra Virgin Olive Oil. I popped up the plastic pour spout and drizzled a reasonable amount over my salad of kale, parsley, bibb lettuce, orange bell peppers, kalamata olives and sliced steak. The nozzle of the pour spout let out only a thin, controlled stream of oil and didn't drip! I keep kosher salt and a mini pepper grinder at my desk so I seasoned my salad with both of those and then took the first bite. Yum! Fruity, grassy and herbaceous - it was a huge improvement over the dull, vaguely olive-flavored oil I'd been getting from the cafeteria.


I did a quick Google search, but didn't find much about Partanna other than where to buy it. Then I went to their website, which was in Italian. I hit the Translate button, and here, for your enjoyment, is a little snippet of what I found:

Twelve reasons to use olive oil
Do not make you fat, it helps the harmonious development of children, facilitates the intestinal absorption of vitamins, aids digestion and regulates the amount of cholesterol in the blood.These are just some of the properties of olive oil, the 'king of the Mediterranean diet.

If you're interested, the full 12 reasons are listed here.