Monday, September 21, 2009

Italian Food and Wine Show

Since I miss Italy so much, well especially Tuscany, it was refreshing to attend the Italian Food and Wine Show in Ottawa's Little Italy.  Drank so many wines, tasted some great foods but best of all tasted some fabulous olive oils from Italy, Greece and Morrocco. 

We settled on two:

Extra-Virgin from Olearia San Giorgio (Calabria)




Extra-Virgin from Le Tre Colonne (Bari)




I strongly suggest you treat yourself to some premium oils and most importantly USE THEM, don't let them sit around for years because you want to save them.  People, these are not Barolos, it's olive oil, it oxidizes hence that awful taste you can get at the back of your throat sometimes when you eat it if it has sat on the shelf for too long.  One thing though, don't cook with it, eat it raw as is, on salads, on pasta, bread, antipasto, or drizzled last minute on pizza.

Now my two-cents on nutrition:  Olive oil is high in monounsaturated fats, these are the healthy fats we should be eating more of.  These are heart healthy and have been shown to reduce the incidence of heart disease and reduce levels of bad cholesterol (LDL is bad, HDL is good...think H, Happy=Good).  If it were up to me I would take every corn, soy, vegetable oil out of everyone's pantry, that stuff is truly awful for our bodies, it is so refined and has very little nutritional value.  You may be spending more on olive oil, but it's worth the splurge for both taste and nutritional value.

1 comment:

  1. When Andrew and I moved into our flat his parents brought over loads of "pantry staples" for us, including a massive 2L bottle of vegetable oil and a 2L can of Greek olive oil (I prefer Italian but his mum is Cypriot and loves hers... it was free so I didn't complain!). More than 2 years later and I've barely made a dent in the vegetable oil (I only really use it for baking, and even then rarely) and the can of olive oil has been replaced several times! So yes, I completely agree :)

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