My surname is perhaps a bit of a giveaway but, in our family, olive oil is regarded as one of life’s great elixirs, a magic oil that we use for everything from cooking to polishing furniture.
The darkest green extra virgin oils – full of healthy polyphenols – will be generously poured onto any salad. Olive oil is great too for rubbing into dry hair or skin, coating garden tools, softening leather, drinking neat with honey for sore throats, sorting out dry ears and cleaning the steel fridge surface. Oh, and treating a baby’s cradle cap.
As you can imagine, we go through litres of the stuff every month, often with several varieties on the go at once to sample different flavours and blends. And, so far, I’ve managed to swallow the huge hikes in olive oil prices that we’ve seen over the last year because of our love for the oil fruit.
