Suzy Eats

The silvery-green sage plant is native to Mediterranean regions and is now cultivated throughout the USA. There are almost 1000 different varieties of sage but they all contain similar health benefits which are outlined below. I grow sage in my garden and like to add it to my tea and if you are a guest at my house, you will probably be served a cup of tea with sage 🙂 It is most commonly used in the USA as a Turkey stuffing on Thanksgiving. I would caution against Read the rest of this entry »

Olive oil is similar to wine in that the taste is a matter of a person’s preference. Many factors contribute to why there is differences in the taste, aroma and flavor of olive oils. 

The following factors can impact the taste of the olive oil: type of olive used, soil conditions and location where olives were grown, weather during the “growing” and “harvesting” seasons, ripeness of the  olives, season/timing of the harvest, harvesting method, length of time between the harvest and pressing, pressing technique, AND packaging and storage methods.

The olive is native to the Mediterranean region, and each area around the Mediterranean provides a unique type of olive. Olives from different areas are often blended together and olives from the same area but different regionsare also blended. Both of these methods provide olive oils which are still as tasty and rich in flavor as solo area olive oils. Olives change colors as they ripen. They start as a green, change to purplish, and then become black once they are fully ripened.

As mentioned above, some of the olive oils are “green”. These olive oils are from unripe olives and provide a slightly bitter taste. The moderately green tinted oils are the most common and in most of the foods we eat. These olive oils have fruity and nutty flavors and are usually added to neutral-flavored foods. The best combination of food with a green olive oil is usually a food with a neutral taste since the strong flavor of a green olive oil can really stand out. 

Ripe olives provide the olive oils that are golden, yellowish color.  The olive oil from ripe olives are more mild and buttery in taste. They do not have that bitter, fruity flavor like the greens. These oils are better for foods that already have a strong flavor since the ripe olive oil will not overpower the food. 

Olives just like other plants are also subject to pests. Farmers utilized pesticides on the olives to help prevent the “olive fly” from ruining their crops. If you would like to avoid the pesticides, Suzy Eats recommends using organic olive oil.

We were fortunate enough to receive fresh thyme and sage from Al’ard. We will include these in our review as well. We are very excited to review all of these products.  Stay tuned 🙂

Oils and fats are all very different. More specifically, they contain various amounts of saturated and unsaturated fat content. For health reasons, it is always best to select an oil that is high in monounsaturated fat and low in saturated fat. Olive Oil is probably one of the healthiest and contains a high amount of monounsaturated fat and low saturated fat. Some may argue that it is the healthiest oil to eat, but it is probably not best to use it when you are deep frying foods.

Depending upon what kind of cooking you are doing there may be an oil of choice 🙂 For frying foods-  best oils are those with high smoke points such as canola, corn, safflower and sunflower. For stir-frying and salad dressing-any oil low in saturated fat like canola, corn, flaxseed, olive, peanut, safflower, sunflower and walnut are all great choices. We recommend avoiding coconut and palm oil, butter and margarine (although butter is healthier than margarine).

Listed below is a table of the various types of oils and their fat content.

Suzy Eats was recently contacted by Alard Products www.alardproducts.com and we agreed to review their ORGANIC OLIVE OIL. We will be sharing the results of our review soon as we are eating our olive oil daily 🙂

Stay tuned as will have some Olive Oil Giveaways soon!!! 🙂