Product Description

For more than four thousand years, the olive tree has been a symbol of abundance, peace, and longevity. Gifted by a goddess, revered by ancient cultures, and protected by emperors, the olive tree and its precious fruit have played important roles in civilization.

Dubbed “liquid gold” by Homer, olive oil has been used for food, medicine, magic, beauty, and divine rituals. Baseball star Joe DiMaggio is even said to have soaked his bat in olive oil. And while it is no longer drawn upon to treat leprosy or massage elephants, the use of this versatile product is growing by leaps and bounds around the world.

The Passionate Olive is the ultimate guide to this natural marvel. Along with olive legends and fascinating history, Carol Firenze shares the myriad practical uses of olive oil through the telling of her favorite family stories and by offering unique formulas and recipes.

Restore luster to your pearls . . . curb your cat’s hair-ball problems . . . silence squeaky doors hinges . . . soothe your sore throat and dry lips . . . replace artery-clogging butter in your favorite dishes with . . . can you guess?

The Passionate Olive reveals the secrets of how to enhance your life, love, and health with olive oil and merits a front-and-center spot among your most cherished books. It makes a beautiful gift, too, for just about everyone and every occasion. In fact, you and your friends will want to keep The Passionate Olive and a bottle of olive oil in your kitchen, your bathroom, and even your bedroom.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #398766 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-29
• Released on: 2005-03-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780345476760
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
"Food's cheaper than medicine," claims Firenze in this charming book about the practical uses of olive oil. Firenze shares her passion for the staple ingredient by recounting warm memories from her Italian-American childhood, divulging tasty family recipes and detailing olive oil's fascinating history as a common Mediterranean health aid and an ingredient in food preparation. For those new to olive oil, Firenze explains the different classifications, the best ways to cook with it (marinating, frying, baking, etc.) and how to throw a great Olive Oil tasting party. The book covers a wide variety of topics, ranging from olive oil's historic role in religious rituals to its more sensual role as a rubbing oil for massages. Firenzi also details the practical uses of olive oil: it can be employed as a Diaper Rash Remedy to sooth babies' bottoms; an added ingredient to dog or cat food to give one's pet a healthy, shiny coat; and a homemade Shoe Polish. Most importantly, the book is filled with delicious recipes such as Gigi's Eggplant Parmesan and Massimo's Tomato and Potato Side Dish. This delightful book will not only make readers' mouths water, but will provide them with a greater understanding of an under-appreciated domestic and culinary ingredient.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
CAROL FIRENZE is a board member of the California Olive Oil Council and a professional member of the American Institute of Wine and Food and the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. She received her Olive Oil Consultant Certificate from the Italian Culinary Institute in New York and holds a doctorate in education from the University of San Francisco, with a focus on cultural and communicative understanding. Firenze lives in Los Gatos, California, and is an international management consultant.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter one

Liquid Gold

Olive oil . . . i just love it! I always have. I adore everything about it: the color, the feel, the taste, the texture, the variety, the mystique, the smell—the possibilities. I think my love of olive oil must be hereditary. Ever since I was a child growing up in an Italian American family, olives and olive oil have fascinated me. I remember opening a can of olives, draining the liquid, and putting whole pitted olives on my fingers and popping them in my mouth sequentially and eating them with complete delight. I also reminisce about my early childhood friends being shocked at our family’s use of olive oil instead of the vegetable oils used in their homes, and their surprised faces as I dipped bread into oil rather than spreading it with butter. Even then I was trying to convert people to the magical world of olive oil.

All of my ancestors came from the region of Liguria, an area of Italy known for its light, flavorful, and delicate oils. I remember savoring the exquisite tastes of my grandmothers’ cooking and hearing the stories about how my grandfathers saved money for several weeks to purchase the precious oil; it was a household priority and a staple and necessary for food as well as for many other practical things.

Throughout history there have been many people who have been completely amazed by the merits of olive oil. Although treating leprosy, massaging the skin of elephants, or boiling it to pour over castle walls onto attackers may not be counted among our current everyday uses for olive oil, its uses are not only infinite but also legendary. Homer was right when he named this precious oil liquid gold and sang praises to the olive tree in his epic poems.

While most people think of olive oil mainly as a culinary condiment, people of the ancient Mediterranean burned olive oil for illumination or applied it topically to the body. From ancient times to the present, people have used it for medicine, for magic, and as part of their everyday beauty rituals. Olive oil has always been more than a basic food to the people of the Mediterranean; it’s been the Mediterranean’s lifeblood and has illuminated history since the beginning of humanity.

Olive oil’s mystical glow has been a magical ingredient in religious and spiritual rituals and a therapeutic resource to cure ailments and diseases. It was used to anoint kings (often poured directly on their heads), and it became a “monarch” itself when it became known as the king of all oils. In ancient Greece, athletes ritualistically smeared it all over their bodies before engaging in physical exercise, and winners were crowned with olive branch wreaths. In Rome, gladiators oiled their bodies as they prepared for competition. Celebrated physician and Father of Medicine Hippocrates recommended the use of olive oil for curing ulcers, cholera, and muscular pain. Drops were (and still are) trickled through holes in the tombs of saints to pay homage to them. Olive oil perhaps is the missing piece used in building one of the engineering wonders of the world, answering the question scholars have posed for centuries: What else could have helped ease the movement of the great stones to build the pyramids of Egypt?

The history of the olive culture mirrors the history of Western civilization. Although scholars disagree as to the actual specific location, the olive tree most likely originated in Asia Minor, probably in the Caucasus Mountains. What is known is that the first cultivated olive trees appeared around 6,000 BC in the area of Syria. They then spread to Crete, Palestine, and Israel. As much as precious petroleum oil is used as a basis for today’s economy, back then the economy was based on the production and sale of grain, wine, and olive oil. As trading moved out into other regions, this commercial network spread the knowledge and cultivation to what is now Turkey, Cyprus, Egypt, and Greece.

By the seventh century BC, olive trees were well established in Greece. The olive tree was considered so sacred that legislation was written to prohibit the cutting down of one. Known as Solon’s Olive Protection Law, and written by the statesman, Solon, the law stated that wrote that anyone who uprooted or destroyed an olive tree would be judged in court and, if found guilty, sentenced to death. In fact, the olive culture was so highly valued and the fruit from trees considered so sacred and revered that only chaste men and virgins were authorized to pick the fruit. (I wonder what kind of workforce we could gather today based on those stringent guidelines?)

The Romans planted olive groves and extended olive cultivation throughout their ever-growing empire. They improved oil-production techniques by inventing what was to be the prototype of the modern lever press. Populations conquered by the Romans were often ordered to pay taxes in the form of olive oil. Why, you may ask? As great consumers of oil, the Romans could not feed their own citizens with local oil output (a situation that still exists in Italy today). As documented in the Museo dell’Olivo (the Carli Olive Tree Museum in Imperia, Italy), it has been estimated that adult citizens going to public gymnasiums used as much as 55 liters (14.3 gallons) of olive oil annually for personal hygiene, for consumption, as a lubricant, for lighting, for rituals, and as a medicament. That is a lot of olive oil!

The valuable oil played an important role in the development of the Mediterranean economy. Under Roman rule, the Mediterranean region was divided according to olive oil markets, and olive oil trading was as hot a commodity as was dot.com stock in its heyday. Two notable differences between the dot.com peak and the olive oil peak: First of all, according to the historian Pliny, by the first century AD, Rome had excellent oil that was sold “at reasonable prices.” Second, olive oil is a trend that has lasted.

Advanced ships were built for the purpose of transporting oils a great distance. Hispania (that portion of the Roman Empire encompassing most of present-day Spain and Portugal) was the largest supplier of this precious liquid, and their olive oils were considered the holy grail of oils and thought to have the finest quality. The oil was shipped in terra-cotta amphoras (large, two-handled jars with narrow necks). Often carrying up to seventy kilos of olive oil, these amphoras could be used only once for three major reasons: olive oil permeated the porous terra-cotta causing rancidity if used again; they often became damaged during the voyage; and cleaning and recycling of the amphoras was unprofitable. The number of discarded amphoras is staggering. In fact, there is a mountain in Rome called Mt. Testaccio—forty-nine meters high and one kilometer wide—that is made entirely of methodically broken, discarded, and stacked amphoras.

The citizens of Rome and other parts of this vast empire consumed great quantities of Hispania’s wonderful oil. Even the oldest cookbook (that we know about), written by Apicius in the first century AD and entitled De Re Coquinaria (“On Cookery”), included many recipes using Hispania’s oil.

Olive cultivation declined during the barbarian invasions. It became rare and valuable during the Middle Ages, where it was chiefly used for religious purposes. Religious orders owned a great share of the cultivated olive trees, and behind monastic walls the precious oil could be found at the tables of churchmen.

The history of olive cultivation in the New World can be traced to missionaries traveling with Spanish explorers and conquistadors who carried the olive to Mexico (New Spain), to Caribbean settlements, then to the mainland of South America (Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile), and, at last, to what is now California. As early as 1524, Franciscan missionaries planted olive trees in New Spain. As they prepared for new settlements (in Baja California), they would take pot cuttings (or seeds) from existing orchards to their new outposts.

Sailing in the name of Spain, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, while not involved in olive agriculture, noted the importance of olive oil during his journey to the New World. He is said to have allotted a daily ration of a quarter liter of olive oil (about 1 cup) to each sailor aboard ship.

The early history of olive cultivation in present-day California revolves around the Franciscan fathers. During the second half of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, olive groves were established at nineteen of the twenty-one California missions, beginning with San Diego de Alcala and ending with San Francisco Solano Mission in Sonoma. Only the missions at San Francisco and Carmel do not have suitable climates for growing olive trees.

Historically, the original purpose of growing olives in California was for the making of oil, with the first oil produced in 1803. By the mid-nineteenth century, olive oil was a thriving industry, but then it languished. Its popularity was cyclical, and, by the end of the nineteenth century, table olives became the primary products from the fruit of the tree (and still are). However, in recent years, a number of Californians are planting olive trees and harvesting the fruit to make exceptional olive oil.

Since 1985, the use of olive oil in the United States has grown exponentially with the importing of excellent European oils, the availability of award-winning California oils, the national focus on health and nutrition, and the growing interest in culinary arts. But not too many people know that the olive tree itself has always been a symbol of abundance, peace, longevity, and wisdom.

Capable of living up to three thousand years, this hardy and undemanding tree can survive semi-arid climates, shallow soil, and decapitation. Should a tree die, shoots will begin to grow from the bas...

Customer Reviews

The Perfect Gift Book and More...
This is such a perfect little book to give as a gift. I have tried two of the uses mentioned in the book--frothing oil and water for my dry skin and freezing oil in my ice cube tray for use instead of butter. Both were great! I highly recommend this book--it's filled with interesting historical facts and fun new uses to try.

Fantastic informative book!
This book is such a treat and a great gift for any foodie! It is visually beautiful with olive colored text and lovely illustrations. The tips are surprising on how to use olive oil and the long history of olive oil compelling.

I saw the writer speak in the bay area and she was delightful.
She made a great suggestion to bring a copy of The Passionate Olive book(of course) and a bottle of olive oil to your next dinner party.

Great Book - Lots of Fun
I loved this book. Lots of great information and fun to read!
I have begun using some of the Olive Oil uses suggested in this book already and they work! Try it yourself.