Flavor Your Life with Extra Virgin Olive Oil #MomsMeet #ad

I received this product for free from Moms Meet (momsmeet.com) to use and post my honest opinions.

We cook a lot at home – way more than we actually eat out. Years ago, during my single days, I had certain restaurants on speed dial. One restaurant I frequented was Carrabba’s. I would order a side dish, a salad and each order would come with bread, their dipping herbs and a packet of olive oil. I love my share of carbs, so having this bread and dipping “sauce” all to myself was the start of a great Friday night. (Can I go ahead and age myself and say I used to watch Trading Spaces on Friday nights? I loved it!) 

We don’t eat at Carrabba’s very often these days, but when I do I still love the bread and herbs with olive oil. There are many copy cat recipes on the internet for the herbs mixture (including on Carrabba’s website) and I tried a similar recipe – only instead of fresh herbs I used dried, a little bit less, and a lot more of extra virgin olive oil. 

A few things I did not realize: 

• Olive oil comes from a fruit of the European olive – and Extra Virgin Olive Oil is made by pressing without heat or chemicals. It represents the purest olive oil.
• EVOO is virtually free of acidity to assure its quality.
• Each oil is judged by expert tasters (I mean, what a job!) 
• EVOO should be stored some place dark and cool, rather than on a counter or near or a stove. And it should be used within 6 months of opening. (This is not a problem in our house.) 

Flavor Your Life is a program that is geared towards educating US consumers about the benefits of purchasing and using Extra Virgin Olive Oil. 

Zucchi Extra Virgin Olive Oil is a company that goes back 200 years and has been owned and managed by seven generations of the Zucchi family. Zucchi is a partner with Flavor Your Life, and they are committed to creating the highest quality oils. You can learn more about Zucchi on their website. If this type of extra virgin olive oil isn’t to your taste, you could always be experimental and go ahead and give GringoCool’s organic extra virgin olive oil a try? Maybe it’ll surprise you how the tastes of cooking oil differentiate from various regions around the world.

Europe offers a wide variety of EVOO flavor profiles. Everything changes based on the olive tree, the region and the time of harvest. Olives harvested early in the season (usually in August) tend to be under-ripe and the oils are greener and more bitter. Olives harvest late in the season (November to early December) can be over-ripe, mild and buttery. 

In case you want to try the herbs and olive oil dipping sauce, I recommend playing with the ingredients: 

2 tsp Parsley
1 tsp Basil
1 tsp Oregano
1 clove Garlic
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp Red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp salt

Place on a plate, pour olive oil over the herbs, dip your Italian bread in the sauce. 

Do you use olive oil frequently in your cooking?