Olive Oil And Peppermint Ice Cream

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I am taking a couple dietary additives I feel real good about. It doesn't matter whether they're providing the results promised. I just like the idea of reaching for such results. I ran out of the capsules of this combination of Acetyl L-Carnitine and Alpha Lipoic Acid temporarily, but not intentionally. 

I had gone to the Wal-Mart vitamin counter where I usually get it (it's the closest and best stocked grocery store to my house by a long shot), and they were out. I dreaded the idea of driving all over town to find it because of the price of gas. I went to several other of the large franchise drug stores to find some, and they didn't carry it. I took the last capsule of it I had this morning. I take it twice a day per the instructions on the label. 

Tonight I didn't have a capsule to take, and I wanted some ice cream, so I drove over to the Wal-Mart SuperCenter, and they had restocked what I wanted. I was real pleased about that. I want to keep a regular schedule with this weird additive, but mostly I was happy to sit here and eat some peppermint bark ice cream. 

Eating almost the entire pint container of ice cream made me think of a poem by this woman who proclaimed, "More ice cream and less beans...". I didn't remember it so much. I put in what I remembered of it into Google, and the first ten or twelve links were about this poem, and for the first time I saw that it does have a one-word title:

http://www.luvzbluez.com/purple.html

WARNING
by Jenny Joseph

WHEN I AM AN OLD WOMAN I SHALL WEAR PURPLE
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me....

I didn't eat much ice cream for a long time. I didn't eat wheat products that had gluten in it either. My current dalliance with probiotics has changed that. I have another goal in mind than avoiding gluten and dairy products. My new aim is simply to feed my friendly gut bacteria, and apparently they like sopping bread with olive oil and parmesan, and ice cream of the very best kind. 

What's really new in my diet is the olive oil. I just wasn't raised to it. Never. As much as I traveled around and tasted the foods of various cultures I never encountered the notion of consuming olive oil because it was good for you. My only cognizance of it's use was it's Mediterranean cultural roots. 

My sister-in-law is the driving force behind my present curiosity about olive oil. She introduced me to it by buying me a bottle of it as a present for my birthday gift. Previously, I have been using canola oil to cook with. It's cheaper (I am a self-confessed miser), and I argued that canola oil is good enough for the likes of me. She was born in The Year Of The Dragon according to the Chinese astrology place mats, and I was born in The Year Of The Rabbit. She didn't agree with me using the canola, and demanded that I use the olive oil she bought me for the sake of my health. Now, I'm glad she was so adamant.   

For that reason, especially after I started studying and researching probiotics, I decided to read the default article on olive oil at Wikipedia. What I read was pretty much all positive, and in between this serious info and my sister-in-law's cocksure insistence, I decided to take olive oil more seriously and make it a mainstay in my diet. Now, I'm infrequently drinking it straight out of the bottle. Never in all my life have I imagined doing that. 

I've read that Wikipedia article several more times, and information from other sources to. Some time ago I had read that there is a lot of misinformation going around about olive oil, and unless you are really familiar with what to look for when you buy it, you can get cheated. 

Due to all the reading I've been doing, and after reading lots of labels and what information to look for, I'm not really concerned about getting cheated due to my ignorance about wot's what anymore. The different sorts of commercial olive oil is printed right on the label, the consumer just has to know what to look for. 

Most of the olive oil on the grocery store shelf at least won't kill you. The big difference in the various kinds is usually about how it's processed. At best, one specific brand of it might not be top shelf in taste and acidity, and there is the possibility of it getting rancid because it's past it's shelf life, but it's not a matter of getting cheated nutritiously. It's all good. Other than how it's processed, much of the controversy is about where the olives come from and where and how they're processed. 

As far as the nutritional values are concerned it really don't seem to matter if the olive oil is processed in many different places and then mixed together as a blend. Every label I read at the grocery store stated where the oil originated by country. Even if the label on the front states it's Italian, keep looking and you might discover it was grown in Tunisia, Spain, or Greece.

One interesting factoid is how olive trees are getting to be a major source of income in Australia. It originated around the arid regions around the Mediterranean basin. The olive tree has elaborate root systems that really reach deep into the dry soils of the desert-like areas of the mideast. Australia has lots and lots of land like that. What's not to like about the growing olive oil industry there? 

If you're more of an esthete and/or have territorial loyalties, then it's easy to placate those feelings by making choices in that vein. The info I'm reading states that if it's thoughtfully processed in the same place it's grown, you really can't go wrong. I bought a bottle of Israeli oil simply because the label claims it was entirely grown and processed in the Halutza Highlands. 

After I've decided which countries olive trees I wanna patronize, for whatever reason, it's then just a matter of acidity and taste. I'm not Jewish. For me, buying the Halutza brand was just the idea that it was grown and processed in the same place, and that it was not heated or treated with chemicals. Italian or Greek olive oil is fine with me. Olive oil from Senegal or Yemen, if it's entirely grown and processed there is just dandy with me. In the U.S., it's gotta say where it's from on the label. 

The acidity of olive oil seems to be a big deal to many people who consider themselves purists. Some people like a light taste. Others like a little more tartness and as stronger acidic taste. I've tasted several kinds now, and as long as it's not bitter or rancid I can go either way. Granted, according to my present research, the healthy ingredients found in olive oil may differ a little according to the region it's grown, but not enough to obsess over unless you're exceedingly fastidious. 

The way I'm preparing olive oil for dipping now obviates it's country of origin anyway. That, and my plebeian taste buds. The taste is modified too much by the type of ingredients I put in it. Parmesan or feta cheese works well. I bought some blue cheese to try out that I haven't used yet. Even better for taste in my opinion is miso. A half teaspoon of miso with a dash of soy sauce along with the grated cheese, and I'm a happy man. It's choosing the bread to sop it up with that still mystifies me. 

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