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Fresh fruit is one of the extravagant luxuries delivered to us by nature during the summer months. From crisp apples to juicy papaya, from the tangy sweetness of an orange to the melt-in-your-mouth tenderness of a pear, a good piece of fruit is a high point in any eating experience. Another summer tradition is grilling. Steaks, chicken, vegetable kabobs, fish… You name it, we’ll grill it. Even fruit!   Which Fruits Can You Grill? Most of us have probably had the classics—grilled peaches and pineapple. But just in case you’ve never grilled them yourself or want to try a new...

A couple of weeks ago, we talked about a few different ways you can recycle your empty glass bottles around the house. After all, those of us who love good olive oil and vinegars end up with more than our fair share of pretty glass bottles to figure out what to do with. Here are some cool ideas that fit right in during warm weather.   Summer DIY Crafts We all love summer flowers. And even better are when the flowers in our yard attract those beautiful little flying jewels—hummingbirds. Tiny and busy, gloriously colorful and always hungry, hummingbirds are...

Everyone loves a good DIY project! And for those of us who use a lot of good olive oil, sometimes you find yourself with a selection of pretty empty olive oil or flavored vinegar bottles around the house. You don’t want to throw them away, but what can you do with them instead?  Here are some suggestions!   Dishwashing Liquid A good quality olive oil bottle is typically tinted glass, but keep in mind often a balsamic vinegar bottle is lighter toned or even clear when it’s empty. Pick a bottle in a color you like, fill it with dish...

Olive oil is one of the great timeless foods in the world. It has been highly valued from the earliest recorded civilizations through the modern day. And why not? It’s delicious, healthy, and useful in many areas of life.   Earliest Cultivation and Pressing There is evidence that people collected wild olives as early as the 8th millennium B.C., in Asia Minor and Greece. But the earliest records of cultivated olive groves hail from the hot dry regions of Syria and Iraq. Olive oil was being expressed by about 6,000 B.C. in places like Jericho and Galilee. Rapid expansion of...

Here at Old Town Olive, we’re always looking for new ways to use balsamic vinegars and olive oil. Not only do we believe in our products and want to be able to recommend them to our customers to use in a variety of ways, but we also just plain enjoy experimenting with them here at our shop and getting to taste the results. We recently blogged about shrubs, the flavored vinegar drinks from centuries past. Those things are very tasty and very refreshing! When looking up recipe ideas for shrubs we found another interesting idea—cocktails made with balsamic vinegar or...