Yes, it was accessible to people local to the trees but not nearly for all. Interestingly, the Romans, as well as home-producing, imported a lot of their olive oil from Spain.

Ahh, yes, of course. Love it!

Olive oil has been a major economic force throughout the Mediterranean for millennia. It stores and travels well. Pork lard has been a staple wherever eating pig is not restricted by religion. Pigs are relatively easy and cheap to keep (often semi-feral) and they can be slaughtered whenever necessary. I am half Sicilian. My ancestors used everything including sheep and chicken fat, and different products were more suitable for different dishes and different types of cooking and during different seasons.

Because olive oil is such a huge business. $14 bill a year. Olive trees can bear fruit within 2 years and grow to full height in 15. It’s been 75 years since the 1950s evacuation from country to city and the turn to olive oil for ‘health’.

If you talk to elders, like Karima did in Chewing the Fat, you find that unless they lived in an olive region, they used pig fat.

I am not against olive oil, I use it every day in my kitchen.

The women quoted in Karima’s book who lived on lard – and rarely if ever consumed olive oil – are from all over Italy.

Yes there are some particular areas of the country where olives have been cultivated for a long time but what I am against is the world-wide accepted ‘truth’ that all Italians have been living on olive oil since time began. They haven’t.

Glad you have you here Carole 🙂