Food Goes In Mouth

I really hate going three weeks without posting. With busy times come more fast-food mouth stuffing. As photogenic as the crunch-wrap from Taco Bell wants to be, I just don’t think it would make a good post. The good news is I’ll be able to return to my usual pace of cooking once I’m done making a few thingamajiggers for some crazy fruit company we sometimes call Client.

Since the cooking has been sparse I really want to highlight a couple of special food related gifts I received for Christmas. The first is a set of products from the Lucero Olive Oil company pictured above. From left to right you’ll see a bottle of balsamic vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil, and…a mystery blob which, you will have to trust me, is just an unlabeled bottle.

The balsamic vinegar isn’t produced by the Luceros, because apparently that kind of thing takes a little time. However, it is imported from a high quality Modena source.

The olive oil is their Ascolano variety. Not to be confused with Olive Ascolane, the Ascolano variety of olive tree grows well in the area around my hometown.

Whats with the mystery bottle? My good friends would probably say, “Oh no, it’s some kind of insane olive fermented 150 proof super-booze.” And that would be awesome, but I guess the next best thing would be flavored balsamic vinegar, black cherry balsamic to be exact. When my folks picked this up they hadn’t even gotten to labeling yet.

Oh, how does it all taste? Amazing. Yep, that’s the extent of my review skills but let’s see if I can’t add a little literary fluff. I read through the Lucero website before opening the bottles and they describe the Ascolano as being, “amazingly fruity flavored.” Surrounded by Central California wine country, I’m used to seeing this kind of thing in marketing literature or reviews. “Mild fruity notes with a hint of leather and jasmine on the back of the tongue” or something completely ridiculous. But they weren’t lying. I’m no olive oil conniseur but the second I took in the aroma I started questioning whether it was slightly infused with fruit. Tasting it left me with the same impression, but with the a disinct accompanying flavor of good olive.

While the flavors are wonderful, it really isn’t the most surprising thing to me about these products. See, Linda was my 6th grade teacher. And Russ, I don’t even know how many years we went to school together before graduating High School, wherein I would school him on the golf course (hahahaha I really do hope he reads this). Dewey and Katie are Cal Poly SLO grads. They were winding up the tail end of their years here when I was just starting.

After more than 10 years of knowing the Lucero family I just now learn that they’re producing top notch olive oil?! Holy crap, where have I been?

Thanks for making something tasty guys. (And of course :D thanks again Mom & Dad for the gift)