KITCHEN GOLD
Making your own
il o e v i ol TEXT Madison Moulton
G
ood olive oil is a precious commodity – it can instantly elevate the taste of any dish and transport you to the rolling olive fields of Mediterranean Europe. As South Africans know, this comes at a price – and usually a high one at that. To make matters worse, many of the products labelled ‘extra-virgin’ we pay so much for are actually mixes containing refined olive oil or other cheaper oils, which can take away the health and taste benefits of the real thing. What would it take to bypass this processing and cheating and supply yourself with a lifetime of homemade olive oil? As it turns out, not all that much. Let’s crunch the numbers. Imagine you’re living in Greece, the country with the highest per capita consumption of olive oil in the world. According to statistics, Greeks consume an average of 20l of olive oil per person per year. A not-so-close second is Spain, at around 14l per person. These averages are likely far higher than any South African household, but it’s always best to work with worst case scenarios. Now, how many olives does a single tree produce? On average, one mature olive tree will produce between 15 and 20kg of olives per season. This
34 I www.growtoeat.co.za
