Olive you

This morning in line at the grocery store, I overhead a little boy telling his mom how much he loved M&M candies.  "I love the peanut ones just as much as the plain ones," he gushed. As he said that, I thought back to the "I went nuts in Plains, GA" t-shirts from the 8th grade South Georgia trip, and I thought about how happy I am to be from a place that produces peanuts. What an awesome product.

Every region has its own unique products (kind of like the souvenirs), and in Spain, the hands down most popular product is olive oil. The Spaniards are obsessed. An essential component of the Mediterranean diet, olive oil is used in virtually everything edible here. Spain is the world's largest olive oil producer, and the olive trees that fill the countryside explain why.

Even though it is high calorie, olive oil its low saturated fat content makes it extremely healthy. It's full of omega-3's (my favorite), which have been observed to have an insane amount of health benefits. I'm a huge fan of the prevalence of olive oil in the diet. One of my absolute favorite dishes Mercedes has made is called veduras al horno (vegetables of oven). She just lines up a mixture of vegetables in a pan, pours olive oil on them, and sticks them in the oven. The result is actually amazing.

Olive oil is sold in 5-liter jugs. My madre has one in the kitchen, and we have to replenish that more often than the milk.

Though I'm still partial to peanuts, olive oil is a crucial part of the Spanish diet and culture which isn't so bad itself.