(261) Liquid gold

I saw a program on Astro about the Italian economy. In the program they touched on the test marketing of extra virgin olive oil in Beijing.

I had a neighbor in Silver City whose cousin's year end bonus in 2000 was a cool million dollars. Of course the lady concerned lives in a mansion in a gated and guarded area with tight security. Of interest to me, the wealthy lady only uses olive oil in her kitchen. She bought different grade oil for different purposes: extra virgin for salads and ordinary olive oil for light frying.

After listening to that, I actually went to the supermarket and checked on the prices of those bottles. What I found out was that none of the different brands of liquid gold was less than two times the price of the normal cooking oil I use. And I want to point out that I am using mid range vegetable based oil. At the end I did buy one small bottle to find out why folks would pay so much for it. Among the many purposes I used it for, it was quite good as salad oil and in cooking pasta sauce. That was the last time you find olive oil in my kitchen. It is not because I don't like it, I simply feel that in order to pay for that as a daily staple, I am not willing to trim my budget to fit it in.