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Recently this new brand of olive oil showed up at my local Super Target store. It’s less expensive thant some of the other high quality olive oils, about $10 a bottle (others are $14 to $18) and it tastes wonderful. It’s Australian, which is obviously not Italian, but it has a similar bright and fresh taste and obviously cooks just the same. So far I would say it is similar in every way to any of other commonly available olive oils I have found and since it is a bit less expensive and comes as either a mellow flavor or fruity flavor (I prefer the fruity flavor, meaning more olive flavor, not Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit flavor) I’m sticking with this stuff for now. Best part, you can go to their site to join their tasting club and they’ll send you a fancy oilive oil tasting glass. Wicked cool.

Along with this great olive oil, of course I have to have some balsamic vinegar. I have a new favorite there as well. Basically balsamic vinegar gets better with age and concentration, so this being a 20 year vinegar means it is better than the 1-3 year stuff you find for a couple bucks a bottle most places. The best part is that it really does taste better but it doesn’t cost a lot more like some other aged vinegars. I’ve tried a couple 15 year and 30 year vinegars that I didn’t like as much so this is a nice balance of price and quality. It is from Super Target as well. It’s expensive enough to use only in things like salads or other applications where you will taste the vinegar itself as opposed to use in recipes where it will be cooked or reduced down anyway (which can improve the flavor of most vinegars regardless their age).

Pretty much every night I make a nice, big salad of leaf lettuces and tomato with a dressing of these two ingredients plus a little fresh ground black pepper. I’ve tried at least 20 to 30 other bottled dressings and I keep coming back to this simple combination.