nutrient-dense traditions

A dramatic rise in olive oil prices echoes the impact of wild fires on the olive groves of Greece in recent times. It is difficult to imagine the devastation involved when a resource such as olive groves that are hundreds of years old goes up in smoke. Livelihoods, memories, traditions gone in an instant. Can we compare such an experience here in Ireland? I’m remembering the images of the foot and mouth animal pyres in the Cooley peninsula. The trauma of that time is hard to go back to and in truth at the time I did not appreciate the enormity of it.
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Our reliance on olive oil though driven by years of nutrition advice and the benefits of the Mediterranean diet etc., have contributed to us forgetting about our local equivalents. Should we not be able to access olive oil at all being prohibitively expensive or not available what do we do? Use rapeseed oil for salad dressings? Use lard for cooking? Tallow for frying?

What is tallow you say? This is the thing… we need to reacquaint ourselves with the foods we actually have. The nutrient dense and economical version we have on our door step. You might actually be surprised…

Anne Maher