I have impulses for olive oil that resemble those of love. I consume it in such gargantuan proportions that even my designated dealer was concerned. It’s my own alcohol. It has been running through my veins since my early childhood, when my mother put it in my first bottles. From then on, our roads have never left each other. I use it so often that a one liter bottle barely lasts more than a month, so I order whole cans of it.
It’s childhood that speaks in me. When you were raised by a mother and a grandmother who were both born on the other side of the Mediterranean, in this Tunisia bathed in sun and light, olive oil is like wine for the first communicant: a necessity, an obligation, an obvious fact, an everyday imperative. Not a dish has been served to me without having received its anointing, not a sweet whose preparation has not incorporated it into its recipe.
Sometimes I even wonder if the placenta I was stuck in for nine months didn’t have traces of it. Subsequently, when I came into the world, I witnessed scenes of such violence that they marked me forever: an egg brick plunged into a pot teeming with olive oil, a spinach fricassee so full of its presence that its color took on the colors of ebony, pastries so coated in its liquor that their calorie content would have been enough to feed an entire city. This is how my childhood passed, between two bottles of olive oil planted like sentinels in the kitchen.
Even today, I still have the after-effects. Any food that finds its way onto my plate has previously received his blessing. Pasta, salads, legumes, fish, vegetables, whether raw or cooked, all are soaked in its gold. Even in savory or sweet cakes, each of which contains a significant portion. It’s quite simple, apart from coffee, I don’t see anything falling into my stomach without being provided with it.
I like its variation of colors, its golden yellow which can tend towards dark green, its shades sometimes brown, often golden, its light or dark glimpses, its sweet side where the sun seems to be reflected like in a mirror. It is the song of the earth which is reborn in the light, the tender glow of twilight when the memories of the past day mingle, these perfumes of the Orient into which the soul sinks as in a palace of the thousand and one nights.
Through olive oil, I achieve immortality. A little more and I’ll take some directly intravenously.
I can’t describe these flavors well. My palate is somewhat blind, but I nevertheless recognize its subtleties, the detours, the finesse. Its intimate scent is like an invitation to close your eyes more closely to feel deep within yourself this call of hot countries, of life passing in slow motion. The poetry of olive oil is that of the earth and the sea mixed together, of the copper of the sun immersed in the azure of the sky, of this alliance between the nourishing soil and its trees planted there, as short as they are robust and whose gnarled branches recall the reunion between the light of life and the work of nature.
Obviously, being somewhat anxious by nature, when I discover the infinite list of its benefits, I experience a childlike joy. I feel myself becoming invincible, on my way to eternity. Ah ah, I say to myself, but with the quantity that I absorb, if I do not become at least a hundred years old, it is beyond understanding. My arteries, by force, must be made of steel. No way my heart will fail me. What cancer will be able to find a fault in a body thus nourished with this perfect oil? None, absolutely none.
Through olive oil, I achieve immortality. A little more and I’ll take some directly intravenously. I don’t use any others. Sunflower, rapeseed, peanut, I don’t want to know anything about you. Sometimes a little walnut oil, but not too much either. My loyalty is second to none. I believe that I devote a cult to him, a sort of adoration which is of the order of mysticism. I could follow his orders. Honor her and serve her, as in the past, of the ancient divinities.
Cholesterol doesn’t scare me. If I were to die from too much olive oil, I would be the happiest man. Needless to say, I choose it with particular, almost maniacal care. I want it pure, organic, extra virgin, cold pressed, with a noble extraction. My entire budget goes there. It takes what it takes. What I don’t spend on alcohol (its consumption has been forbidden to me since a little health problem), I invest in bottles of olive oil with a strong reputation and a fairly high price.
No matter how drunk you are, as long as you have the right can of olive oil!
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