Girl+Fire Turns 2 with the Annual Top 5

A few weeks ago, I was laid up in bed. I didn't cook, I didn't eat, I didn't leave my house. All I could do was sip my codeine-laden cough syrup and sleep.

At some point, while I was in a sleepy haze, Girl+Fire turned two. My little blog here has been around for 2 orange-tinged years! I'm about 12 days late on the celebration, but that's how long I was stuck in bed, so it evens out.

It's math. You can't argue.

And so to continue the tradition we began with last year's celebration, here are the top 5 memorable moments of the year:

5. Discovering the ripe freshness of extra virgin olive oil. Unfortunately CalTech wasn't able to hold their harvest this year due to lack of olives, so once I used up the contents of this very pretty bottle, there was no more to be had. Hopefully we'll procure more later this year!

4. Food Swaps and the introduction to the delicious Surly Temple. There's nothing like revisiting a childhood favorite with a dash of alcohol.

3. Turning a food fail into an exquisite spicy sweet sauce.

2. And then putting it on pizza. (How does pizza end up on the list every year?)

1. But the best possible experience from this past year was visiting Costa Rica and eating with the Murillo family. Nothing can even compare. ¡Pura vida!

So what will year 3 bring? Who knows! Thank you all for reading along. I might be getting a hang of this cooking thing.

Finally.

And now that I'm back up and out of bed, I can thankfully start cooking again. Yay!

CalTech Olive Oil

Last fall, my nephew, mom, and I went a-pickin' at the Caltech Olive Harvest. It was fun. There was escargot.

About a month later, we got the word that the olive oil was in stock. $13 for an 8-ounce bottle! But I'd done the labor, and was curious enough so I bought two bottles (gifted one to my parents, since mom had done the laboring too).

We opened the bottle immediately upon arriving home and wow, was I surprised. You could say I'm an olive oil novice—I'd never had something so fresh and olive-y! It tasted exactly like...green olives. Yes I could almost literally taste the greeness. It was a bit much.

Because it's only 8 ounces and has such a strong flavor, I've been hesitant to use it to cook with. But I decided to fool with the Foodista Olive Muffins this weekend, and ran out of the "regular" olive oil in the pantry, so I had to use some of my super green oil. The muffins were a bit of a disaster. They were too dry, like scones. But when dipped in the olive oil, mmm. Goodness.

Once I perfect the muffins, I'll post the recipe. Till then, I have to figure out other ways to use this oil. The Fire is open to suggestions!

The Caltech Olive Harvest

Olives  have a long history. They've been around since just after the dinosaurs died en masse. They probably would have liked olives, had they stuck around. Because olives are delicious.

Caltech in Pasadena, CA is home to an urban (suburban?) olive cache and in recent years they've taken to harvesting them and making olive oil. It turns out this annual event is family friendly and earns participants t-shirts and escargot tastings, so my mom and I took my nephew Alex out for an afternoon of olive pickin' fun.

Upon arrival, we were greeted by huge ladders and cherry pickers, though most teams of students and random attendees seemed to enjoy attacking the trees with rakes and raining olives on their teammates below.

Alex gleefully jumped in to help one team collect the fallen fruits. He refused to give me a good shot of his happy, smiling face, but he did attack the olives like they were candy falling out of a piñata. Clearly the last three years of birthday parties were good training!

There were also huge trays of cured olives ready for eating. The feta cheese was delicious! Look at those huge bricks! (No, I didn't steal one, despite my addiction-level love of cheese.) Oh, and the infused oils! They were set out for a blind tasting but I have no idea

what they were infused with, only that they all tasted more like olives than anything. The one in the green ramekin was the darkest of the offerings, and it was the one I liked best. I shamelessly ate about 10 pieces of bread dipped in just that. (Yes, I risked bread poisoning for it. Totally worth it.)

But the true highlight was the escargot being cooked onsite. I know they're an acquired taste for some, but I LOVE them. I tried to convince my mom they taste like mushrooms and, like a good sport, she ate one, but she's not a fan.

I'm still wondering why I didn't bother getting a can. Duh.

As it turns out, the patience of three-year-old being dragged around a college campus is nearly nonexistent, so we only "harvested" for about an hour. I do have to give Alex credit for not complaining much. He did keep repeating his fervent desire for chocolate ice cream, but after his hard work, he earned it. He's such a good kid. Many thanks to his parents for letting me borrow him for an afternoon!

I can't wait to taste the olive oil when it goes on sale next month. And I'm looking forward to going to the harvest again next year. This time, though, I'm totally snagging one of those cans of escargot!