[Photograph: nudo-italia.com] One of the best gifts I've probably ever given a friend was adopting a manatee in her name through the Save the Manatee Club. She received an actual photo of Brutus, her new sea cow bundle of joy, his bio, and a super official certificate. [Ed. note: this was very much inspired by manatee enthusiast Robyn.] Our weekend giveaway has nothing to do with manatees but it's another neat opportunity to support an adoptive cause. Nudo is a family-run co-operative of olive groves around a small hilltop village in the Marche region of Italy. Through this one-year adoption ($150), you get to follow the progress of your own tree—the olive variety is up to you—and of course...
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guardian.co.ukSo you might have cleared space on your balcony for a container garden, or even planted a little plot in your backyard. Still, you may not have the time, space, or expertise to branch out--say, with a peach tree, or an olive tree, or even a few pigs. But if you want a farm harvest without the farm, consider adoption. At the Masumoto Family Farm near Fresno, California--at times a supplier to Blue Hill, Per Se, and Chez Panisse--Elberta peach trees are available for "adoption." Each winter, prospective owners apply to own a peach tree; the Masumotos take care of planting, pruning, and raising your baby. Then at midsummer harvest, adopters come out to the farm to pick the trees...
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Editor's Note: Every morning in October, we'll have something to put you in the Halloween mood! It's not hard to find Halloween snacks to impress kids, but finding something classy and creepy enough for adults can be a bit more difficult. That’s why the Eyeball Caprese makes the perfect appetizer for any Halloween party. It’s a simple twist on a classic insalata caprese, and it looks fantastic. The key ingredient here is the Castelvetrano olives, an Italian specialty that has the perfect shade of bright green skin—as Evil Mad Scientist notes: "You can of course use other types of green olives, but they probably won't look quite as alive." If you're wondering how to make the pupil shape precise, the...
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Photograph by roboppy on Flickr. Aggressive olive farming techniques for cheap, mass-produced olive oil now means extreme water shortages in Italy, Greece, Spain, and Portugal. Farms that produce the low-priced oils are driving out the small olive farmers who produce the quality goods—and are also leading to other "serious environmental problems" such as soil erosion. Inappropriate weed-control and soil control, combined with the inherently high risk of erosion in many olive-farming areas, is leading to desertification on a wide scale in some of the main producing regions. If these irresponsible farming methods continue, we might be demanding for butter instead of olive oil at our favorite restaurants....
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Add enough sugar to
anything and you’ve made candy, right? Now try that trick with
olives.
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At Caltech's recent Olive Oil Festival volunteers picked olives from the campus's 130 olive trees, most of which were sent to the Santa Barbara Olive Company for pressing. The remaining olives were crushed on campus using a human-powered device invented by Ricky Jones and Dvin Adalian, the students who garnered attention for pressing oil from the school's olives last year. Tableau Vivante took photos of the festival, including the crushing machine, accompanying olive-centric dinner, and freshly picked olives. Check out more photos in the accompanying flickr set. [via Tastespotting]...
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