Weekend olive links

As it happens, having some useless facts up in one's sleeve can sometimes come in really handy. Given the nature of this blog, the topic of said useless facts will of course be olive oil.

I suppose a general read from the most beloved fast-food of facts should be a good place to start: Olives article on Wikipedia

I also happen to be a mythology junkie, so I suggest you take a look at  this myth about the olive tree (there's also an audio file for the really lazy)

And, I guess this should be appropriate, what is exactly extra virgin olive oil?  (maybe not that useless...)
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For the less inclined to chemistry and long explanations, the extra vergine is obtained by cold pressing freshly picked olives. That's it.
The free fatty acids number (which should be below 0,8%) is basically an indicator of how much care was taken for the fruit and its transformation into oil. The other marker in use, the peroxide number, tells you how "rusty" the fats are. Here too, the lower the number, the better the oil. A broader explanation on olive oil chemistry here.
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Or, if the weather serves you well, you may rather want to go out and enjoy yourselves and keep those links for a boring rainy/working day.