Sharri Whiting, a feature writer for Luxury Travel Advisor, who every November can be found up in an olive tree filling her basket with fruit, has taken her first-hand knowledge of growing, harvesting and pressing olives in Umbria, Italy, and written the definitive app on olive oil for foodies and culinary tourists: OLIVE OIL IQ.
Olive Oil IQ not only tells the historic tales of the olive trade in the Mediterranean, from the Phoenicians to modern-day producers, it offers tips on choosing, buying, tasting, and using Extra Virgin olive oil to its best advantage.
The app includes recipes and cooking tips, conversational tidbits (olive oil and sex, olive oil and superstitions), and everything a culinary pilgrim needs to know to travel Italy’s Olive Oil Routes, from producers to farm holidays in agriturismi to cooking classes to museums. Italy’s oil production is tied to high quality extra-virgin oils, so it’s the perfect place to begin to explore the Mediterranean olive oil culture.
Other entries in Olive Oil IQ include how oil is categorized and labeled, tips on using olive trees for landscaping, how to avoid fraudulently labeled oils, how to set up an oil tasting and how to judge the oils you taste, spa and beauty treatments and olive oil-based products, olive oil’s healing powers, what happens to the leaves and cuttings, religion and olive oil, health and olive oil, olive oil in myth and legend, sports, how to transport and store oil, olives in art and literature, and more.
There are 450 photos. The app was published for iPhone and iPad by Sutro Media.
Sharri Whiting writes about Italy for Luxury Travel Advisor magazine, Food Arts, the Italian Notes blog, and her own blog about life in Umbria, umbriabella.blogspot.com. She lectures with her husband, Piero De Masi, about Mediterranean life and culture on international cruises. Sharri co-directed the Simmons College (Boston) summer graduate course in Italy for six years, wrote Top Ten Guide to Rome (The Internationalist, Boston, 2000), and is researching the notable Americans buried in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome over the last two hundred years. Her book, Culture Smart! Namibia (Kuperard, London; Random House, New York, 2008) reflects her interest and experience in southern Africa, where olive oil is an emerging industry. She is a member of the Author’s Guild (www.sharriwhiting.com).
There are limited number of free codes for travel professionals and journalists. For a code to download a review copy of Olive Oil IQ, please contact [email protected].