Olive oil
Olive harvest (From the British Museum, London)
Olive trees were, to the Greeks, the symbol of civilization. Everybody had to have fat in their diet somehow, but barbarians (people who weren't Greek) got their fat from animal products like milk and cheese and meat. The Greeks thought it was gross to drink milk, and they ate only a little cheese and very little meat. They got their fat mainly from olives, or, because olives don't keep very well, from olive oil.
Olive trees take forever to grow. If you plant an
olive seedling, and take good care of it, twenty years later you will
begin to get olives from the tree. People who plant olive trees are
really going to take care of them their whole lives so that their
kids will have olives when they
grow up.
Because of this, people who move around a lot, like nomads,
don't use olive oil much.
To find out more about olive oil, check out these books from Amazon.com or your library:
Olive Trees Inside and Out, by Andrew Hipp (2004). For kids.
Olive Oil - From Tree to Table, by Peggy Knickerbocker, Laurie Smith (1997). With beautiful photographs, and recipes.
Olives
: The Life and Lore of a Noble Fruit, by Mort Rosenblum (1998).
Mainly about olive growing in France, this still has a lot of information
about olives in general, and it's entertaining to read, too.
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Wheat
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