Cloud 9 Olive Oil will be featured at:

Family Farm Feast, May 11th, 11am - 4pm, Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve, 550 Palm Avenue, Morgan Hill, California.

Come join us for a fun, outdoor festival featuring specialties from multicultural cuisines - with a focus on healthy dishes with fresh ingredients from local farms and food producers - celebrating Buy Fresh Buy Local!   

Look for Cloud 9 Olive Oil at Birk’s Restaurant.
This event will showcase top Bay Area chefs and restaurants including Birk’s Restaurant, Odeum of Morgan Hill, Flea Street Café, Laura Stec – Innovative Cuisine, Mission City Creamery, Rock Bottom Brewery, The Table, Zona Rosa, Barefoot Coffeet, Café 152 Berger Co., Columbia Gorge Oraganic and More!

There will be food demo, gourmet food to purchase, music, guided hikes and games galore.

Activities will include onsite ice cream making, a session on how to prepare an enticing and healthy brown bag lunch, interactive children's activities such as building irrigation models for agriculture, and interpretive hikes. Scheduled family-friendly entertainers include award-winning singer/songwriter Andy-Z, multi-cultural storyteller Olga Loya, Phil Cornish Bluegrass Band, and many more!

This has nothing to do with olive oil, but the recent rains this spring triggered some nice foggy landscapes, while the trees are sprouting and the birds are calling. Here's for all of us to enjoy.

Many Food blogs and magazines have reported the benefits of olive oil.
  
Now this one is more serious, or credible - straight from The New England Journal of Medicine :

"In conclusion, in this primary prevention trial, we observed that an energy-unrestricted Mediterranean diet, supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts, resulted in a substantial reduction in the risk of major cardiovascular events among high-risk persons. The results support the benefits of the Mediterranean diet for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease."

Translate: "energy-unrestricted" --> "eat as much as you want""substantial reduction in the risk of major cardiovascular events among high-risk persons" --> "less heart attack if you're at risk".

Well maybe do not eat as much as you want, but basically, olive oil and nuts are good for you.

If you are scientifically inclined, the whole paper is at: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303#t=articleMethods

check the Time Health and Family page: http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/25/its-the-olive-oil-mediterranean-diet-lowers-risk-of-heart-attack-and-stroke/

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Eating a Mediterranean diet high in extra-virgin olive oil has health benefits, a study suggests
• A Mediterranean diet high in nuts can also boost heart health
• Study participants showed fewer heart problems and lower deaths from heart disease

(TIME.com) -- The Mediterranean diet is a well-known weapon in the fight against heart disease, but exactly how effective is it?
To find out, researchers led by Dr. Ramón Estruch, from the Department of Internal Medicine at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, put the Mediterranean diet to the test against a low-fat diet.
They followed participants to track rates of heart attack, stroke and heart-disease-related death. After nearly five years, the results were so striking for one group that the study was stopped early, according to research published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.
The group that showed the least heart problems and lowest rate of heart disease deaths? Those who ate a Mediterranean diet high in extra-virgin olive oil. Coming in at a close second were participants who ate a Mediterranean diet high in nuts.

We are slowly appreciating good olive oil! The US consumption increased by 9%, reports the Olive Oil Times at http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/olive-oil-business/united-states-olive-oil-consumption-higher/32283 while our internal production is growing and our imports falling. Buy, eat local!

Interesting research, olive oil is better than most oils even for deep frying. See the Olive Oil Times at http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/olive-oil-business/europe/olive-oil-healthier-and-tastier-for-frying/32328 

Green is the color. Strong, fresh, new oil has arrived. We have split our olives in 3 groups and will produce French, Spanish and Italian olio nuovo.

This is new fresh olive oil you can’t get every day, we make it once a year.

Olio Nuovo heralds the new olive oil season.  Beginning in mid-November Cloud 9 Orchard will harvest our olives and will extract and bottle Olio Nuovo immediately for our customers.  This year we will have fruits from all our Italian, Spanish and French variety trees and we will be offering -

Olio Nuovo - Italian varietal
Olio Nuovo – Spanish Varietal
Olio Nuovo – French Varietal

If you are doing your Christmas shopping now, Olio Nuovo makes great gifts for the holiday season.  This is what olive oil aficionados wait for all year!

Why is Cloud 9 Olio Nuovo such a great thing?
Cloud 9 Olio Nuovo is the freshest possible extra virgin olive oil you can find. 
Cloud 9 Olio Nuovo is the healthiest extra virgin olive oil. Because of its freshness it delivers a higher level of polyphenols – the chemical substances found in plants that helps reduce the risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

What does it taste like?
The taste of Olio Nuovo is intense and bursting with freshness. There’s nothing like it. The flavor profile is different with each the Italian, French and Spanish Olio Nuovo.  Whatever the taste, it will be stunning, bold and invigorating. The color will be much more intense than its later self.

Unlike other oils, Olio Nuovo is not decanted/filtered. Hold the bottle up to light you and you will see the fruit particles and sediment which arguably is better for you.  But because of this, Olio Nuovo must be consumed by early March.  Otherwise those fruit particles will begin to ferment and will change the taste and quality of the oil.

How to use Olio Nuovo?  
I would make a habit of drinking a teaspoon every morning in your orange juice or eat it with your cereal, oat meal or scramble eggs.  Feel it magically lubricate your health! Sparingly massage Olio Nuovo onto your skin and feel your skin becomes rejuvenated.

Use Cloud 9 Olio Nuovo as you would with regular Extra Virgin Olive Oil….tossed with hot pasta and some salt and pepper.  Same with quinoa, couscous, rice and beans.  Add other cooked or cured meats and vegetables to make it your signature dish. Taste the explosion of flavors!  It’s also great drizzled over soups, brushetta and roasted vegetables and, of course, simply as a dipping.  

Remember our Olio Nuovo is different from Olio Nuovo shipped from Europe. Ours hasn’t been sitting on a ship for four to six weeks.

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to thank all our friends who came to help us harvest and for the beautiful olives we got this year! 
Luckily we had little rain before or during the harvest and we could pick largely as planned.

As the weather turns, with cooler nights and days that are still warm, the olives are slowly turning black. The harvest is a few weeks away.