Dates Warmed in Olive Oil with Sea Salt

I'm participating in the Whole Life Challenge and because I chose the advanced nutrition rules, my occasional dark chocolate for dessert is out.  But dates are a wonderful, wholesome, sweet snack and can make a delightful dessert.

A co-worker mentioned that he ate this at a Seattle restaurant and he and his wife made them when they were on a Whole 30 challenge.  I had a 2 pound box of dates from Costco and a sampler of Oregon Olive Mill oil, so I decided to make them myself.  Its not hard, only takes a few minutes and really showcases the ingredients. For this recipe, use the best quality oil and salt that you have, it will really make everything pop.

Oregon Olive Mill grows olives in the Willamette Valley on a fourth generation farm.  They harvest their own olives and them mill them in their own mill.  They have 13,000 trees that grow 3 varieties of olives making a top quality extra virgin olive oil.  Each variety yields an oil with a different taste, mouth feel and importantly, an after taste.   For this recipe, I used the Tuscan Extra Virgin Olive oil, because it had the most robust taste.

I used San Juan Island Sea Salt, a local Pacific North-West manufacturer of sea salt from our very own Salish Sea.  I got a sample of this salt at the International Food Blogger's Conference and it is a favorite of mine.   The salt has a brighter, crisper flavor than the french sea salts and is in much finer crystals than the Tibetan pink salt.  When I'm finishing something and want to taste the salt, this is the one I use.

I think that having a tasting party of olive oils, salts, wine, whisky or chocolate would be a pretty cool thing to do. Not all at once, but maybe a series of parties. Hmm, ideas...

Dates Warmed in Olive Oil with Sea Salt
less than 10 minutes

Ingredients

1-1/2 Tablespoon of your best olive oil
3 - 4 dates, pitted
Sea salt, fine grained, best quality

1. Warm the olive oil in a small pan, over medium heat. You don't want the oil to get warm like you'd cook meat with it, but just warm.
2. Put the pitted dates in the olive oil and gently roll them in the olive oil.  Do this until the dates are warmed through, 3 or 4 minutes.
3. Once the dates are warmed, put them on a plate and give them a generous sprinkle of sea salt.
4. Serve and enjoy!

Disclaimer: Other than the sampler of the Oregon Mill Olive Oil, I was not compensated for this post. The opinion and recipe are my own.  And if I wasn't paleo, I'd be dipping bread in this oil and just eating it that way. It's that good.

Cooking with swag

Having recently attended the 2013 International Food Blogger's Conference, we came home with a great deal of swag, particularly small sized samples of gourmet and healthy food.  You might have seen Heather's picture of our counter.  Being local, which meant we drove home each night, many companies would push us to take their extras. And we sure did, didn't we?


Last weekend, with the onset of fall in the Pacific Northwest, I decided to make Pumpkin Spice Almond Butter Muffins, which I saw posted on Hybrid Athlete.  Not only were the muffins paleo and had fall flavors, the recipe called for ingredients which I had received as swag at the conference.

The honey, vanilla and cinnamon were all conference swag.

Manuka Doctor Honey - Manuka honey from New Zealand with supposed health benefits.  But what is really awesome about it is the flavor and consistency.  It's thick, not like runny corn syrup honey with a nice floral taste.  While I've cooked with it some, I've probably eaten just as much straight from a spoon.

Lagrima Vanilla - Lagrima Vanilla is a local, boutique vanilla producer. The vanilla is smooth, without that bite that comes from most commercial vanilla. They use Ugandan beans and manufacture just a few cities north of me. I hope to check out their production facility someday and share that adventure on my blog.

Yen Bai Cinnamon - Sahale Snacks has scoured the earth and found the best tasting cinnamon in the forests of Viet Nam.  It has a much brighter flavor than other cinnamons I've tasted, with spicy bite more like red hots.

The muffins were a nice treat to welcome fall. My kids snatched up four before I even had a chance to eat any. Luckily, I was able to save some for my breakfasts at work - the idea was to make breakfast for the week, but alas, after my kids, there were only enough for two breakfasts (with some nice leftover frittata).

Using a few tips I got during the food photography sessions with Andrew Scrivani (just go watch his blog for a few minutes), I took this picture for your enjoyment!


Eat clean and stay fit!

International Food Blogger's Conference 2013

Later this month, I'm going to take a day off from work. Yep, a vacation day. I've been looking forward to this one for a while. The third weekend of September, Seattle is hosting the International Food Blogger's Conference. It's going to be three days of tasting, learning blog techniques and meeting other foodies!


The breakout sessions look to be pretty interesting.  I'm particularly looking forward to several of them. 

As my family has made the transition to living Paleo and eating clean, I've been taking many food photos on Instagram. I've been working on my food presentation because food that looks good tastes better.  Andrew Scrivani, from the New York Times, will be giving a food photography presentation. It looks to be pretty interesting and many people on the internet are excited about it too!

I'm a geek and a geek that likes to cook.  I've read about Sous Vide and how you can make a DIY sous vide cooker.  Combining science (and geeky science) with cooking is just awesome.  Scott Heimedinger is going to lead a breakout session on "everything you've ever wanted to know about cooking sous vide at home."  His title is Director of Applied Research at Modernist Cuisine, how cool is that? I'm hoping to learn a lot about this technique (and maybe hoping for some really cool swag like a sous vide machine).

I blog to keep my writing skills up, which does pay off.  But there will be a few breakout sessions on how to make your blog more effective and make a bigger impact.  I'm a fan of continual learning and self-improvement, so these sessions have made my list.  And when the presentation is made by a writer for the New York Times, I'm sure I can learn a thing or two (or three or four).

Through out all this, I'm looking forward to eating samples from interacting with brands I already know and love like Dry Soda, LaraBar, Chipotle and Bob's Red Mill.  It'll be neat to learn about Northern Divine, a caviar producer in British Columbia!

We're going to get to taste some of the great local Seattle food scene with tastings and even a dinner with a sampling menu from some excellent Seattle restaurants.  Send me to Cupcake Royale for dinner, please!

I hope I didn't make you drool on your keyboard, but you've got to agree, it looks like its going to be a fun few days.

If you're going to be at IFBC, let me know in the comments, maybe follow me on Twitter or add me to your IFBC list. I've got my IFBC list and I'd be happy to add you to it! I look forward to meeting other bloggers who love food like I do!