Oliv: A Paradise Island of Taste Bliss

When I go out to visit my parents in Saskatoon, I don't really expect to come across sophisticated tastes in the prairie. There are of course the Saskatoon berry products and my favourite, fresh raspberries from my parents' garden. When I unintentionally found Oliv, the self-identified "premium olive oil experience", I was both delighted and surprised.

They enticed a visiting friend and I in to the store with taste testing and air-conditioning. It was as if we had walked into a large winery. One half of the store consisted of vinegars, everything from the 18 year old aged to the espresso flavoured. The other half was a selection of oils from the light extra virgin to organic to porcini infused. Immediately, I knew they had won me over. The next difficulty lay in exactly which vinegar or oil I would take home with me. They were more than gracious with my continuing requests for samples. My final choice of cinnamon and pear vinegar left me with no regrets, deliciously accompanying both bread and salad.

Their oils reminded me of an experience I had on my honeymoon in Croatia. We had bought olive oil from an olive farmer on the island Dugy Otok, who poured it from a huge cask into an empty plastic coke bottle. Her candour and earthiness felt authentic and her oil tasted like olives, giving me the first taste of what olive oil should be like. If what the founders of Oliv, Awie and Isabeau du Toit, claim on their website is true, their olive oil is "chemically unaltered" and retains the goodness of oil made straight from the vine.

The du Toit's first store opened in Moose Jaw, SK. They have opened subsequent stores in Regina, Saskatoon and Phoenix, Arizona, but have not yet expanded east to my disappointment. The quality of their product would offer a stiff competition to stores already established in Toronto.

In more recent years, my parents' palate has expanded somewhat. If their shifting tastes are mirrored in the greater population of Saskatchewan, Oliv may have the resources to expand their business into a chain of stores across Canada. I wish them all the success and look to them as gastro-leaders in the prairie.

Gender Trap Part 1 - CBC Ideas

This is a refreshing radio program from CBC debunking swell of voices who insist once again on the inate differences between men and women (and of course how women and men are better suited to different societal roles). What's new about this latest affront to gender equality is its supposed grounding in science and therefore its claim to neutrality. CBC lays out the arguments for innate gender differences and against. Yet, overwhelming (at least at the end of part 1) the evidence shows that our young girls and boys may appear to have different neural structures and consequently different abilities, but there's no strong evidence to support that these are biological rather than shaped by the enviroment.

For example, one study, quoted in the program, revealed that mothers talk differently to their little girls than to their little boys. To their girls, they not only used more complex language but also geared their language to expressing emotion. Boys were spoken to in relatively simply phrases that often resembled short commands. Why then would the boys show less verbal ability than girls?

This program should lead to a healthy skeptiscm regarding any findings coming from the natural sciences. When the medical norm is that there are no gender differences, so negative studies won't be published, what's published is the few studies that do show some kind of difference. Any sort of found gender difference in a data set is also an opportunity to publish another article. Publish or perish. The social demands of the science community influence the type of results that make it to the public realm. In contrast to the natural sciences, social psychology studies increasingly show that gender is reinforced by expectation. Our gendered identity is perhaps intrapolated by society more than we care to admit.

 These are just some gems from a solid program at a particularly parched moment for the fields of feminism.

It would be helpful to any feminist to remember that the great institutions we have built to enrich the knowledge of ourselves such as the natural sciences consist also of people. Why are there less women in politics? Why do women consistently earn less than men? We may not choose to stay at home and take care of kids because we are biologically programmed to do so, but rather because we do not have the social support. All women need a man with us like Margaret Thatcher's husband. It is they who will love us enough to see us stand at the full height of our ability. We will all be richer for it.