443: Olive Odyssey

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. These olive trees that we harvest with our farmers have been passed down through generations. This is, you know, they're great, great grandparents' olive trees. So imagine taking care of an olive tree that your great grandfather has given to you. This is Taste. I'm your host, Eliza Barbanel.

0:59Olive Odyssey is a Palestinian olive oil collective working to build demand, supply chains, and economic power for Palestinian farmers since 2022. Today, co-founder Aya Faor is on the show to share how Olive Odyssey is working to build collective power and partnering with groups like Rose Los Angeles to create special food collab products funding aid in Gaza.

1:29Aya Faur, this is Taste. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm such an admirer of Olive Odyssey and the work that you do. And I'm wondering if to start today, you could just give a little bit of context for everyone who's listening about what Olive Odyssey is and what inspired you to start the brand. Olive Odyssey is a Palestinian brand. It's an olive oil collective. We sell Palestinian olive oil from all over Palestine to the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the U.K., mostly. And when did you start the brand? So basically, the idea of O started in October of 2022 during harvest season.

2:12It's a funny story, but here in Palestine, during harvest season, you go visit family and friends, and everybody shows you their olive oil, they bring it to you, you have to try it. And everybody thinks their olive oil is the best olive oil. It's like this secret friendly competition. So everybody tells you, this is my olive oil, it's from this area, from this village, this farmer or our land. And seeing all of this every year in 2022, we decided that we should open a brand that does exactly that. you know tell bring different olive oil tell the story of the farmers of the villages and it is exactly what we did yeah and i'd love to hear a little bit about what the process was like of bringing together all of these farmers i know that like olive odyssey you call it a collective because you are getting olives from different farmers all over palestine and then kind of blending them together to make the product how did you go about finding these farmers in the first place?

3:17Kind of everybody knows everyone or knows someone of this family and this family. So we kind of went to villages and asked who has the best olive oil or and we started meeting a lot of farmers trying a lot of olive oil. Palestine is a small place after all. So this is how we've met The people, some of the people are very famous for their olive oil as well. So it was easy to find in some other areas, smaller villages. It was harder to get there, still hard to get there to this day. But the thing is, we really wanted to work with as many farmers as we can. And in Palestine, we are divided in a couple of areas, one being 48, which is where I am, and then the West Bank and Ghazi.

4:19And then we kind of wanted to connect all of the people from all of these different areas and include the Palestinians in the diaspora. So this was our goal and aim when we founded Al-Varisi. So we have farmers from 48 and from the West Bank. We couldn't get farmers from Ghazi back then because we can't enter Ghazi and nothing can come out of Ghazi. So we had a team making content for us in Ghazi. And also a team, we worked with content creators in the diaspora in the UK to make us content as well. And this way we had palestines from all over. Also the farmers, we work with each farmer in a different way.

5:09So for some of the farmers, we buy the olive oil from them. But other farmers, we help them with the harvest because they're in villages where they're not allowed to harvest. so we i'm speaking about myself because i am from 48 which i have a little bit more privilege than any other palestinians because i can go into the west bank people from the west bank can't come to 48 so we collect people from 48 and we help harvest the olive the olives we help transport it for some other farmers we help with pressing it so whatever the farmer needs we do so for each farmer, it's a different story. This year was particularly hard.

5:57Yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit more about how you have been operating this year. Obviously, there is so much destruction and devastation and so many difficulties for access, even more than it would normally have been. I think you must be selling olive oil from the 2023 harvest right now, right? But you're doing production for the next year. How is that going? So we're selling the 2023 harvest, but harvest season is in October and November. So it was a very tough time in Palestine and in the West Bank. So a lot of farmers were forbidden to harvest. A lot of farms were actually not touched and the trees are still bearing the fruit from last year.

6:44So this season, the trees won't have any fruit. So what happened in 2023, harvest season will affect the season as well. A lot of villages were under blockade and we had a really hard time getting to a lot of our farmers. For some of our farmers that we worked with last year, we couldn't get this year, unfortunately. This year, we don't know how this would look like this year. It's important to say that the The difficulties that we're having are not something new that happened only this year. It's every year that this happens. But this year with the genocide in Gaza, it has been harder to do. I really don't know how it would look like for this next year, which is coming soon.

7:40But we're starting to prepare for our harvest season and, you know, hoping it would be easier than last year. Definitely. And I think another element of this that I find so compelling is just this, you know, ancient history of olive oil, like as part of the Palestinian culture. I know I was reading on your website that the press that you're using in Aboud, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, is like 3000 years old. And I'm curious what it feels like for you to be kind of continuing and preserving this legacy of Palestinian olive oil. I really can't tell you how privileged I am to be doing what I'm doing.

8:20The connection that we have with our olive trees is beyond strong. The first olive tree ever to be found was found in the Levant in Syria. And one of the oldest olive trees in the world is in Palestine, as we speak. So the way back this goes is beyond, you know, what we can comprehend, I think. And these olive trees that we harvest with our farmers have been passed down through generations. This is, you know, their great, great grandparents' olive trees. I know what I feel, the love I feel for my Monstera at home. so imagine taking care of an olive tree that your great-grandfather has given to you these olive trees are our families it's like these olive trees are our elders and not you know it's not a tree that you take care of they're older than you they've been there your whole life you've lived under these trees every year you go and harvest these trees the connection is beyond description And not to mention, it's important when talking about the significance of olive trees, it's important to mention the economical side of all of this.

9:41Palestinians in Palestine rely highly on olive oil. We have over 10 million olive trees in Palestine, and over 100 ,000 Palestinian families rely on these trees as a source of income. To just try and make you understand this a little bit better, 50 % of the cultivated land in Palestine are olive trees. So this is very important for Palestinians' economy as well. And with Israel's campaign against the Palestinian olive tree and the expansions of settlements in the West Bank, and now the total destruction of olive trees in Ghazi, everything becomes even more significant and more important. Beyond the emotional importance, the destruction and restriction of Palestinians from harvesting or planting olive trees is kind of a method of economic control by Israel.

10:42So it is important both emotionally, economically, really in every way possible. So every time you harvest your olive trees or you go touch your olive tree, it feels like you are resistant. Your existent olive trees also serve today as a symbol of resistance in Palestine. Absolutely. And I think the economic element is so important to consider in all of this. And also, I think as somebody here in America, I've certainly been seeing a lot of people in the food world, beyond the food world who have been buying Palestinian olive oil from Olive Odyssey, from some other places as a way of trying to show support.

11:25And I think an element of that as well are these collaborations that Olive Odyssey has been doing. I know you've done a collaboration with Rose Los Angeles, like the Chocolate Fund's collaboration. Could you maybe explain a little bit about what that is and how that came about? So we really believe in collaborative efforts. Most important form of resistance is community. And one of the ways to do this really is collaborating with other brands. The collaboration with Rose, they reached out to us. And from there, it was kind of a love story. I think a lot of us felt helpless watching the genocide in Ghazi and not knowing what to do.

12:14And I think that doing this collaboration for us and for Rose felt important because we were doing something and making a change. And I think if all of us do small things, we can really actually bring change. For this collaboration, which we've done already two runs, Rose have donated all of the proceeds to Ghazi and the West Bank. We've helped secure jobs for 10 Ghazans who are stranded in the West Bank for eight months in agriculture. We've also helped build a soccer field in Burin, a small village in the West Bank, the soccer field that was destroyed by settlers. And we've helped five families reach their goal to evacuate Ghazi.

13:11Unfortunately, these families are trapped in Ghazi, since Israel is in control of the Egyptian border now. But we're not stopping there, and we're working on more projects. Rose, again, like I said, it is kind of a love story. And Rose will be launching a new delight that we're working on together called Luqma. Luqma, it's a collaboration with four chefs, Irim Asil, Andy Baragni, Fadi Kuttan, and Sanim Nusrat, and Palestinian designer Ibrahim Hassan. And these delights, all of the proceeds will be donated to Sowing Seeds of Hope, which is an organization that is dedicated to building urban farms on rooftops and community vegetables farms in Ghazzi.

14:10So hoping to secure food for people in Ghazzi, We will be starting in the north of Ghazi and hoping to continue with this project to the rest of Ghazi. That sounds incredible. I think there's something really special about selling food for the purpose of giving food sovereignty to people in Palestine. When do you know that collaboration will come out? Next month. I really think you should talk to Rose there. Yeah. really incredible and doing some amazing stuff. We'll be launching in August and we will also be having an event together that will be held on August 24 as well. It's a dinner event with the hope of collecting donations for the same organization.

15:04We'll definitely link to Rose's website in the show notes. And I actually did an interview with one of the founders of Rose that a couple of years ago that we can link to as well. I guess for listeners who may not know what Rose is, they are actually a like cannabis edibles brand based out of Los Angeles. They make products with THC and CBD, these kind of delights that Aya's mentioning, which are like a Turkish delight style gummy. And then this chocolate that you're doing as well, which has the olive oil from Olive Odyssey and also, I believe, like wild foraged Palestinian za 'atar as well, right?

15:40Yeah, and with these delights as well, the ingredients, a lot of the ingredients are coming from Palestine. So, yeah, I think this one is going to be just as special. Is it difficult to be sending za 'atar and olive oil and all of these things like out of the area in this moment? I think mostly the za 'atar because I don't know if you know, but za 'atar is forbidding to forage for. the Israeli government has criminalized foraging. So it's hard to forage for, but sending out, we can use the Haifa port. So for now, it's okay. We go to the West Bank by car. We do like every time I need to go to the West Bank, we need to pass like three checkpoints, which is sounds okay but it's really not it's like hours and hours of waiting and sometimes you know you you're not allowed to bring things in so you kind of have to hide things and you know it's kind of crazy here yeah i actually watched a video by jumanamana called foragers that was about the criminalization of foraging in palestine and we can link to that as well i think it's a really powerful video to see.

17:04And I think talking with you about this collaboration with Rose makes me imagine that there's just a lot of interest, like I said before, of people that are trying to support Palestinians, support all of Odyssey. Have you noticed an increase in sales or social media or anything like that over the past year? Yeah, for sure. Definitely. We actually had a lot more haters but now we like kind of we're feeling so much love everybody is very supportive and a lot of people buy uh in order to support palestine uh but i think we take great pride that our our product is really good uh so you kind of you buy it first because you want to support, but a lot of people come back.

17:56So for us, this is very important because we really don't want people to buy our product merely to support Palestinian farmers, although it's very important. But these farmers really produce a great product. So and we're very proud of it. Yeah, I think the product really does speak for itself. And there's actually like different kinds of olive oil. I think from our conversation, maybe someone would think it's just one blend, but you're doing these different cold pressed olive oils from different regions, from different farmers. And the one that I tried from Nazareth was so kind of peppery and grassy and green.

18:37I'm curious if you have maybe a favorite is hard to choose, but an olive oil that you find to be particularly delicious or fun to cook with right now. I really can't say like if you were to be in my kitchen you would see I have two bottles of each of our olive oils. It's really the different villages that these olive oil come from have different weather and different soil. We also use different cultivars and different olives so everything is very very different. For me I prefer the peppery olive oils. Some prefer the, you know, more smooth and buttery. But yeah, we kind of do have all of the range.

19:24And for different things that you're cooking, you kind of need different tastes of olive oil. So it depends really on what you're looking for. Yeah, like an olive oil for cooking versus an olive oil for drizzling over vegetables, something like that. Again, I'm Palestinian, so we cook only with extra virgin olive oil. But yeah, it depends. I guess if you're cooking something that is smooth and you would want to give it a kick, so I would use a more peppery olive oil. But if I'm making something that is bitter, I'm not going to use bitter olive oil. I'm going to use something a little light to not overpower.

20:04So really, this is the only thing. But you can use every extra virgin olive oil for cooking and you can use every extra virgin olive oil for drizzling. But it really depends on what taste you're looking for. Yeah, I like this idea of thinking about everything as a balancing act of flavors and what flavor the olive oil is bringing and how you might want to balance that in different ways. I'm curious if you have any advice for people on tasting olive oil who maybe haven't done that before. Or is there any like right way to do that? Things to look out for? I think one of the most important things to say is that the color of the olive oil does not matter.

20:43People think that the greener it is, the better it is. But really, it doesn't matter. And for a lot of producers, you know, you can change the color of the olive oil, obviously, if it's not organic. So the color does not matter. And then the taste. you're looking for some smells of tomato leaves, some green almonds, grass, some grassiness. These are the things that you want to have in your olive oil. If you don't have smells for your olive oil, you want to dismiss this olive oil and not use it. And then do you, when you're with the farmers, the ones that are making their own olive oil? Are you tasting it with them?

21:32Like, how did you kind of learn what characteristics you were looking for in an olive oil? Okay, so we come from a family of olive oil lovers. So I've been around olive oil for my whole life, but I am also a certified olive oil taster, which is a certification that you get learning how to taste olive oil and actually for an olive oil to be classified as extra virgin olive oil there are some things that chemically need to be in the olive oil but also you need to have seven olive oil people who are certified to taste it and say that this is an extra virgin olive oil and i am one of these people so really it is tasting a lot of olive oil and tasting the good and the bad and uh getting your taste buds to know what is good and what is bad is it's in everything it's in the smell it's in the taste uh you you can kind of tell if an olive oil is good before you taste it just by smelling it.

22:47And with our farmers, we go there, we go the day they press the olives. And one of the things that we make sure of, which is very important if you want to produce good extra virgin olive oil, you harvest your olives and you have to go press them within the next six hours. So you can't just leave the fruit and not press it. So we go on the harvest day, we go to the mills, we taste the olive oil, we put it in a container, we close it after we took a sample of it, and we send the sample for testings. And only after we get the testings is that we start bottling the olive oil. So this is how we work with all of our farmers.

23:36What sorts of things are you testing for when you're sending it out? Acidity is one of the most important things. you want low acidity below 0.8 in order to be classified as extra virgin olive oil. So this is one of the most important things. Even if an olive oil is at 0.8, I mean, it does classify as extra virgin, but this is not something that you would want. So we make sure that all of our olive oil has an acidity lower than 0.5. quality of the olive oil, really, I can't stress this enough, is very important for us. Right. I do feel like with olive oil, so many people talk about how there's kind of fake olive oil out there, things like that.

24:22Is that what you mean? Yeah. Yeah. I think in a lot of places, people really know what to look for. But I guess in the last couple of years, we've been seeing a lot of kind of scandals where people would just put a label that it's extra virgin olive oil and when it's really not and sometimes it's very harmful because when it's not extra virgin olive oil you kind of lose the whole benefits of olive oil so for us it's really important to deliver on that part because olive oil beyond that it is tasty it's really good for you and I think people should be able to benefit from the benefits that olive oil holds.

25:08Definitely. And I just want to hear a little bit about how the pressing results in a higher quality product as well, because I know that you work a lot with kind of stone mills, granite stone mills. How does that result in a higher quality olive oil product? We don't only use the granite mills. We have some of our farmers work with the traditional stone mills but others use the cold press and the quality is easier to control when it's not stone mills but you can do a lot of things to control the quality of your olive oil one thing is really to harvest and press it the same day within under six hours and even how you store your olives from, since you're taking it from the field to the mills.

26:04You can't put it in bags. It should be open in baskets and not squished. So not a lot of olives on top of each other, small boxes. So it starts there, right? And then going forward, the place should be immaculate clean. The machinery should be closed to try and control the oxygen touching the olives and the olive oil when coming out. There's a lot of things you could do to control the quality of your olive oil, really. Definitely. And it all results in just such a special flavor and a product. And I think, you know, when I tried it myself at a friend's apartment for dinner, I really felt like it was such a special olive oil.

26:53So getting to hear about how it comes together is special as well. And I know that we talked a little bit about the Rose Delights that are going to be coming out this summer. Are there any other projects or products or things coming up in the next couple of months that you want to share? Well, we're currently collaborating with EA for Earth. They're making face lotion using our olive oil. They're also donating a part of the proceeds to Razi. So we're very excited about this collaboration. We've already done it once and it's going again now. And we're hoping this would be something for the long run.

27:31We've done a collaboration with Cocova, an amazing chocolatier in Wisconsin. She also made chocolate using our olive oil. We are currently working on a collaboration, the cutest collaboration we've done with a brand called In the Garden by Kayla Rain. She's making jewelry using plants and flowers that I'm sending out from Palestine. Like I said, we really believe in a collective effort. I think the most important thing that is happening now is that we're building a community. And if you want to resist anything, really, it's important to have community. And through these collaborations, we're happy every time anybody reaches out to us.

28:16Definitely. I think seeing the collaborations in the way that people who touch food as an ingredient or food as a final product or food and skincare, all of these different things, it really is special to see everyone coming together. And I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the podcast and speak with me, Aya. Thank you so much for having me.

28:40this is taste is hosted by matt rodbard and me eliza abarbanel the show is produced by shalia harris and pat stango and edited by clayton gumbert theme music by steve rydell visit taste online at tastecooking.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for updates on all cool things happening