gifts i love : brightland

WHEN I WAS a single gal, dinner for me was whatever looked good in the Whole Foods prepared case that night or maybe, if I was feeling ambitious, a pot of spaghetti. When I started to grow my family, my cooking repertoire slowly started to expand, too. Cooking is now obvs an everyday part of my life (more like 3-5x a day) and probs fueled 70% by love and 30% by necessity depending on the day. I’m super passionate about food and health and want to share that with my family, but I’m for sure still learning how to be a ‘good’ cook. I can follow a good recipe and am a FIRM believer that having the right tools for the job is key, be it your go-to kitchen supplies or the best ingredients you can get your hands on. It’s something I’ve been slowly and intentionally honing over the years, swapping out big piles of mostly useless gadgets for a few of the RIGHT ones. It’s the reason I buy organic when I can and the inspiration for finally splurging on some truly gorgeous Brightland Olive Oil.

I’VE HONESTLY always just bought a simple, inexpensive olive oil believing that anything coming from the Mediterranean was probably pretty good and basically all the same. Um, no. It turns out I could NOT have been more naive. When you dig in, you find out that much imported olive oil sold in the US as ‘extra virgin’ is actually nothing of the sort. It can be [and often is] rancid, moldy, contaminated with larvae and filled up with a bunch of other super junky types of oil. EEW. GROSS. It’s apparently a massive global scandal and actually super fascinating (I now want to read this book for the juicy details). The oil I was buying may not have even had the powerful polyphenols and other awesome health benefits that I was using it for in the first place. So I took the leap to something SO MUCH better. If I’m super honest, my leap started more like a casual wander fueled entirely by Brightland’s stunning branding (I’m like a barracuda drawn to shiny objects), but after learning more, I didn’t hesitate to jump and will never look back.

BRIGHTLAND produces small-batch, high quality, gorgeous olive oils with only locally-grown fruit straight from the rich Cali soil. They source all of the little gems from a family-run farm and know exactly what they’re putting into their final product. So you can rest knowing that you’re not putting mold or larvae into your Taboule. And the flavor is spectacular. It’s bright and herbaceous and so super delicious. I started with their ‘basic’ oils, Awake and Alive plus pretty Spouts for both (quickly now some of those ‘right’ kitchen gadgets). I use Awake for soups and chicken and Alive for all the veggies. Then I added Rosette (garlic) and Ardor (chili pepper) to the lineup and they’re both delicious. Ardor is SO good on roasted broccolini, potatoes and chicken. They also make two gorgeous vinegars, Parasol (champagne) and Rapture (balsamic), made with the same high standards. And they just launched a new line of raw, unfiltered honeys. California Orange Blossom and Kauai Wildflower are both made by small-batch farmers in the US and are gorgeous. Brightland has stunning sets that would be a really beautiful gift for anyone on your list who loves to cook or eat fabulous food.

SO, WHILE I still have plenty of days when I’d rather just grab something from Whole Foods, on all of the other days when I’m excited to chef it up, I’m so happy that I have the right tools for the job. GIFT A LITTLE HAPPINESS. xo