Olive oil

General introduction

Olive oil is a widespread and very versatile good produced in Tarrabaenia and the settlement area of the Messellat Mdûlûn around the Grey Sea. There are also small areas of olive tree cultivation further to the Southwest, where the Arakat people live.

Olive oil has a lot of applications. It can be used as food, cosmetic, medicine, for technical application as a sort of grease and also as fuel for oil lamps and stoves to generate light or heat.

Sources and harvest

Olives are harvested from olive trees which are abundant in the area described above. In Tarrabaenia the olive tree is an economical staple, whereas Messellat Mdûlûn consider them somehat sacred, probably due to the many beneficial ways in which they can be used. The degree of reverence varies in different city states. In some of them they may be cut down and their wood be used, performing some rites, in others harming the trees is an utter taboo.

Whatever the individual circumstances, olives are harvested in autumn and partly soaked in brine to render them edible, partly brought to mills to press out the olive oil. Oil is stored and transported in amphorae. The Andaperna people import olive oil from the Messellat Mdûlûn amd only know the amphorae as sources of the oil. It's common for Andaperna people to believe, that while they don't think the oil just wells um in the amphorae, that it is rather sourced from a faucet fixed to a trunk of a specific kind of tree.

Properties and use

As said, the oil is used for a wide variety of things, especially in cuisine and health care. To enumerate all the uses there would go to far. An other frequent and important use is that of the oil as a fuel. It is used in small oil lamps, which are made from either clay or metal or also in heating stoves, not as the main fuel, but instead to compliment wood, straw or cow dung.

Type

Organic