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recipe for you, your friends, or your pet—something to be consumed. The iconwith two bottles of olive oil surrounded only by olive leaves designates formulas for external uses only.
    Now that you have learned about the many types of olive oil available, the stage is set for you to learn of the many uses for this golden liquid—many of which have been handed down in my family for literally generations. So, grab your favorite bottle (of olive oil) and let’s begin our adventure around the house, exploring the amazing diversity of this practical substance.

CHAPTER THREE
Around the House
    EVEN AS A LITTLE GIRL , I was aware of the many magical uses of olive oil. I often noticed my parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles taking the gallon-sized can of olive oil out of the kitchen to use in various daily household tasks—whether the tasks involved cleaning, preservation, prevention, maintenance, repair, or just something that needed attention “in a pinch.” I marveled at the stories they told of the importance of olive oil—like the story of the famous Italian American baseball player Joe DiMaggio. It seems as if olive oil might have actually contributed to his fame. When he started playing baseball in 1981, an olive oil distributor named Rossi sponsored his first team. And as I understand it, Joe DiMaggio rubbed olive oil on his bat (his baseball bat, of course!) and often soaked it in olive oil for up to ten days. The treatment purportedly gave his bat greater spring!
    To this day, whenever I mention my love of olive oil,some people stare at me in amazement, while others gleefully tell me how they use it. At a recent dinner party, I sat next to a young woman who manages a furniture store. She told me that prior to the store’s professional photo shoots, the furniture is polished with olive oil. The extra sheen provided by the olive oil makes the furniture pop off the pages of their high-end catalog. The mahogany simply gleams! I listen to these stories and fondly remember my childhood and the glistening mahogany furniture in my grandparents’ homes.
    I grew up in a large, colonial-style home in what was then considered the country; it is now part of one of the trendiest areas in Silicon Valley. Yet at the time, the house was quite remote from the city, with little traffic to disturb the stillness of the night. It had wonderful large rooms in which every sound would reverberate. Its heavy doors were characteristic of the fine 1928 construction. In older homes, creaks and noises can be a bit frightening to a young girl in the middle of the night. I remember my father using drops of olive oil (no WD-40 in those days!) to prevent the creaks and squeaks, thus assuring the family a restful night’s sleep. It worked! In fact, any gears or hinges around the house can be oiled with this magical substance. After all, if the Romans applied olive oil to the wooden and metal mechanisms of their weaponry, and if workers during the Industrial Revolution lubricated some machines with olive oil, why not oil the gears and hinges around your home with same golden liquid?
    As an adult, I remember the day I had a “fashion crisis” and couldn’t seem to find anything in the house to solve the problem. I was on my way out the door to attend a family member’s wedding when I made one last quick stopto check my lipstick in the hall mirror. I saw that the pearls I had chosen for the event had lost a great deal of their beautiful luster. Realizing that I had absolutely no cleaners around the house that did not contain some type of harsh chemical, I wondered what I could possibly do to revitalize my pearls. I was uncomfortable using anything harsh for fear of damaging them. It suddenly came to me to get out my trusty bottle of olive oil. I poured a small amount on a kitchen towel and rubbed it onto my pearls. To my delight and pleasure, they soon glowed the way they did when I first received them from a dear relative. I was so happy that