5 Things to Do with Olive Oil, from an Italian Multitasker

During the daily hazing that is elementary school lunch, most of my classmates ate peanut butter and jelly, or ham and cheese, crusts cut off blemlishless white bread. I, however, was the weird kid sent to school with giant Italian subs made with cold cuts left over from family gatherings—Sundays spent in the driveway with multicolored olives, hunks of cheese, meatballs and anisette cookies.

In my family, olive oil was king. It dripped from those Italian subs, started all sauces and soups, and slicked back our hair when we mixed it with lemon juice as teenagers, hoping it would make blond miracles out of black hair. But there's a lot more to olive oil than vinaigrette and omegas. You can use it as furniture polish (if you have furniture nice enough to polish); as the fluid in a makeshift lamp, should the apocalypse catch you off guard; and in these five surprising ways.

Check out the slideshow above to find out five new ways to use olive oil!

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