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D.O.P. Balsamic Vinegar, the only authentic Balsamic Vinegar, goes for well over $100 for a tiny 100ml bottle, and given the multi-year, multi-barrel method of brewing each bottle, it is a miracle it can be found for even that cheap. Congratulations for having a cabinet full of it! May I come over sometime? ;)

You can find 100ml 12 year DOP Balsamic for under $100, though not by much.

You can find BVM invecchiato that is majority grape must and aged for 3+ years for significantly cheaper and is still quite good, though.

> This is just false, real balsamic is easy to find and I have several bottles in my cabinet.

There are varying types of "real", though. Length of aging matters; the longer it's aged the more evaporates off and the thicker (and tastier, IMO) it gets.

The $10/bottle watery stuff you'd use in a vinaigrette is not the same as the $30-40/bottle stuff that's almost syrupy thick. Both are real balsamic vinegar, even DOP. They're vastly different tastes, though.

No, no, I'm definitely not talking about the $10 bottle, I'm talking about the fancy artisanal stuff that's aged for years and waaaayyyy way way more expensive.

> "I would never eat a tomato like I'd eat an apple"

You should at least try it, you might like it. Personally I like a very light sprinkling of salt, but that's not necessary.

I think salt with the bigger "meatier" tomatoes is a must, however the smaller varieties are better straight.

True, I'd never put salt on a cherry tomato for instance.

> I very much enjoy a really good quality olive oil with bread, but I would never call it a "feast,

Figure of speech.

But yes, it is incredibly good. Unfortunaly, you won't find it at the grocery store, no matter what the bottle says.

Yes, I can find it in the grocery store. I also have bought it from specialty shops (which aren't exactly rare).

My grocery store also sells fresh squeezed orange and grapefruit juice they juice every morning and fresh mozzarella they make every day in the store and probably some other fancy stuff I'm not aware of.

I know people who buy the low quality oil because they prefer it. My grandmother preferred corn fed beef to grass fed beef.

But its pointless, because you'll just tell me I'm wrong and your olive oil is so much better than mine because all your posts here are just "my tastes in food are so much more sophisticated than all the peons."

> I know people who buy the low quality oil because they prefer it. My grandmother preferred corn fed beef to grass fed beef.

I had a roommate in college who couldn't stand the taste of anything that wasn't aggressively processed. He would take a microwaved TV dinner over a home-cooked meal in a heartbeat.

He was also the pickiest eater I've ever met. The only thing he really liked was meat seasoned with whatever stuff Stouffer's and Hungry Man put in it (I'm guessing lots of salt). Didn't like Chinese food, or pretty much anything ethnic. Didn't like anything with sauce on it. He wouldn't eat chili dogs because he said the chili sauce was gross. Whenever we'd get him to try something new, he'd take a few bites of it, say "it's dead to me", and then push it away. At one point, we dragged him to a Chinese restaurant, he only got fried rice, and then did exactly that with the fried rice he got... and then to make a point, he stuck his chopsticks in it vertically to make it clear that it was now an offering to the dead.

He was a strange person, though I understand he's changed a lot since college.

Kinda charming that someone who hated Chinese food nevertheless knew about chopstick etiquette.

Oh, he was a total weeb. We were all weebs.

(I still am, really)