Gray Sea Salt Harvested on The Coast of France

Connoisseurs of olive oil and vinegar, meet Sandy Greenfield of Evansville and her fledgling company Drizzle, which offers delicious pure varieties of extra virgin and flavored extra virgin olive oils; balsamic vinegars from Modena, Italy and flavored sea salts.

"I love to cook," said Greenfield. "I've been cooking since I was 12, so I like to experiment with new stuff. I visited a store in Colorado that sold vinegars, oil, flavored salts and spices. I loved it. I'm starting out small, but someday I'd like to have a retail space. Right now it's just the farmer's markets, and I do olive oil tasting parties."

In the vinegar department, Greenfield carries only 18-year-old true balsamic from Modena, Italy, in both regular and white varieties.

Balsamic vinegar starts with cooked sour grape juice rather than being fermented from an alcohol source like other vinegars. After being boiled and reduced, the juice, or must, is aged in wooden casks. This concentrates and mellows the flavor. The texture is thick and syrupy. When essences such as peach, fig, chocolate, raspberry or pomegranate are added, the flavor is amazing.

As for olive oil, Greenfield offers two plain, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oils from Spanish olives. One is pressed from the arbequina olive and is mild and suitable for most uses. The second is a blend of oils from picual, arbequina and hojiblanca olives; this one is extremely fruity and peppery, and perfect for use as a finishing and dipping oil.

Her third extra virgin olive oil is Italian, from the Sevillano olive, a Spanish variety now grown in many olive oil-producing regions because of its popular and versatile flavor. Greenfield describes it as fruitier than the others, with flavors of avocado and apple.

Her flavored oils include a surprisingly fresh-tasting garlic, lemon, roasted chili (milder than Asian chili oil) and an incredible butter-flavored extra virgin oil that would make movie popcorn topping blush.

"I love to use the roasted chili olive oil on salmon," said Greenfield. "I brush it with the oil, grill it with some Himalayan pink salt, then finish it with a little more oil for some heat. The butter-flavored oil is great for healthy baking. You can use the arbequina for baking, too, because it's mild."

Greenfield orders both the vinegars and oils already flavored with essences and natural flavors, and bottled to her specifications. There are no bits of food in the bottles, so there are no dangers of foodborne illness.

Finally, she offers pure Himalayan pink salt, which is mined by hand in the Himalayan mountains from ancient sea beds; gray sea salt harvested on the coast of France; and sea salts spiced with fennel, lime, chipotle and a "butcher salt" with rosemary, thyme, sage and marjoram.

"I've replaced my regular table salt with Himalayan pink salt," Greenfield said. "The sodium content is the same as regular salt, but it's got a deeper flavor because of the trace minerals. Regular salt is such a dead food with all the processing it goes through and the iodine they add to it. The Himalayan salt is hand-cut, hand-ground and not processed at all.