Follow the Yellow Briq Road

This weekend my small family celebrated an early holiday gathering because yours truly is back on the road next week, heading to my favorite oil-rich Muslim country... olive oil that is: Tunisia.

Friends Ezzedine and Wadya extended the invite to the 42nd International Sahara Festival in the oasis town of Douz featuring Berber dancing, camel races and military displays on Arabian horses.

Photographer Great and GoNomad writer Paul Shoul wrote about this wonderful trip last year.

My Christmas feast in Tunisia will be fish instead of ham, briq (filled pastry) instead of bread, couscous instead of mashed potatoes and fig brandy instead of eggnog. All of it drenched in buckets and buckets of Yosra or olive oil as they call it.

My second travel article on Tunisia (yet to be posted) includes the importance of olive oil to the country's history, religion, politics, economics and culture. The cash crop is what wine is to Northern California or corn is to middle America. The land and soil has been cultivated for generations to produce the best possible olive trees. Add a cool drift from the sea and olive growers that use traditional methods of harvesting and you come up with a wonderfully flavorful fruit.

Okay, I'm a little too excited over extra-virgin but the restaurants really are that good. Cooked up lamb, camel, fish or shrimp and the liquid gold lives up to its name and reputation.