balsamico

The Balsamico you see in the supermarket is red wine vinegar with added sugar and flavourings.

I can make Aceto Balsamico in my basement the traditional way (I'd need a basement first), and can sell it, but not call Aceto Balsamico.

Who cares if it takes you 5 seconds more to find the balsamico for your salad?

I go to Italy every few months and buy a few bottles of generic balsamico for cooking.

It takes 12 years to make the best, aceto balsamico tradizionale (traditional balsamic vinegar), and at least 25 to make the finest, extra Vecchio.

You avoid processed foods, but you add balsamico to your salad?

As an individual making a tomato salad, you can mask off that lack of flavor by just dumping balsamico, olive oil, salt and pepper over the tomatoes...

This is how we have protected products here in Europe - hundreds of cheeses, salamis, balsamico di modena, well basically anything with any history.

I also like just salad, with a little salt, pepper and balsamico.

I've been using Axure and Balsamico which are quite good tools, but I find myself getting stuck and wasting a lot of time on emulating behaviour which is quite easy to code.

Preparing it is easy as well (think 1 tuna can + some fresh salad + olive oil/balsamico => awesome meal) if the hacker dojo has a rice cooker you're golden, otherwise get one for 30 bucks and you'll have a healthy carb source all the time.

That being said, we have some olive oil and balsamico flavored with truffles (real and artificial), which has actually stronger flavor than original mushrooms which have rather mild taste, and we use it very sparingly, not missing it at all.

So it can be one drop of "Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena DOP", which is the real deal.

I don't believe that's true, you can call it Aceto Balsamico, but you can't call it "Aceto Balsamico di Modena" if it's not produced from that region.

One example: Most "balsamic vinegar" is not Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale.

Buy a bottle of 30 year old balsamico and compare it to the cheap stuff and I suspect you will wonder (like me), "Is this really balsamic vinegar???"

Balsamico is made by concentrating down grape juice through boiling, and then fermenting the resulting must for years.

Balsamico, Cider and Pine Nuts suffer from this problem.