Olives Galore

Today, rather than stories, I’m more in the mood to share pictures. Specifically, pictures of my olive curing project. For the next six weeks I’ll be trying to determine the best possible method to home-cure olives. I’ll be experimenting with the two varieties grown in Alicia’s groves – Arbeuqina and Morrot. And I’ll be manipulating a slew of variables, performing 20 tests in all.

So, I have twenty jars of olives, each of which gets a unique treatment. The curing medium, which ranges from salt (both fine and coarse) to pure water to lye solution to salt water (and varying concentrations of each), for every single jar must be changed each morning and each night, and the olives stirred every two hours. The olives in all the different jars are progressing through the curing process at varying rates, so every morning I have to test an olive from each jar and document its progress with notes and pictures. It’s a lot to juggle, and can get confusing, but it’s nothing a good excel spread sheet can’t make sense of in a hurry. And if you know me, you know I love a good spread sheet. So basically what I’m saying is this is exactly my kind of project!

And the olives are just so pretty right now, like huge round emeralds. I couldn't resist indulging you with pictures from every single angle. Because soon, as the curing continues, they'll eventually loose this youthful prettiness and slowly begin to turn that sad, drab color of well... olives.

Thanks for reading - I hope you enjoy the pictures!