Last year I found an olive place in California that ships fresh picked olives so you can cure your own: Penna Gourmet Olives. I was too late for green ones, but managed to get in on the tail end of the black harvest. This was in November and olives have to cure for awhile ~ 6 to 8 or 10 weeks. We already had a planned trip to DisneyWorld for Christmas. Someone was going to check my olives, but the holidays got hectic and she forgot. While the olive curing experiment last year did not succeed, it was a learning experience.
Being embroiled in this health crisis, I totally forgot to check on fresh green olives and missed them again this year. Rats! HOWEVER, fresh black olives were available for shipping as of yesterday at 5:00p.m., and I've ordered two more boxes - one of Black Sevillano and one of Black Manzanilla. I am so excited to get to try this again! People have been home curing olives for centuries and I'm so interested in how they will differ from the commercially prepared ones. I have some friends who have been lucky enough to eat home-cured olives when they visit family around the Mediterranean and they just rave about them.
Here are a few pics of the beginning of last year's experiment. I will make more photos and attempt to take better care of my olives this year. Here's hoping for some delicious treats!
Olives in their shipping box
A close-up of fresh black olives
Olives in their soaking water
Becky, I've never considered curing my own olives . . . I'll have to check this out for good olives are very rare on the prairie indeed.
ReplyDeleteOh Martha, I would love it if you cure some olives too and we could compare notes. I am determined for it to succeed this year. What made me even think of it in the first place was an article in the NYTimes last year. It sounded so interesting and the finished product sounded so good. I figured that made sense. Most of the time homemade tastes better.
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