Olives!

Today we picked olives.

I love to eat them, but had not realised how many different shapes and sizes they came in. At least the trees were fairly short, so we could reach the olives from the ground without climbing. Some trees were full of fruit, some completely bare, but we managed to pick about 12kg. Of course Dave was selective about what he picked, I tended to pick clean.

So when we got home I took the perfect olives out for Dave to begin to process in various ways, so we can see what works best, and then I was left with 3kgs of dud ones. What a waste! We could not allow that so I decided to get the oil out of them. Olive oil comes from olives? Pale yellow stuff, that is so good in cooking.

Right. These are ripe olives, already black in colour. So I put them in a big cast iron pot, and used a slightly smaller pot's lid to crush the olives. Only I wasn't strong enough to make any impression on the fruit, so I stood on it and rocked. That started to work and I could hear squishing noises. Only, unfortunately, the juice started to splash out, onto our landlords kitchen floor. Dave suggested I go outside, but my feet were already rather olive purple looking. So he carried me out! On his back! With me giggling all the way.

Once outside I did manage to get quite a lot of goo out of the olives, but it is a purple goo, more like the colour of wine! So I tasted some. It is bitter, very bitter.

Now we have added water to the goo, and hopefully the oil will rise to the top, and we can somehow scoop it out. I am not sure that the oil will be worth it, as my feet and hands are now stained purple, and my back is aching from falling over while rocking the pot, but it certainly adds to our fund of experiences here.

My only question is "is the oil that is going to rise up out of the goo going to be purple, pink or yellow?"