Olives

Well, I bottled the first bottles of black olives today - the first bowl I consider 'ready', into strong herbed brine with a dash of vinegar. That gave just over 7 bottles of Olives - the standard 350 ml jar. I figure we're looking at another maybe 18 jars. 25 + 6 green olives. Now that sounds a lot, but by the time you add giving friends a jar and the serious locust factor AKA Paddy and James (my sons, coming home from Uni in 3 weeks)... maybe we DO need to pick some more. The ones in raw salt were a bit of a failure in my opinion. Or not to my taste anyway. The small number I did in wood-ash lye I won't at this stage do again. The awkward thing is it'll be yet another week before they can really be tried. - 31 jars of what might be a total flop and quite a lot of work, is a little worrying. But ever onward. It has already showed me how well the local grapevine works - I mentioned to Rosemary that our herb production of everything but parsley was... moderate, and of course I am using that for the herbed brine and need to dry some really soon as the temperatures are dropping - down to 3 centigrade this morning. Next thing Carol shows up at my study door with a huge bunch of marjoram, sage, thyme, mint and garlic chives. It can be a pretty good community to be in.

I want to try some roll-mops with the Australian Salmon and the Wrasse - the former is Okay fresh - just, and the latter is acceptible briefly poached in Thai green curry, or a crab-and-tomato Tal grottli, probably OK as part of fishsoup/stew so long as it has 'in liquid'cooking. I really, really need to catch some crabs in this place that are not pea-crabs! Anyway, when the boys get here, there will be some more serious efforts. At the moment I am focussing on finishing the current book. The weather -- daytime -- has been glorious clear without being too hot. Fortunately this rotten cold is still hovering, snotty and feeling a bit miz. It'd be difficult to resist this sort of temptation otherwise.