Brine your own olives at home.

Have you ever tasted an olive freshly picked from the tree? It tastes awful!

I greatly admire the person who has figured out how to turn those bitter olives into something tasteful. And the funny thing is, now I know how myself. It all started with a stroll around the garden with my youngest daughter at the end of September.

"Wow, that olive tree of yours has grown," says my daughter." And there are so many olives on it!" Before I am able to take a breath to say that it takes a lot of work before there are nice olives on a plate, she already has grabbed her phone and looked on the Internet. "Mom, now is the time to harvest olives. Shall we do it?"

So we look for a bucket and pick the olives from the tree. Next we take of the leaves and divide the harvest. As you will understand my daughter wants to make olives too.

Next step? My daughter reads from her phone: "Crush the olives". I put the olives in a tea towel and give them a few hits with the hammer. That should be enough. Next I submerge the olives in water. And now the tough bit: the olives have to be rinsed EVERY DAY with clean water. Every day until the bitter taste has gone.

The following day. The olives look pretty bad. They are brown-spotted. My daughter sends me an instruction film, which shows me that every olive should be crushed one by one. As an experiment she will do so with her olives. I have not much confidence in my discoloured olives. But I rinse and rinse and rinse .......

After 14 days, the bitter taste of my daughter's olives has disappeared. Not with my olives though. So I rinse and rinse and rinse ....

To make a long story short, after a month and a half the bitter taste has disappeared.

Next step is pickling the olives. Make a brine using 100 g of sea salt and 1 litre of water. I find a nice glass jar to put my olives in. On the bottom of the jar I put rosemary, thyme, oregano and a clove of garlic. All these herbs come from my own garden!!! Finally I put the olives in the jar and pour the pickle on the olives. On top of that, I pour a layer of olive oil. Now the olives have to stand for another month.

Another month ...... when everything goes well, we will be eating olives from our garden at Christmas!

Enjoy your week

Hetty

romantic rose garden

olives in my garden

First day. Olives in a bucket with water. 

The olives look devastated  

Herbs from my own garden 

Add the herbs 

Poor over the salted water 

Wait for another month.