It used to make me sad that there is nothing on Olives in this forum. There should be. I absolutely love both black and green, and I did so much research online, I never found that you can brine black ones. It's news to me! Thanks! I'm so in love with the greenies. I include pink and purple because they are not yet ripe, and the jars look so pretty. I have no idea what variety we have. They have enormous olives. I jerked a couple suckers off a few trees at a local golf course, and they grew. Mine haven't fruited yet after 4 years, but that golf course is handy, and I go prepared to pick while those men take FOREVER to find their balls which they always hit in the weeds, and to PUTT! An olive could go from green to ripe just in the time it takes them to walk around their ball, examine every angle and miss the hole every time! As far as brinning one or two olives, that could take a long time. I'd put them in a black coffee cup and keep them in a cool dark cupboard and change the brine often. It has to be salty enough to float a fresh egg. I found so much history on olives when searching for brine recipes. Ripe olives are bitter! So nobody thought to eat them, but then some fisherman found some that had fallen into salty water, tasted them, found them to be good, and so the myth lives...........~

It does sound like fun curing your own. If olives grow so well in your area, perhaps a post on Freecycle or Craigslist might bring you a bounty of chemical-free organic olives. IMO harvesting anything from a pesticided, herbicided, and whatever-cided golf course is asking for trouble. Who knows what those heavy chemicals do in your body after you eat them let alone what the harvested fruit's cells have taken up through their roots? It's the same reason why I don't pick blackberries on the side of the road. Further back in the briers the fruit is just as sweet and the chances of them being full of lead greatly reduced. I don't think bleach, sulfur, lye, or salt treatments would release the bad chemicals from the fruit's cells, though they would for those inherent to the fruit (which causes bitterness in olives). Chemicals, metals, and -cides have no taste when pulled into fruit cells. JMO Nancy

pretty much only drink margarita's and on the rocks and only made w/ Sauza Tres' Generacciones tequila. fairly rare find in restaurants, occassionally in bars, i have friends bring it from mexico for me as it's also expensive and hard to find. when i bought my house it was christened and toasted w/ several well aged bottles LOL that's how much i adore this stuff :-) ~ liz

jeri-, Sounds delish with tomatoes, olives and spinach. If it is the costco pesto in the squarish container that needs to be fridged?, i know that one. I like it. A life-saver in the dead of winter when i want something quick and fresh tasting. Nice and nutty, good garlic flavor. Hard for us to use up once opened so i freeze it in small containers. A tbsp in a salad dressing is good!. Also nice in a bean salad. When i drain my pasta i save a bit of the pasta water...just a 1/4 cup-ish in a pyrex. When your pasta is drained it will continue to steam being so hot. The first thing tossed into it will slightly cook and be absorbed. (why i don't add the pesto first....the basil will not taste as fresh). A small amount of marinade like a fruity vinegar with some of your olive brine, just a tbsp of each. A bit of good olive oil and again just a tbsp or less. (if it is the same pesto i know, it is made with mostly sunflower oil...just a tiny bit of olive oil further down the ingredient list). It is oily enough for me so i don't usually add any extra oil...and not about calories at all. More about an oily tasting pasta salad. If the spinach in your deli salad is firm, add it with the pesto later on when the pasta has cooled a bit. I add a bit of that saved pasta water to my pesto but judge that before adding. I'm always using different brands of pasta and i can never tell what the 'steaming' factor might be. If you want the spinach to be slightly wilted, toss it in when the pasta is hot adding with your marinade 'brine'. DH likes a certain pasta that i've been having trouble with. It is a spinach green leaf shape and a bit thick, and very starchy. It seems to like some extra olive oil to 'seal' it. Meaning to coat it and hold that starch. Otherwise it releases starch into the rest of the 'salad'. Tricky to try and reproduce a favorite, and often expensive, deli version. Fun though if you pull it off. I'm trying to crack the code of a great deli spinach egg salad. I think the spinach is Matador and just started a tray of seed starts for a fall crop...it is very thick and meaty, not thin and wilty. A bit nuts but i'm determined, : ) I did buy some over the winter and it has really good fridge shelf life. Also quickly blanched it froze well. Without the acrid iron taste that some leafy spinach has...