Olives are easy to process. You just have to allow them time. I pick them over to remove any damaged ones, then put them in big glass jars and cover with water and drain and change the water every day for a fortnight. This is the work part. The rest is mostly just waiting.
I’ve been making this a bit lately and it makes a great dip and sandwich spread too, but last night I found it’s true vocation – on a pizza. Recipe:
The Recipe
Edamame are green soy beans, and most Australians anyway only ever encounter them in a sushi bar. They’re easy to grow in a garden though, and to me, they work so well as a snack food because they have a distinct nuttiness to them. They remind me more of boiled peanuts than anything else.
We actually managed to harvest olives this year! Some years – most years in fact – we’re a bit too slow. I play chicken with the birds and lose. I like black olives better than green, so I wait and watch the trees, laden, ripening. Then one day, just at the point where I’m thinking best not to risk waiting any longer, I check and they’re all gone. All….gone.
Over 40ºC (104ºF) again yesterday, and it looks like it will get up there again today. But meanwhile, if life gives you lemons a good permaculturist makes lemonade. So if life gives you a heat wave, a good permaculturist forgets making tomato passata and puts all that lovely solar energy to work making sun dried tomatoes instead.
The longest day, the shortest night, the night of midsummer dreaming. Happy solstice everyone! Today is the longest day of the year in the southern hemisphere and the shortest in the northern hemisphere, and it’s been a traditional festival for a lot longer than 2011 years. For me, it marks the start of holidays, a few weeks with some time with family, community and friends, some time visiting, some time…