The Original Angel Boy and I purchased olive trees at about the same time from our individual Trader Joe’s stores, just as a sort of experiment to see what would happen.

While his tree is about five feet tall now with many little olives, mine is stuck at two feet and, after a couple of years, here’s my bountiful harvest! I’m so excited!

Yes, I know you can’t eat olives directly from the tree because it’s extremely bitter and unpalatable due to a compound called oleuropein. Olives must be cured using salt packing, water soaking, or a brine process to make them edible.

I wonder who was the first person to figure out that it wasn’t a good idea to eat them raw?

And who first came up with these methods?

Dry Salt Method: Layer ripe black olives with coarse rock salt (about a 3:1 ratio of olives to salt) in a breathable container or a perforated bag to draw out the bitter juices over three to six weeks.

Water or Brine Curing: Soak the fresh olives in clean water, changing the water daily for two to three weeks until the bitterness fades, then transfer them to a salt brine solution for storage.

Rinse the cured olives thoroughly, then pack in olive oil, vinegar, or fresh herbs for final flavor enhancement.

There’s another method using lye, but that seems dangerous, so I didn’t include it.

I’ll let you know how delcious it is when it’s ready to eat and I arrange it on a miniature charcuterie platter.