Green olives from Palermo, Sicily

So my friend came back from Palermo(in Sicily) ( he was there for less than a week). Before he left to Sicily he asked me if I wanted anything, and of course I told him "olives!". Sicily is the holy land of olives. Spain and Greece might be great places, and France might be fine foodies' paradise, but Sicily beats them all to dirt. Italy (Sicily is part of Italy) is home of the best food in the world, and SIcily is home of the best olives ( and the best food too). Ah whenever I go there...

Anyway, he came back and brought me some olives. They're dirt cheap over there. Now these were packaed in aitight plastic packaging. Nothing less attractive than vacuum sealed transparent plastic fod bags. Ugh. But I knew when I saw those olvied in the packet, they were going to be good.

Boy was I right. Huge green olives, with that beautiful sourness to die for. Ah These were spiced up garlic olives. Their tastes is nothing short fo heavenly, so I'm gonna be rationing them for the next week. After that they'd risk going bad, and I don't want that. So I looked at the ingredients, to see what they were. Now usually the especially sour ones have shitloads of vegetables added to them, and they taste great. Yet these ones had just 4 ingredients in their marinade. Sunflower oil, garlic, chilli peppers, and oregano, in that order. Simple and beautiful.

Next time I get my hands on some raw olives I'll use that marinade after leaving them in salt water for a good while.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be posting pictures of the lovely olives to give you an idea of the ratios of the ingredients in the marinade, since it's too dark now. Damn good olives. :)

The olive tree, Thomas Jefferson

"The olive tree is surely the richest gift of Heaven" - Thomas Jefferson.

I love olives!

I really do. Some people just look at me weird, especially if they don't like olives themselves, but for me olives are the best food in the world. I'm literally like Pavlov's dog, only for olives.

So I decided to start a blog about olives. I haven't yet managed to find lots of information about olives on the net. Some info about curing olives mostly, but nothing much else. I hope to contribute something to other olive lovers around the world, especially in places where olives are not so popular, or are not really grown.

I come from the little island of Malta, in the Mediterranean. Olives used to be an important par tof the economy, or so it seems, due to the fact that a many Maltese placenames are related to olives or olive oil. However, while today olives are still an intrinsic part of the Maltese diet, they are grown less frequently for picking ( we do have a lot of 'wild' olive trees which make decent olives though). A family friend ( a dentist) has a small grove of olives and presses his own olive oil. It's beautiful golden-green murky stuff that tastes of green fresh olives. Beautiful! You can almost drink the stuff.

I've recently moved to sweden, where olives are expensive. OR at least, real olives are. You can buy canned olives which are complete rubbish. They're only good for throwing away or for torturing somebody's tastebuds. So I don't buy any because they are so expensive and I'm kind of broke at the moment!

Well well, this was my first post, something about myself, and soon you will start finding frequent posts about olives! So stay tuned!