I love olives, especially those giant olives with the pimiento peppers stuffed in the middle. And I love olive oils, it’s great for salads and soap making. So when I came across this olive tree at the shopping center parking lot I had to take a closer look.
These purple olives were very bitter! They are inedible fresh, either green or ripe. And must be cured (just like soap) to become the tasty little fruits we all love. I found a post on how to cure ripe olives over at “Mama’s Tavern“.
“Put fresh, ripe olives in a pillowcase with an equal weight of salt. Hang outside. Shake up every day or two. When edible, rinse and pack in oil. It’s as easy as that.” - Mama’s Tavern
The instructions are very easy to follow. Of course I haven’t wanted to attempt this as I would need to collect tons of tiny ripe olives to make it worth it!
This is what happens when you squeeze them. I had to tip toe my way towards the tree (so not to dirty my shoes) to get a closer look. The fruits were so ripe they would fall off the branches just by touching them.
Many parts of California have olive trees literally growing almost everywhere. From sides of the road and along public streets. They are refer to as “Mission Olives”,probably left behind by the Spanish missionaries. Even in my childhood I remember climbing an olive tree for fun. The tree wasn’t too big and it had lots of twisting branches. The boys would use the green olives as ammunition. And when I briefly lived in southern California, there was an apartment building named “The Olive Pit” and there were dozens of olive trees all around.
