Culinary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Olives

8 Comments

I share Lileks’ attitude:

Wife wanted Olives for the Christmas snack tray. There is an Olive Bar. I hate olives, so the olive bar is interesting: so many things to dislike and ignore. Just like the DirecTV options. The amount of choices you can passively reject is just astonishing; it’s a defining feature of modern life.

I suppose I should try a couple different ones, just to see if maybe there’s one I like, but I’ve never gotten into them.

8 thoughts on “Olives”

  1. My favorite olives by far are Peloponnese Ionian olives, but they do have pits.
    At amazon

    Peloponnese® is a Hormel Foods brand, and Hormel makes Spam, so you know their olives are great, too.

    *goes off to dream about an Ionian olive/Spam loaf*

    1. What would be cool is rather than pimento’s have olives stuffed with spam…kind of an inverse spam loaf. The truth be told, I like spam. I like just slicing it thick from the can with some relish and onion for an awesome sandwich

    2. George,

      My local supermarket (Stop & Shop chain) has Peloponnesian brand olives in jars – of various kinds (not just kalamata) and you can get them pitted.

  2. Olives are an acquired taste – with the possible exception of the black pitted US olives in a can.

    I love Greek olives of all kinds.

    Spam? Well…….I’ll pass

    😉

  3. Rand, the hard thing is growing stuff that you can not only eat but also live off of.

    I grow apples, plums, pears, and quince. They are all very yummy, but you can’t subsist on this. I am essentially growing “dessert and snacks”, maybe somewhat healthier desserts and snacks than you can get in the store, but they are all high carb and high fructose.

    The hard part is growing “entres” or a “main dish.” Think of the National Lampoon satire of the Frank Herbert Dune novel. The Freedmenmen have to wear their native sweatsuits to burn off the calories from living “off the sugars”, and the “hydraulic despotism” of their native planet is an absence of entres or main courses.

    I guess in your Galt’s Gulch garden you can grow potatoes, but that is another starch, which from a glycemic standpoint is little different than sugar. I guess you could raise chickens or maybe feed some pigs, but who wants the icky mess of livestock?

    You grow an olive tree. You are in California, no? Olives are not just a funky tasting vegetable — they are an oil source. Since the agricultural revolution in the ancient Middle East, oil is wealth, oil is power. You grow olives and you press them for olive oil. Yeah, yeah, olive oil has that funky olive-vegetable taste, but it is supposed to be a mono-saturated fat that is particularly good for you — think of all those plump Southern Europeans (like South-Slavic me!) that stand to live long on olive oil.

    Yeah, you need complete amino acids, maybe the deal is to raise figs or something. But if you have olive oil plus some vegetables and starch source, you can make stuff – stir fry, “fry bread”, you know, you can raise enough food to live on in the impending Debt Crash. I am going to have to trade you apples for your olive oil.

    2. How about turnips? I never really cared for them until I started snacking on kabees el lift, Lebanese pickled turnips, which are really tasty and take about 15 minutes to make (plus waiting a couple days for pickling).

      It seems there are a lot of paleo turnip recipes, and turnips are quick and easy to grow. Plus, I’ve never heard of anyone stealing turnips.

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