I Love Olives More Than Anyone Else

I love the movie Under the Tuscan Sun with Diane Lane. She leaves her cheating husband, and on a whim, purchases a villa in Tuscany with an olive orchard. That would be so cool! I often wonder if olives would taste good without sitting in the brine. You see, I've abused my body all my life and now must take as much medicine as an old fart. At middle age, I can no longer tolerate salt. Drat!!! I LOVE OLIVES.



It started when I was a wee little girl at Granny's house in FL. Her favorite thing must have also been olives, because she always had a relish tray on the bar with pickles, green olives, and black olives. I believe this was always the case as I visited mostly on major holidays, or over the summer, which had a big holiday, too. Granny would have a big shin-dig of food for these events...ham, bunny cakes at Easter, Fourth of July cake for 4th of July. And then the birthdays were always food occasions. Food Glorious Food!



Back to the olives.



I don't remember at what point I developed this olive-lust, but I remember taking black olives and putting one on the tip of each finger, then eating them off one by one. Black olives are good. What is funny about the black olive thing, though, is they have the texture of mushrooms almost, and I don't really like mushrooms. I love the texture and taste of black olives so much that I can down a whole can of large pitted black olives easily. Green olives are a little more technical. As a child, I would suck the pimento out before ingesting the olive. I'm not in to that anymore.



I can eat olives as a side dish. I can eat them as a snack. I can put them in Granny's famous Egg and Olive Salad (which my offspring LOVES--he has the olive-lust, too--thank God he has the right number of chromosomes). I don't care for martinis, so there will be no dousing them in alcohol.



A relative of olives I do not like is the caper. Bleh!!



I looked at the label of Queen Olives the other day, and they have nearly 500mg of sodium just in three little beautiful green creatures soaked in sourness. WHY!?!?! Lately life is about denial, or deal with cankles. Cankles make me bitchy. I've never had nice feet, but my ankles were always somewhat normal.



I made a grilled cheese sandwich today (cheese is another post entirely). I also had a side of queen olives. I'm looking at the plate right now, and see a bit of olive juice. I'm seriously contemplating licking the plate. If someone dumped a cart of olives on me, I really don't think I would mind. There should be an amusement park ride called Rollick With the olives. It will be similar to those disgusting inflatable ball-y things that the kids like. But with olives. I'd take my shoes off and dive in and swim amongst the fruits.

Maybe I can fashion a necklace of olives. Then I could smell them all day. I've often wondered what it would be like to drink a little extra virgin olive oil. That smells good to me.

Hopefully the good things about olives are benefiting me in some way...