Fruit of the Silvery-Green Tree
What is it about olives?
Just...what is it about them?
I used to hate them until very recently; the brine or cure in which they are placed often either tasted bad to me or really didn't sit well in my stomach. In general, most things that are pickled set my tummy into the duck-and-cover position, unless the balance is so light on the vinegar that it hardly has bite. Sourkraut is a total no-no, and most gardinera mixes (Italian pickled veggies, which are often part of an antipasto spread) never go past my lips. Essentially, only kosher dill pickles and 2 recipes in my possession for pickled beets were the only pickled items which didn't sour my gastromic organ. (Yet my absolute favorite 'dressing' for salad is rice wine or red wine vinegar, and plenty of it, or lemon juice and a hint of olive oil...who knew?)
Well, things have changed. The Brilliant One (as my mother calls me, rolling her eyes at the same time) has figured out that if I take olives, wash off the brine or cure, that they are tollerable, and more often than not they're damned tasty. I started with oil-cured Provencal olives...and have now tried it with Kalamata and Nicoise olives. This is amazing!
See, I grew up on olive oil (extra virgin, please), and love the taste of it. Hell, there is nothing better than a loaf of crusty bread straight out of the oven, dipped in olive oil/balsamico/cracked pepper...in fact, my heart breaks (hah) when all that's left is olive oil. The taste is devine. And I always knew that it was the brine/cure that was setting me off...just that I didn't put 2 and 2 together to get 10.
Now? Oh, there's always chopped olives in my salad...and the funniest part came tonight. Often when I'm chopping stuff, Bella (my cat) gets curious and wants to smell what I'm doing. So, I figured I'd let her smell an olive that I just cracked open and pitted. She couldn't stop smelling it! She didn't want to lick it--thank God, as I'm pretty sure that olives are bad for cats--but it was such a different smell that she didn't know what to do.
So, I repeat: what is it about olives!?
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