Anyone fancy a raw olive?

I was not aware that it took 40 days for an olive to be ready to eat. I like olives on my salad, I kind of forgot that until this discussion here. Most recently I've had them on my sub. I think I'm the only fan of olives really, lol.

I did know that about olives. I love them, all kinds! But something else that takes that much preparation? Nope, no idear atall atall...

Thea.. I've never had any raw olive before. Not that I can think of anyway. But I do love olive oil. So healthy for one's health, as you already know. Here, olive oil can be so expensive, around 12 bucks per bottle.

I don't know of anything that i eat that takes that long but of course i didn't know it took olives that long either. That is very interesting. u JUST TAKE THINGS FOR GRANTED NEVER KNOWING HOW THEY GET IN A JAR OR A CAN.

Hello, Thea. We have an olive tree in our garden, but so far we've had no olives on it. Our neighbour's tree is a couple of years older than ours, and last week she harvested two buckets of olives, which she spend hours pricking ready to soak in salt. We can buy a big can of olives from LIDL down the road for about 50 cents, so I asked her why she was bothering, but she wanted some olives from her own tree. I'll probably be the same when my own olives materialise. I love langoustines, and we can buy them on the markets very reasonably. They're easy enough to cook, but they're so messy to peel that I usually just by frozen, partially cooked king prawns. A couple of minutes in the pan with olive oil, garlic and chilli flakes and they're ready to eat, and no messy fingers. My husband loves ox tongue, and I usually cook one for Christmas for him. That has to be soaked, then boiled, then peeled, then pressed in a basin with savoury jelly, so it's quite a palaver, but he loves it, bless him, and it's only a once a year job. The rest of the year I just buy it on the deli counter. Only in England, though, as the Spanish prepare their tongue differently and it's not so flavourful. Tongue is one of the very few items that England can do better than Spain.

I almost knew this or I should say I guessed this. Coz not a single show has been aired on travel and living where they show raw olive being eaten!! I have this faint memory of someone saying that it is disgusting to eat raw olives. We get the salted ones here in bottles and I have wondered what it tastes like when raw...But oil is extracted from raw ones right without keeping it in saline water? We have this dish prepared from mangoes which are kept in saline water for more than 3 weeks. It tastes good and diffrent. The mangoes are peeles and mashed to make a curry with yogurt. It is prefect for a hot summer day.

The only thing that I can think of is potato which is quite inedible in the raw state.

hi thea the only thing that this early in the morning that I can think of that needs a lot of things done to it is hominy,which is corn that has been treated someway with lye water,yep sodium hydroxide, and the stuff really does' taste good, but whenever I eat it I have to make myself forget this hominy was made with lye water other wise I am apt to wonder if hominy is going to corrode my insides.lol. also there is sauerkraut that my mother used to make,you essentially make the beginnings of coleslaw but leave off the dressing and let the shredded cabbage set in a warm 'room until it sort of ferments and turns into sauerkraut. I love the stuff if it is homemade, the canned sauerkraut is messed up with too much vinegar so all you taste is cheap vinegar that puckers up your mouth and doesnt give you that crisp sauerkraut taste. I often wonder who invented the processes that take good food and turn it into something else, either good or bad. I did know about olives, that they have to be soaked in salt water for a long time. I love both black and green olives.

I realise that you're still upset with me for not including you in my will, but please don't punish me with an olive... I beg you spare my life and I'm totally at your service I'm highly allergic to anything with olives so you won't catch me anywhere near an olive..

Now let me think...I do love olives, by the way...green with pimentoes or the dark olives, too. And I cook now always with extra virgin olive oil for it's taste and health properties. I hate raw fish, so I don't eat sushi...but cooked and season a fish first. I eat no raw meat, or rare meat. It must all be well done! That's the first thing that comes to mind, lol. Perhaps I'll be back if I think of something else.

I did not know that it took 40 days for an olive to be edible. I love the black olives but the green olives are just to salty for my taste. If I start eating black olives I can hardly stop eating them I almost eat a whole can of them.

Dear Thea, Have not tried the raw olives. Previously I do not know how to appreciate olives till one day when I went to Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Bahrain where they served superb olives with salad. The green and dark colour ones was great indeed! Now, olives is my favourite! I guess there are many fruits that I would not know their names in English, were pickled so that it is edible.... In Bahasa Malaysia, we have this fruit call 'kedondong'. Thanks and happy myLotting!

I love olives of all kinds and always have. I used to eat green olives like popcorn. I also love raw oysters with hot sauce. Yum yum! I really love most foods that are pickled :)

I love olives! I eat it with everything...salads, pasta, sandwiches, pizza...I sometimes even it it by the spoon full! I have tried an olive directly from a tree; I knew that it has to be processed first to make it edible but my curiosity got the best of me. And let me tell you, it was indeed disgusting! I couldn't spit it out fast enough and the foul taste lasted in my mouth for nearly an hour. I also love to cook with olive oil, since it is a lot healthier and has more nutrients than regular canola or corn oil.

I hear that those things are very disgusting raw, people prefer the ones that are pickled...those are the best...

I was thinking about this some time ago (I'm not sure if I even mentioned it in a discussion) - how I've never seen a fresh, raw olive in my entire life, and how you can only find olives in that black salty juice... I was really puzzled on how they manage to import many sorts of exotic fruit, bringing them from half around the Globe, but they can't bring fresh olives from Greece or Turkey, which are a few hundred kilometers away.

Here we can only get olives in a can. So I imagine that they have some sort of cooking process but, I really don't know. I really don't care for the taste of green olives but, I will eat them if they are in sauces or potatoe salad. I much prefer black olives.

i have never tried raw olives so can't say about its taste. here we only get olive oil (i wonder if the taste of the two can be related?). but then you are right. there are many natural things that do not taste good unless they are processed. (including tea, coffee and chocolate). it would be interesting to know how their processing was discovered.

I love olives! As to other foods that need to be processed before being edible (to humans), 5 come to mind: 1) sabah: a kind of super starcy banana that can be eaten in any variety of ways, as either a fruit or a vegetable. The only way sabah can NOT be eaten, however, is raw. 2) soybeans: since these are high in trypsin inhibitors in their natural state, not only do they taste awful when raw, they can also be harmful. Tofu is traditionally made by soaking soy beans in salt water, but I don't think they need to be soaked very long. 3) nathak: is a kind of harder, starchier version of tofu made from trees (don't know which). The bark from a tree trunk is peeled off, then the remaining log is ground down to a pulpy paste. The resulting goo is filtered, so the fibers are removed. Let it set for a few hours (or was it days? I forgot), and voila! Nathak. 4) sago: don't know if this is a fruit or a vegetable, but it is used as both here in the Philippines. Like soy beans, this can be eaten in any number of ways, except raw. I understand it has to be boiled in salt for a bit. 5) edible camphor: which comes from the camphor laurel. I understand oil from this tree is processed the same way as turpentine, but by adding some other equally poisonous substances to it, the combination creates something edible. How ancient people figured the right combination of deadly chemicals to make something edible, is beyond me. They were probably trying to find a more lethal poison, and came up with it by accident: "Raj, you idiot! He's still alive!?" "I don't understand it! I put enough poison in that damn turpentine mix to kill 3 elephants!"

Hi Thea, I never knew that about the olive. I love olives in martinis but have given up the martini but not the olives. The only thing I can think of that took the same type of preparation but not as long as 40 days was something I didn't even make but my dad did. It's called kim chee (Korean). We had it at a Korean restaurant and it was so good, salty and spicy, not a clue to what was in the mixture but my dad seemed to know and he decided to try to make it. He cut up vegetables (mostly cabbage, I think) and other non-descript stuff) and soaked it in a "for dad's knowledge only" solution(I don't think he remembers what he put in it) for about 3 days (edible at this point) to 1 week (very seasoned at this point) and voila, homemade kim chee. It was good, hot going down and coming out (if you know what I mean.)