Selfsufficientish.com

So I´ve been soaking my olives in brine and and changing the water for about 6 months now (yep, sometimes I just clean forgot about them!), and now they are edible.

So how do I go on from here. They are currently sitting in fresh water, no salt. I´m a bit worried as I read that being low acid, I have to use a pressure canner to avoid botulism, which, of course, I don´t have.

Any thoughts?

Not sure if this will help but it’s what we do with our olives. Jar them in a brine solution 2 pints (1 litre) of water plus 3% oz (100 gms) of salt for every 1 kg of olives. Place the pan with this solution on a moderate heat. As soon as the water comes to the boil take it off the heat. Leave the liquid to cool, then place it in glass jars together the olives. Cover jars and store.

You can wash the olives before eating them and dress them with olive-oil, chilli, garlic, lemon, oregano etc.

We don’t soak them for anywhere as long as you but I suspect that we have different varieties . To make sure that you are doing it correctly ask your neighbours – we’ve been shown so many ways to deal with different types of olives including one that involved soaking them in caustic soda!

Thank you. I´ve seen many methods using lye (caustic soda), just don´t have the faith!!!

I shall give this a go.

Anyone have any feedback on the issue of botulism?

Having noticed we still had some lovely big, black unspoilt olives on a few trees I've just picked a bucket full for pickling. As I've only jarred green olives before, I did some surfing last night and found this little gem.

Just thought I'd post it in case you've not seen it before Clara.

http://www.milkwood.net/resources/how-t ... style.html

Thank you...unfortunately I lost all my olives this year I put them in a string bag to wash in the running water of my spring and the bag rotted, olives washed away. Ah well, next year uh?

Ooh that's annoying. Just think, they'll tun up downstream somewhere as perfect table olives.