making olives

i've been wanting to make olives for a couple years now, but i kept missing the picking season. well, the picking season is now and i went on an olive picking walk through the neighborhood. i found a few recipies online and started a batch of brine-cured olives last wednesday. they should take four to six weeks to cure.

while i was out running errands yesterday i saw a woman and her two children picking olives. i flipped a u turn and got out to ask the woman how she processes her olives. she turned out to be from albania and, with a little help in the translation from her young daughter, told me that where she comes from people use lots and lots of olives, but the olives she's used to are expensive here. so she was out picking olives that were going to waste - same thing i'm doing! she, however, has lots of experience with this and told me how easy it is. here's her process:

pick and wash the olives.

crush each olive to break it open. you can pit them at this stage or not.

soak the crushed olives in plain water for five days. change the water each day.

on day six, rinse the olives and put them on a baking pan. cover them liberally with salt and place them outside in the sun for a day.

when the olives have had their day in the sun, rinse them really well and place them in clean jars. cover them with heavily salted water (another recipe suggested 1/4 cup salt to 1 qt water).

the woman said the olives should be sweet with no bitterness and keep in the fridge or in the cupboard for a year. i started a batch today. i took pictures and i'll post a step-by-step with pix soon.

Harder than I thought

my little boy was diagnosed with cancer about six weeks ago. he has a wilms tumor which is a mutated kidney cell tumor. he was probably born with it. the good news is that it is very treatable. the the not-so-good news is that the 25 weeks of chemo are turning out to be a lot harder on all of us than i thought they would be. five weeks down, twenty to go. he'll also have a second surgery in the first week of december to remove the shrunken tumor and the kidney. we have a wonderful oncologist and a great surgeon, so i know it will all be fine in the end.

my cat

my cat eats the strangest things. sometimes i think she must be part dog! today, it was orange juice. she always wants to know what i'm drinking (she loves bottled water) so i usually let her sniff my glass just so she'll go away. i thought she surely would have no interest in orange juice, but i was wrong. she tried to lick my glass (yuk!) so i poured a tiny bit of juice in my hand just to show her she wouldn't like it. well, i was wrong; she loved it. she lapped it up and asked for more! i did this three times before she was satisfied. it's a good thing i didn't bet on this because i would've lost big money! i really shouldn't be surprised at anything she eats or drinks at this point because she has already flabbergasted me multiple times. here are some of the weird things she likes: eggplant, tomato sauce, minty toothpaste, watermellon, onion rings, mint tea, and now orange juice. who'd've thunk?!

WAHOOOOO!!!

i finally got up the nerve to reformat my hard drive and i fiiiinallllly got my photoshop elements to run!!! hallelujah!!!! i'm a happy camper! now i just need to get all my scrapping stuff in one place ...

very interesting!

try this out and tell me your results:
http://transformati onteam.net/ video/perceptual _experiment_ tc

i'm really curious!

i need a name ...

i'm thinking about doing scrap4hire - if i ever get my pse running again (^&%&%$*) and i need a name for my business. does anybody have any suggestions? i want to target people who may not know about scapbooking, so my business name needs to give an idea of what to expect. i was thinking about something including picture or photo in it. i also am looking for suggestions on how to market myself. thanks for any help you have to offer!

i miss the beach!

on days like this, i really miss the beach. it has been sooooo hot here. growing up in southern california, we spent a lot of time at the beach in the summer. when we weren't at the beach, we were at the pool. i'm a water baby at heart and living in the desert is hot and dry!