The finished product
Ever since I’d read that pickling food can create botulism, I’d been a little nervous. Yet there I was, ready to put our olives into jars.
This is the part where it can all go horribly wrong. One false move and you’ve created the Olives of Death.
I stood at the island in the center of the kitchen. It was a bright Saturday morning, and the light was streaming in the French doors that open out to the deck and the olive grove beyond. Above me the peaked wooden ceiling spread its wings.
There is something about the flow of the house that draws people to that spot in the kitchen. So many of our dinner parties and household conversations seem to congregate around that island.
In front of me I had my canning jars, garlic, lemon, thyme, vinegar, and the olive oil fresh from our grove just two months before.
I’d already waited my 40 days and 40 nights, changing the water on the olives every other day, and then I’d left them in rock salt for two days like the recipe said.
It was time to risk making botulism.
Bringing in the olives
Salt moon
I brought the olive bucket into the kitchen and opened the lid. The white circle of salt at the bottom of that black, inky void looked like the moon.
I poured the salt-covered olives into a colander in the sink and washed them. At all stages of the process I made sure everything – the colander, the sink, the counter – was immaculately clean. After all, I didn’t want anyone to die.
The olives looked a bit shrunken from the salt treatment, but otherwise fine.
Various recipes I’d read said that to pickle properly you have to boil everything – the ingredients, the jars, the lids, the utensils. Everything.
A little voice inside my head whispered, “Botulism!”
First I boiled the jars in water, then boiled the fresh garlic cloves, lemon juice and freshly chopped thyme in the vinegar. I filled the sterilized jars with the dark olives and poured in the vinegar, complete with one or two of the garlic cloves, until the jars were filled halfway. Then I topped them up with our vibrant green olive oil. Finally I put on the lids and placed the full jars into a pot of – you guessed it – boiling water.
No germ was going to survive my phobic sanitation regimen. Everything was going fine.
The only difficulty was that I had six jars full of olives and the pot could only fit three at a time. So when the first three had been in the boiling water for a few minutes, I tried to lift them out.
That was a mistake.
Pulling out the jars
Boiling jars
To get at the jars, I used the pair of over-priced, high-tech oven mitts Rick and I bought last time we were in the States. They’re rubber and their selling point was that you can use them to put your hand in a pot of boiling water to pull out a lobster.
I have never once needed to pull a lobster out of a pot of boiling water. Neither, I can say with some certainty, has Rick. Yet that minor point escaped us both when we saw those gleaming red mitts in the store.
Now it struck me that those oven mitts were the perfect thing for pulling jars of pickled olives out of a pot of boiling water. I would pull the jars out and put the second batch in without missing a beat.
I slipped both gloves on and reached in. The gloves, thankfully, didn’t leak. I picked the jars up by the lids. Out came the first jar. Out came the second.
As I was lifting the third and last jar out, the screw-top ring came off. I suppose the hot water had made the metal expand and become loose.
I watched as the jar fell from my hands and hit the countertop next to the oven with a thunk. Miraculously, the glass didn’t break. What’s more surprising was that the lid stayed on, even though there was no longer any screw-top ring to hold it in place.
But the jar, unfortunately, had not yet come to rest.
The offending oven mitts
It rose up in an odd bounce, and I reached down to stop it from falling onto the floor – both of my hands still encased in thick, red, rubber. It was like trying to catch a hot explosive device while your hands are shoved inside a pair of shoes.
I hit the jar wrong. The lid let loose its tenuous grip and came off. Suddenly hot vinegar, olive oil, and olives came flooding out. I jumped back.
It is a scientific fact that the crack between the stove and the kitchen counter in any domestic environment serves as a kind of voracious black hole, sucking in all falling objects within a three foot radius. I pondered this particularly fascinating phenomenon as I watched the contents of that jar go directly down that crack.
Any liquid that managed to escape the grip of the greedy Stove Meets Counter Vortex spilled out gracefully along the countertop, cascaded lovingly down the cupboard doors, and flowed swiftly across the tile floor.
And olives rolled like marbles everywhere.
I wish that I could say that I responded with a calm, Zen-like equanimity, but I did not. Instead those over-priced, high-tech, bright red oven mitts went flying across the room, along with a stream of obscenities.
I stood there and looked at the mess. There were splashes of garlic, lemon and thyme across every surface imaginable. In what was not my finest hour, I actually contemplated trying to save the olives that were across the floor, but the little voice in my head once again wisely whispered, “botulism,” and so they went straight into the compost bin.
Finished olives on the counter
It was almost 45 minutes before I’d cleaned everything up – a herculean task which of course involved moving the stove.
Then I went calmly about boiling the last three jars. I can tell you this: when they were done, I did not pull them out with the red oven mitts.
Waiting two weeks
The recipe says you have to wait two weeks after jarring the olives before you can eat them.
The two weeks came and went, but for some reason Rick and I never opened a jar. These olives were special, and rare. After pressing most of our harvest olives for oil, and giving buckets of olives away to helpful friends – not to mention spilling that one jarful across the kitchen floor – we had just five jars of olives in our cupboard.
These were olives that needed an occasion.
Then three volunteers came to stay with us. We were providing them with room and board in return for 4 hours of work per day on the property. They were in their late twenties, travelling the world – two young British women from Newcastle and a Japanese woman from Tokyo.
The Brits had worked hard that day grubbing thistle out of the top paddock, and the Japanese woman had cleaned bathrooms and windows. We wanted to thank them.
It was dark already. Dinner was an hour away. Outside the moon was full. Inside the fire roared. I got out some cheese and crackers, offered our guests a beer. Then, out came the olives.
I checked the jar, top and bottom, to see if I could see any signs of mold. I shook it and checked again. All clear. Then I opened the jar and sniffed to see if the olives smelled putrid.
They smelled absolutely delicious. Garlic, lemon and thyme soared around my head.
Rick and I tasted them first, just to make sure they were okay to serve, and because we deserved it. They were heady strong with garlic and thyme, but absolutely wonderful.
I put some in a bowl and told an olive story to our guests. When they tasted them, they ooo-ed and aah-ed.
But most tellingly, they ate them all up.
____________________
Related posts
Read other posts about:
See the pickling recipe on: Zen and the art of olive pickling
Or read the next post: Giant beings in the bottom paddock
Jared, I want your life! Lovely post, I like the salt moon and I can taste the lemon, garlic and thyme. I am also there with you on the spill – the previous owners of our house thought it wise to install a terracotta tile floor, so everything I drop shatters. I’ve mopped up at least 2 litres of (probably rancid) olive oil.
Why don’t we swap for a while? I wouldn’t mind being a published novelist. :-)
I also have a pair of the offending red mitts! Yes, you can put your hands in boiling water, but…someone should have warned you.
Please don’t EVER stop your writing. I enjoy evey minute of it!
Thanks Carmen!
Your olives look absolutely delicious. I hope the recipe was helpful. By the way, your blog is great!
Tell me how I can buy your olives and have them sent to my home in Ohio?
So sorry Suzy – we’re not up to selling them yet. But who knows, maybe in time…
Just a note regarding botulism. The spores of this organism (clostridium)are not killed by the temperature of boiling water, but they will not develop in the presence of acid. Most of the problems with botulism in home-preserved vegetables (such as green beans) have been the absence of acid in the salt mixture. Your recipe uses vinegar, so like millions of Greeks and Italians you should have no problems. However, your scrupulous attention to clean, scalded bowls and jars is a wise precaution if the olives have been in salt for that time. I’ve used the same process with green olives and the product has been equally good. I really enjoy your blog.
That’s so good to know! Thank you!
We can’t wait to savour some of your delicious olives. Ours are still getting there, almost there :)
We’ll have an Olive Fest soon.
Only you could write an olive story this good! I read in awe of all the detailed work, care and precaution you took in preparing your olives (to avoid the dreaded botulism) and then grimaced as I read about the spill and those crazy gloves. But, with relief, there was a happy ending. It sounds like your hard working guests devoured them and with such a story to wet their appetites I am not surprised they went down a treat.
Your writing is enchanting! I followed your link after you commented in mine, and I’ve never been so glad! :)
Just so you know, there are neat little tools you can get, designed JUST for removing glass jars from boiling water and pressure canners. Here’s a picture:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_tys6n13YiAE/SjBNNFFh2bI/AAAAAAAAAg0/5dmCIkYvINo/s1600-h/100_0015.JPG
They have rubber coated handles so you never burn your hands on metal (though please do use oven mitts with good grips when using them), and they have rubber grippers on the bottom part so the jars don’t slip out.
Your boiling water bath is, as mentioned, good for acidic foods (and olives in vinegar do qualify). However, if you’re ever worried, invest in a pressure canner. We can our own chicken broth, green beans, and other non-acidic foods with no worries at all. Scrupulous cleanliness is important, and a good guide to pressure canning. For instance, our chicken broth is canned at 212 degrees F (the temperature of boiling water), at a pressure of 220 pounds, for 20 minutes. This ensures that nothing can live inside there. The pressure poundage creates a higher temperature than boiling water alone can achieve, thereby killing off your botulism spores.
We live by our pressure canner. :) It’s so useful for canning, and it’s large enough to use as a back-up soup pot if we have lots of people coming over. AND if you get a tough old hen that’s outlived her egg laying days, you can slaughter her and put her in for a while, and she comes out tender as a pullet. :)
Yes, I need those can grabber things! Fantastic that you do so much canning. You’re in inspiration to newbies like me.
“Death by Olives”
I have the same fear, only it is of making: The Salmon Mousse.
All this hoo-ha for 5 jars?
Have you ever even heard of a cost/benefit analysis?! They must be the 5 most expensive jars of olives ever.
As an agricultural economist, I can tell you that the olive industry in NZ is heading for a massive dump caused by chronic over-supply as more people jump on the bandwagon and their groves come to production.
There is a limit how many people will pay enough for oil to make it sustainable in a population as small as NZ and we are perilously close to it now! I just did a paper on it for publication soon.
Sadly, Kiwis are all too fond of ignoring the economic realities of such ventures: most of the wineries struggle to make a profit as well.
Sea Innuck,
No offense, but if all you saw in this post was a “cost benefit analysis” then you missed the point entirely. As I talk about in my own blog, they’re not packaging up olives – they’re packaging up summer, and memories. Each jar of olives they put up, is a jar of olives they don’t need to buy later in the year. Each portion of preserved food that ANY family puts up provides them with one more serving that doesn’t need to be purchased at a grocery.
There are plenty of statistics out there to prove it’s cheaper to buy. Of course it is! When you can mass produce, and grow genetically modified fruits that last longer, don’t spoil as easily, and don’t bruise, then you can produce cheaper goods. But you get what you pay for. When I want to eat cardboard, all I need to do is buy tomatoes from a grocery store. Sure they’re cheap… but you get what you pay for.
Growing and pickling and pressing olives is definitely a high risk activity. It’s a fact that a small scale grove in New Zealand won’t make you rich. There’s a bigger risk however, and that lies in the fact that if you’re not careful, it just might make you happy.
Exactly. And I’ll bet you dimes for dollars that it makes you a heck of a lot healthier too. I fail to see how a flavorless clone tomato can beat the vibrant vitamin C and sunshiney goodness of my home-grown ones. :) And yes, those can grabber thingies are the best buy, shy of the pressure canner. :)
I’ve done olive pickling which we did in wood-ash lye (normally for green olives – but I did full ripe) with lemon instead of the vinegar. They were exquisite, even without the home-grown olive oil. I hope to do them again in Tas. And no matter what the innuck says, those jars were worth every ounce of effort, in quality and memories. More people should grow their own food :-)
cheers
Dave