Member-only story
In Praise of the Olive
Olive You! (WP BL 01)
The first time I had olives, I ate a quarter kilo right out of a paper cone. (That’s about half a pound for the 2% of us who don’t use the metric system). I was wandering the sunny streets of Madrid, I had nowhere to be, and life was good. My lifelong love affair with olives began on that day.
I never had olives growing up because my mother didn’t like them. And what she didn’t like, we didn’t eat — she ruled the kitchen and made the menus. There were lots of foods we didn’t have because of her aversions. Brussels sprouts and eggplant, both of which I eat today, come to mind.
So olives were not on my radar. If I had them in any dish (not made by my mother, of course), I picked them out and put them on the side. They were squishy, fetid, and foreign.
I don’t know what drew me to them on that warm sunny day in Madrid. Maybe it was their colors — ranging from mauve to black, no two olives had the same hue. Once I bought the quarter-kilo cone (probably because it was the smallest), I was committed.
I bit into the first olive and was smitten. The flavor notes were as complex as a fine wine. They kept on coming, surrendering their saltiness and tang. By pressing them between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, I could suck out the piquant saltiness.
