Today I put the olives for eating into jars. They’ve been in water for 2 weeks, with the water being changed every day.
I made up a brine of water with enough salt in it to float a medium-sized peeled potato, and gathered rosemary, bay, garlic and piri-piri from the garden to flavour the olives.
I spooned olives and flavourings into the jars in layers. I used 2 garlic cloves, 2 piri-piri, 1 bay leaf, and one small sprig of rosemary per jar. This is total guesswork, so I need to remember when we eat them to write down if these quantities worked or not.
Then I filled the jars with brine, put the lids on, labelled the jars, and put them in the adega. They’ll be ready for eating in 6 weeks, although I’ve done one jar covered with olive oil and put it in the sun to steep which we will try tonight. The olives have already lost a lot of their bitterness and I’m interested to try really fresh ones!
I’m loving that, apart from the salt, all the ingredients are from our land – even the water 
Thanks to multi-talented Conny Kadia for her eating olives recipe.
I also hung up some piri-piri plants and some bay to dry in the kitchen.
Andy was out having a bonfire of olive prunings and managed to burn himself – eek! So he got Aloe Vera and a bandage for the burn, and home-made raisin bread with our own honey for lunch.
Meanwhile … Jonny’s been making a loveable loo:
Hi. Lovely to “read” from you again
Just to let you know something about burns.
The best thing to do when you burn yourself is to cover the burn area immediately with egg white, lightly beaten. I’ve done it when I burn myself with hot water and it worked very, very well. The heat of the burned area will cook the whites so you have to change them frequently but it really gives you a big relief.
Hi Ana
Thanks for the tip! We find Aloe Vera works really well (we used it when our baby grand-daughter got burnt with hot water and the doctor couldn’t believe how quickly it was healing!). Also we have plenty of Aloe Vera but not so many eggs this time of year