better living through chemistry

Is this really only my 15th post of the year? Holy crap I've been slacking. Wait, correct that. I've been slacking at posting anything this year, but slacking with the food projects? Hell no. For example, this picture is but a small bit of what 80 pounds of olives looks like when they are freshly harvested and temporarily residing on a sheet in my living room, awaiting sorting. Two short days later, it was time to start running some experiments. And after a few years of failed attempts with various methods (let's see: vinegar soaking, dry-brining, brine solutions, and fermenting them), it was now time to use the heavy chemicals. More specifically, sodium hydroxide.

Has anyone attempted to buy any lye lately? If you have, did you have any luck? You see, the stuff is rather hard to come by these days sitting on a shelf, as the regulations regarding the sale of it have changed. Rumor has it that quite a few meth-head chemists were purchasing the stuff for cooking up their product, which started to raise eyebrows to the folks selling the stuff, which suddenly made it harder for someone with a legal reason to have the stuff. All of which makes you seem suspect, trying to do so now. It took me about three days, and a jaunt to the next county over to get some. Luckily, it was even food grade, which was great since I had some instructions I was planning on following rather closely.

With an aforementioned large amount of olives to work with, six different experiments have been attempted, with five of them still in process. The fastest one to completion made it in time for a few x-mas gifts, and use at a few parties. So far the consensus is that it worked. They taste like real olives, have a nice texture and even still look decent. But most importantly, they fit on small fingers like real olives should. And that is no lye....

Happy New Year y'all!

(Give me a shout out to let me know you are still out there readers. You never know, it might make for one of them New Year's resolutions along the lines of me pulling it together and documenting more stuff. Which I'm planning on having more time to do so since I'm gonna start running again and I'll have to sit down for a rest eventually.)