Knock knock. Who's there? Olive. Olive who?.....

Olive right next to you!
*tumbleweeds*

Ahem. Anyway did I mention that the climate up here is hot enough to make our olive trees fruit? I grabbed a handful last year and brined them to see how much work was involved and how they ended up.

It actually was not as involved as it seems on first read as the process is spaced over weeks. And the olives were good, although a little salty (I've since learned to put them in plain water 24 hours before use to leach out the extra salt if needed so I will do that this year). They are on the small side but the flavour is still great. Not sure what variety we have.

So here is the first lot. Heaps still on the tree and they will be ready in the next few days.

And this is the method I used. I chose this primarily because it is local so I knew it would have ingredients and measurements I use and likely use the same or similar variety of olives. There are many other brining methods on the internet though.

I have put mine in an ice cream container and used a ziplock bag full of water as the weight.

So many places use olive trees for decorative planting in Auckland and it's often hot enough for them to fruit. So if yours does you could give this a try.

Plums!

It's high summer here and our poor plum tree is groaning under the weight of the fruit. The birds are loving it and much of what is on the ground is already half eaten by them.

I sent the girls out to pick up all the rotting fruit that we hadn't got to in time. They filled up 2 buckets before deciding it wasn't worth the $2 apiece. Child labour isn't as cheap as it used to be. I think they got about half cleared away. I may have to bribe them some more tomorrow.

Meanwhile I have been offloading gifting plums to everyone. As well as plums in my fruit bowl I have made plum jam and plum cordial. Apparently you can use the leftover pulp from the cordial processing to make fruit leather but I decided against it, at least for this year.

The freezer is full of beans, sweetcorn, and broccoli ready for the cooler months. Tomatoes are now cheap so I will be making and bottling Annabel Langbein's harvest tomato sauce over the next week. We love it as a base for pizzas.