The Simplest and Best Way to Cure Olives

By Gerald Smith
If you are lucky enough to have your own olive trees, you will know how bitter raw olives taste straight from the tree. The bitterness is left behind with the pulp when olives are pressed to make oil, but if you want to prepare them for eating - and spare the expense of a press - the fruit must first must be processed, or 'cured'. Although there are several ways to do this, this article will outline the simplest - and in my experience the best - method, which uses only salt. It's the way olives have been cured in Greece for at least three thousand years.
Ripe olives generally include a mixture of black and green fruit. The black olives are the riper ones, but don't wait to harvest them until all of them are black. When the majority of the olives on the tree are black, all of them are ready for picking. Don't wait for the olives to fall from the tree, because by that time many of them will be spoiled. The following cure works equally well on both black and green olives.
Remove any stems and leaves, and wash the fruit in a bucket using fresh water. Pour away the dirty water and spread the olives across a clean table or floor.
Using a sharp knife or fork, make three or four cuts in the skin of each olive. These incisions will enable the salt water to draw the bitterness out of the fruit - the treatment won't work without them.
Dissolve 120 grams of salt into each liter of a bucket of clean water. Throw the the pricked olives into this solution, using an upturned plate to ensure that every olive is submerged. Note that this is about three times the concentration of salt in seawater, so don't use seawater as a substitute.
After 24 hours, pour the liquid away and replace with clean saline water of the same concentration. Repeat this step daily for about 12 days. After 10 days, taste an olive or two each day: continue this washing cycle until every trace of bitterness has gone.
When the washing process is completed and the olives are edible, they are ready to be stored. Pour away the last of the saline solution and dry the olives. Place them into sealable storage jars, topping up the jars with olive oil. If you want, you can add flavorings to the oil: garlic, basil and lemon juice are particular favorites. Ensure that every olive is submerged in the oil, then seal the jar. Store the olives in a cool, dark place.
Although this method is both cheap and simple, it is also quite labor-intensive, and therefore unsuitable for commercial quantities of fruit. The finished product, however, is delicious: those chemically-treated, mass-produced olives that you can buy for a fortune at the local delicatessen will never taste the same again.
Gerald Smith is a technical consultant at [http://www.smithgcb.demon.co.uk/]Piedmont Properties, a real estate agency specializing in Italian vineyards.
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Seven Mistakes to Avoid When Melting Chocolate

By Barbara O'Brien
If you haven't had it happen to you at least once, consider yourself lucky. You're standing there at the stove, melting some of those little blocks of chocolate that come in boxes. You anticipate with glee those chocolate-dipped strawberries that will be tonight's dinner finale. You look up to check the time or talk to the kids, and when you look back at the stove, your chocolate is not becoming silky smooth, but gloppy and weird. And to add insult to (culinary) injury, the more you heat and stir, the lumpier it gets.
Your chocolate has seized. The good news is that you can still use that chocolate mess in other recipes if you haven't scorched it. The bad news is that you won't be having chocolate dipped strawberries tonight. Read on to discover the seven most common ways to ruin chocolate when melting it and what you can do to avoid disaster.
Mistake #1. Letting water make contact with the chocolate - A block of chocolate doesn't look like it, but it has no water in it at all. It's made of small, dry particles of cocoa and sugar and of cocoa butter. A drop of water that gets into the melting chocolate causes the particles to clump up around the water. This is seizing. You can avoid this by keeping any moisture away from the chocolate. If you melt your chocolate in a double boiler, don't use too much water in the bottom and do not let the water boil.
Mistake #2. Overheating. If the heat is too high, the chocolate will scorch before it's all melted. While this is technically not seizing, scorched chocolate forms little clumps of its own. There is nothing you can do with scorched chocolate, except maybe use it as a face mask or something. Don't eat it.
The double boiler is a life saver here (although still not totally foolproof). Again, let the water simmer, not boil. You can also melt chocolate in the oven if you have extra time. Set the oven to its lowest temperature and check the chocolate every few minutes and stir it. Keep in mind, chocolate shouldn't get hotter than about 115 degrees F. when melting. This is just warm, not hot.
The microwave oven works quite well if you set it on 50% power, check your chocolate and stir after 1 minute, then nuke and stir every 15-20 seconds until it is almost melted. Stir without heating, and let the residual heat melt the chocolate completely.
Mistake #3. Trying to melt a big chunk of chocolate - not only will you still be standing there at the stove until sometime tomorrow trying to melt it, you'll have scorched it long before the whole chunk is melted. Chop up the chocolate, please. Try to chop it into fairly uniform pieces. Think chocolate chips for dark chocolate, finer for milk or white chocolate, as they tend to burn more easily. This applies no matter what method you use.
Mistake #4. Trying to melt it directly in a pot on the stove - Much too hot, too fast. You know that the chocolate touching the bottom of the pan is going to get way over 115 degrees. Don't do it.
Mistake #5. Neglecting it - Melting chocolate needs attention; it needs love. It needs to be stirred frequently to distribute the heat evenly.
Mistake #6. Putting a lid on the melting chocolate - Okay, I've seen this recommended before, but the problem here is that any moisture caught in the pan will condense on the lid and drip down into the chocolate. And you know what happens then, right?
Mistake #7. Trying to make it melt faster - Patience is a virtue. You can't hurry the process. You're just asking for trouble. Use low heat and take your time.
Remember: use low heat, take your time, keep it dry, and stir, stir, stir. You're working with chocolate here. Breathe in that rich aroma. Marvel at the silkiness of the melted chocolate. Anticipate the delight of the final product. Hey, don't get too lost in your senses. You have to keep stirring. Good luck.
In the next article on chocolate, I'll talk about what you can do with that seized chocolate.
Barbara O'Brien is an author, cook and mother of two young chefs. She encourages adults and children to learning about cooking and nutrition together. Find great recipes, nutrition tips, and fun facts at [http://www.squidoo.com/yummyrecipes]Incredibly Good Recipes and [http://kids-cook.com]Kids-Cook.com
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Benefits of Cinnamon

Cinnamon’s unique healing abilities come from three basic types of components in the essential oils found in its bark. These oils contain active components called cinnamaldehyde, cinnamyl acetate, and cinnamyl alcohol, plus a wide range of other volatile substances.

Cinnamaldehyde (also called cinnamic aldehyde) has been well-researched for its effects on blood platelets. Platelets are constituents of blood that are meant to clump together under emergency circumstances (like physical injury) as a way to stop bleeding, but under normal circumstances, they can make blood flow inadequate if they clump together too much. The cinnaldehyde in cinnamon helps prevent unwanted clumping of blood platelets. (The way it accomplishes this health-protective act is by inhibiting the release of an inflammatory fatty acid called arachidonic acid from platelet membranes and reducing the formation of an inflammatory messaging molecule called thromboxane A2.) Cinnamon's ability to lower the release of arachidonic acid from cell membranes also puts it in the category of an “anti-inflammatory” food that can be helpful in lessening inflammation.

Cinnamon may significantly help people with type 2 diabetes improve their ability to respond to insulin, thus normalizing their blood sugar levels. Both test tube and animal studies have shown that compounds in cinnamon not only stimulate insulin receptors, but also inhibit an enzyme that inactivates them, thus significantly increasing cells’ ability to use glucose. Studies to confirm cinnamon’s beneficial actions in humans are currently underway with the most recent report coming from researchers from the US Agricultural Research Service, who have shown that less than half a teaspoon per day of cinnamon reduces blood sugar levels in persons with type 2 diabetes. Their study included 60 Pakistani volunteers with type 2 diabetes who were not taking insulin. Subjects were divided into six groups. For 40 days, groups 1, 2 and 3 were given 1, 3, or 6 grams per day of cinnamon while groups 4, 5 and 6 received placebo capsules. Even the lowest amount of cinnamon, 1 gram per day (approximately ¼ to ½ teaspoon), produced an approximately 20% drop in blood sugar; cholesterol and triglycerides were lowered as well. When daily cinnamon was stopped, blood sugar levels began to increase. (December 30, 2003)

Not only does consuming cinnamon improve the body’s ability to utilize blood sugar, but just smelling the wonderful odor of this sweet spice boosts brain activity! Research led by Dr. P. Zoladz and presented April 24, 2004, at the annual meeting of the Association for Chemoreception Sciences, in Sarasota, FL, found that chewing cinnamon flavored gum or just smelling cinnamon enhanced study participants’ cognitive processing. Specifically, cinnamon improved participants’ scores on tasks related to attentional processes, virtual recognition memory, working memory, and visual-motor speed while working on a computer-based program. Participants were exposed to four odorant conditions: no odor, peppermint odor, jasmine, and cinnamon, with cinnamon emerging the clear winner in producing positive effects on brain function. Encouraged by the results of these studies, researchers will be evaluating cinnamon’s potential for enhancing cognition in the elderly, individuals with test-anxiety, and possibly even patients with diseases that lead to cognitive decline. (May 9, 2004)


Douglas Adams is an Independent Watkins Associate
http://www.watkinsonline.com/douglas.adams/

“Watkins award-winning high-oil Korintje cassia is about twice as flavorful as the Ceylon variety, and is the best quality cinnamon available anywhere”