A Bitter Lesson in Harvesting Olives

Question: For close to 30 years I’ve had a lone olive tree. For close to 30 autumns and late summers, I have harvested its crop. But the crop goes to ground because I haven’t been able to figure out how to transform the little black beauties into an edible fruit.

I was told by the county at one time that there were two processes I could use. One involved using lye and I wanted nothing to do with that. The other I tried, but I failed at it. That involved putting the olives in a dark drawer for weeks, going in daily and sprinkling fresh salt on them. All this did was scare my kids, who thought there was a drawer full of roaches.

Have you heard of any workable processes?--C.L.

Answer: It might be less trouble for you to process and cure your own bacon than to cope with olives.

The olive is a curious fruit, indeed, according to Dr. Martin Miller, a food technologist with UC Davis. And getting the bitterness out can get awfully involved. It means going to quite a bit of trouble for something that’s eaten in one bite.

What causes this lip-puckering bitterness, according to another olive expert, Dr. George York, also a food technologist with UC Davis’ Department of Food Science and Technology, is oleuropein, a bitter chemical that runs rampant through green olives.

Because you refer to your olives as “little black beauties,” both of our resident experts on the fruit are afraid that you may be waiting entirely too long in the maturation cycle to do anything meaningful with them.

If you are waiting until they turn completely black and fall to the ground, they say, you’re ending up with olives best converted into olive oil or, at best (picked before they fall to the ground), you have olives that may lend themselves to the “dry Greek style” of processing--involving layers of rock salt alternated with layers of olives. But which, according to Miller, “is still very much of an acquired taste. They’re still quite bitter to American palates.”

Strawberry Tint

California olives, York adds, start turning green about Oct. 1 and continue in this greening-up mode for about four to six weeks. At this point, a strawberry tint begins manifesting itself, but they are still fine for processing. The coloration then shades into purple and, by mid-December, they are black.

If the Greek-style bitter blacks are your bag, the olives can still be utilized as long as, again, they are hand-picked. Once they’ve fallen from the tree, though, forget it.

Although the lye processing is a common commercial method of treating olives, Miller thinks you are wise in shunning it because it is both complicated and--because lye is a corrosive alkaline solution--can damage your skin, clothes or anything else with which it comes into contact.

My advice is to get a copy of UC’s leaflet on the subject: “Home Pickling of Olives,” No. 2758. We are assured by York that “it’s quite non-technical.” You can do this by calling your county cooperative extension office listed in the phone book’s white pages under “UC Cooperative Extension.”

Even after all of this blood, sweat, toil and splashing around in salty water, you still have to stuff those slippery little anchovies and/or pimentos into those tiny holes in the middle.

Q: In your recent column about U.S Savings Bonds (Series EE) and the reporting of interest on them, you neglected one very important aspect. If you purchase these bonds as gifts and your name does not appear as co-owner or beneficiary--but your Social Security number is required and typed on the bond--then you are fined by the Internal Revenue Service when the computer turns up your number on the canceled bond even though the person cashing in the bond reports the income and pays taxes on the interest.

This has happened to my 99-year-old mother who has been giving such bonds as gifts for years. She has been penalized by the IRS for the past three years even though the recipients of those bonds, in every case, had paid taxes on the interest.--R.N.

A: Yes, I’m afraid you’re right. The person in the Los Angeles Federal Reserve Bank who had assured me that it was immaterial whose Social Security number appeared on the bond because the tax due is payable by the person whose name is on the bond was only half right. True enough, the tax on the interest is due and payable by the person who is named on the bond when he redeems it, but it is also quite common for the giver--as in the case of your mother--to get nicked too.

Pain in the Neck

Your mother, according to Rob Giannangeli, the IRS’ public affairs officer here, can get her money back, but it’s admittedly something of a pain in the neck. She has to write to the IRS telling it when the bonds were bought, giving it the Social Security numbers of those who received them and, ultimately, the date when the bonds were redeemed and the tax paid.

“It’s a good argument,” he says, “for always using the recipient’s Social Security number on a bond like this, or on a bank account or on anything else that you put in a child’s name. Children have to have a Social Security number now, anyway, and it’s highly unlikely that there will be any tax due when they redeem the bond--they don’t even have to file anything if their income is less than $500 a year because there’s no tax liability and, on the next $500, it’s at the lowest rate.” EE bonds are still a great gift for children, but the plight of R.N.’s mother is a great argument too for putting both the child’s name and Social Security number on it.