brrgrrl@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>
> I'm starting to get over my fear of olives. I've always pushed whole olives away if they come in a salad I get at a restaurant, but recently I had a deelish vegan pizza here in NY and it had teeny, tiny bits of olives and I really enjoyed the bit of zip that they added. I'm still not ready for a plateful of whole sour olives, though. Too intense. So my question is: are there different kinds of olives like there are peppers, with varying flavors? Would someone tell me what the mildest-tasting olive is? I'd like to try adding little bits to salads, etc., but I want to start out slow ;-)
There are definitely different flavors in olives. My personal favorites
are the California black olives (pitted) that one finds in the grocery
stores in with such things as pickles, etc. I taught my little cousin
the bad habit of sticking them on my pinkie finger and eating them off
my finger... :) These are likely the ones you got on your NYC pizza --
I seem to remember there being several pizzarias down there that use
black olives as toppings.
I've only ever liked the green ones with the little red pimientos in
them if they were buried in olive loaf (a baloney-type product, which I
don't eat anymore, for obvious reasons! :) I think it was the novelty
of having little green and red things in the middle of my luncheon meat,
more than the flavor. I've never been able to eat them otherwise -- too
sour.
And the fancy Greek ones I find pretty gross and disgusting.
Do be warned that olives are high in fat. I heard a TV commercial for
olives once that said "Only 9 calories per olive, and only 1 gram of
fat!". Well, gee, 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories, so they're pretty
close to 100% calories from fat, by their own admission... But if
you're only having a few olives every now and again, it shouldn't be
enough to worry about...
Faith
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