Anyone Grow Mayhaw ?

[Nyboy]

Guess kind of like cranberries I have 2 bushes a friend planted. They looked so good when they turned red.I grabbed a handfull and popped them in my mouth, god where they sour!!!! Couldn't spit them out fast enough, lesson learned if new try small piece first.

 

[britesea]

Reminds me of a story about my sister-in-law-- she went on a date with a boy who kept on talking about how much he loves olives. So she told him they had an olive tree and the olives were ripe right now, did he want some? Oh yeah. He tried to eat them right off the tree. I don't think he ever asked her for a date again.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

A few months ago I bought a jar of Peruvian olives for me sister (who, unlike me, likes olives) at one of those remainder stores. I wasn't until I got home and looked closer at the label I realized that the olives had merely been dried, they had never been salted or cured (the label actually claimed that they did not need it since "our olives are of such fine quality that they should be enjoyed as they come off the tree") Actually the jar is still sitting there while we try and figure out what to do with it (I've looked up how to cure your own olives online, but all the recipes I have seen assume you are starting with fresh raw green olives (like they sell at some Italian supermarkets), not dried fully ripe ones (actually are fully ripe olives ever actually eaten, I thought that even the black kind was picked under ripe, and the black color came from the lye treatment). I suppose at some point well just pull them out, pit them, toss the fruit away, and send the pits on (someone on one of my other garden forums is trying to establish a seed grown olive grove)

Oh and my version of the trying story was my discovery that, even if (like me) you like the taste of horehound candy, that does NOT mean you can pull leaves off a horehound plant and chew them.

 

[britesea]

My mother lived on the island of Ibiza in the Mediterranean for 15 years and the way they cure olives there is to take the ripe, black olives and put them in a wooden box, slightly crushed so that there are cracks going all the way through to the pit, and then putting the box in the sea for a while (I don't know how long). The olives come out a bit tougher and chewier than American ripe olives, which are treated with lye as you said; they have a really complex flavor- a little salty, a little bitter... I can't describe it, but it's addictive. I've never heard of eating olives straight off the tree as they are incredibly bitter, but maybe drying them does something?

 

[Nyboy]

Isn't lye toxic ? Like used to open clogged drains?

 

[Pulsegleaner]

In large, concentrated quantities yes, lye is extremely caustic. However diluted lye is a pretty common thing in cooking and processing. Pretzels get a lye water wash, as do some kinds of Chinese noodles, to give them a yellow color. If you've ever been to Chinatown and had "Hong Kong Style" Lo Mein, those noodles are lye washed (in fact every now and again I've had to throw an order out because they forgot to wash the lye off) Lye is also one of the things often used to nixamatize corn to convert it into hominy (since it is stronger than wood ashes it's works faster. It takes most of a day to nixamatize corn with ashes, with lye, it takes a few minutes.)

 

[Nyboy]

I guess I should be more aware of what I am eating?

 

[Smart Red]

I guess I should be more aware of what I am eating?

I suspect that is a big part of why we garden in the first place, however, sometimes -- when eating out with friends -- it is best if you don't quite know what you're eating.

 

[Nyboy]

Red I once went with my best friend to her grandmothers house. Right before we got to the door she said to me " don't eat any meat" Of coruse I had to ask why, she said her neighorhood lacks any pigeons and squirrels !!

 

[bobm]

Right after the Viet Nam war, the Fresno ( Cal.) County Pound noticed a definite drop in stray dogs as well as missing dogs in certain neighborhoods as well an increase of the refugees coming in to the pound to get dogs. Seems that they are a delicacy item !