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<pre>On Sat, 20 Feb 1999 12:30:39 EST, you wrote:

>From: STUTZCO@aol.com
>
>Jamal-
>I too can eat 40 freshly home cured california ascolano olives at a time with
>a glass of Rosé in the summer whilst playing boule. Might I suggest that
>everyone join the California Olive Oil Council(cooc.com-check us out), which
>has 300 members and is already a trade organization for the olive oil industry
>in CA?
>Ken Stutz
Hate to brag Ken, but we have about 200 trees bearing kalamatas in our orchard.
I forget what variety the other 500 or so are. They're small, and FULL of oil.
We just press oil from them. Those are the bearing trees. We put another 150
kalamatas in last spring and in seven years or so we might be seeing some
profit from them, if the shepherds keep their flocks away from the young trees
anyway. Oh well, if they don't I'll have fresh lamb for life.

Some of the kalamatas we keep for curing, but when the kalamatas are pressed we
make sure we're there so that the oil, usually about 70 gallons a year, that we
plan on keeping for ourselves and friends, isn't "polluted" with inferior
fruit. The golden color, and flavor of kalamata oil is fantastic. That's all
we use at home. I'm sipping ouzo, sampling fresh feta, covered with a little
oil and black pepper, and pigging out on our home cured kalamatas while I'm
typing this, one handed of course. The vinegar and olive oil added after
curing does AMAZING things to the keyboard if you're not careful.

On a side note, most of the olives harvested from our area of Greece are
exported to Italy and re-exported from there as "Italian" olive product. Sorry
if I'm offending any Italian producers on the list, but the fact is that the
Greeks are really far behind other European olive producing countries in
marketing and export. Doesn't bother me a bit, as long as we meet expenses and
have a little wine money left over.

Norm Corley
Athens, Greece
http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/7003 - Personal Page
http://radivision.hypermart.net - Business Page

"I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian!"
</pre>
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