If the only foods left on the face of the earth were olives and mushrooms, I would be eating grass and dirt.

Ditto! Well Said Wolf.

I am personally shocked at the hatred pointed at the meek and worthy Olive.

M . for shame!

This is true. However, olives seem to have more of a gross-out factor. They go squish or splat or at least leave a footprint of olive juiciness on the victim. Bonus points if it falls into someone's shirt. Double bonus if the shirt is inhabited by a female.

We could talk about the ballistic value of the cherry tomato, but this is the Olive thread. :D

I used to hate mushrooms but then I visited the mushroom museum in Kennett Sq. and had an epiphany (actually, I was starving to damn death and they had some complimentary marinated mushrooms). I love them now. However, I would much rather suffer a slow, painful death from starvation than eat an olive of any kind.

I was once told, or read, that the red things that you might call "pimentos" that you see in olives... are not really fit for human consumption.

I think they were once pimientos which were a kind of pepper, and now they are something else entirely, with little specks of pimiento pepper and red food coloring.

Sorta like crab being fake crab a lot of the time, actually being some stupid fish with crab flavoring and coloring.

But this is as unclear on the facts as I can be.

Questions to the olive-haters in the crowd: Which type of olives turned you off to them? The canned ones that are basically salt with a touch of olive flavoring? Real olives (fresh, with pits and such)? If they were real olives, were they green or black? And who made them for you, an Italian, a Greek ar a Middle-Easterner, because the different seasonings and marinades definitely effect the flavor a lot. I personally prefer them fresh, right off of the tree, and I like the black better than the green. Canned are better for cooking, though, because the taste isn't so over-powering.

Warning: tasteless olive humor coming up. Scroll past quickly to avoid




















































I like my olives as I like my men: Young, black, and hanging in the trees.














































End tasteless humor zone. It is now safe for the young, the weak, the sick, and the liberals to read on.

There's an easy answer to that: I've never met an olive I did like. Canned, fresh, whole, pimentoed, cooked, raw, black, green...I dislike them all equally. No discrimination here.

Only bad olive I've ever had was Anchovy stuffed, yuk. I make great hot Italian olives

I'm amazed at the number of people who hate olives here.

I'm not terribly fond of the typical green spanish olive, but one of the tastiest foods on Earth is the Kalamata olive, a delicious black Greek olive. I could eat an entire jar of them in one sitting. If all you have had are canned black or green olives, I can understand your opinions, but try a Kalamata olive before you swear off olives for good.

There are a LOT of different kinds of olives out there. The typical olive you remember from your american childhood is just about the worst.

I had a friend give me a jar of Crying Tongue olives a couple years back. The "Tongue" part is an extra long red pepper that is stuffed into the olive, and they really do look like they are sticking their tongues out at you. The peppers are also among the hottest in the world, which is where the "Crying" comes in.

It sits, unopened, in my kitchen cabinet.

Wolf, send to me. They cost about 3 bucks for a small here. When you can find them. Boy they'er hot. Sometimes known as Fire tongue.

There's an easy answer to that: I've never met an olive I did like. Canned, fresh, whole, pimentoed, cooked, raw, black, green...I dislike them all equally. No discrimination here.

Ditto. But I don't mind Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Oil-cured olives are really nice... they are slightly dry and a bit sweeter. They are to die for on pizza.

I tend to like only black olives and Kalamata olives... not a big fan of the green ones, but i'll eat them if necessary.

My husband (I'm going to just start calling him Arimoose to save keystrokes) buys jars of Goya manzanita olives and a jar of hot little yellow papers. He drains some of the olive juice out and cuts up half the yellow peppers, puts em in the jar with the olives and 2 tablespoons of crushed garlic (about 2 cloves worth) and lets them blend.