billbill1,
Your question about green and black olives is not really stupid at all. In fact I didn't knwo either until I actually moved to the farm. The answer is, all olives are green, and they ripen to black. That does not mean that a green olive isn't ripe, becasue it is. They just get more ripe and turn black.
So black olives could have been picked green, and then left to sit in a ox under an olive tree with salt on them and they turned black. Or a black olive could have been picked when it was already black.
Green olives are picked green, and then cured right away so they stay green. There are different curing methods for green olives. The most simple way is to put them in water and change the water every day, don't even add salt. Then there is the put them in water add salt and change the water once a week. Then there is curing them with wood ashes and something else, no it could jsut be wood ashes which basically makes lye, and don't change the water till they are done.
I don't know if you looked at the pictures of the Truffle and Olive Oil market, if I even got a good shot of it, but Provence has so much cottage industry, people making all kinds of specialty foods in their home and they sell it at the markets and people love to buy homemade products. This is a country of specialty work.
it can be rathr annoying as well sometimes you want to just go to one big store and get what you want, and you have to search until you find the specialty store that sells what you want. Like microwave popcorn, can't find it here. Peple have heard about it but no one call tell me wehre to buy it.
Even frozen foods, there is a specialty store that is a full store of jsut frozen, high quality food. The big grocery stores do have big frozen food sections, however a large chain exists that sells only igh quality frozen foods, which brings me back to my observaton that the whole country is set up as specialties. Things here are by word of mouth. Even usig the internet is more difficult to find things on the internet, becasue a lot of businesses don't have websites. If they have one it will say under construction and then they don't even put a phone number down, now how hard would that be.
People still do face to face business here, getting an online quote for anything is rare. If you do get an online quote it is always followed by, you must call to confirm. It is a very advanced country, I mean they make airplanes here, the Airbus, and it is advanced, but at the same time it is a very personable country and people still prefer to do business face to face. I will say it does not go fast enough for me. But usually form these small businesses you get very high quality work or products. They tend to be family owned and operated.
I like the slow life but when I want a quote on shipping or a quote on the plastic capsules we are putting on top of our bottles, you know like that shrink cap you cut through on a wine bottle, it literally takes 2 weeks to get a price, and Imean form anybody. You jsut are not able to call up and get a quotation, much less e-mail. It took me 5 business day to get a quotation for "how much does it cost to ship 20 cases of olive oil weighing XXX kilos form my city to London?" A week! Finally when I got the answer I asked the young man what took so long, his response, "No reason" I asked him what do yo mean no reason, he said, "I jsut really can't give you a reason that is how long it takes"
So I like the slow life but I am challenged by it as well I guess I like to be slow but I want everybody else to be fast- /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
