Eat, add to cooking and drop into a martini

How about serving olives as a predinner snack? Here’s the good news.
Four large olives have 25 calories. Compare with an ounce of cheddar cheese: 115 calories. Or a half cup of mixed nuts: 400 calories. Or 20 tortilla chips: 180 calories. There’s more good news. Olives are low
in fat, but what fat they have is an excellent source of the good fats that help lower the bad cholesterol (LDL-cholesterol) while leaving the beneficial HDL-cholesterol level unaffected. They are a cholesterol-free food.

A Fascinating History
Olive trees were being grown before the written language was invented. The Egyptians cultivated olive groves (as seen in an inscription on a temple from the time of Ramses ll (1197 BC). The Christian bible refers to the ‘king of trees‘ in Genesis – and again when the dove returns to Noah’s ark with an olive branch in its beak. And today: Olive groves flourish on six continents (Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North and South America).
Processing: Olives are processed three ways: oxidized, green or natural.
• Natural: These are allowed to mature on the tree.
• Black ripe: Harvested green and put in tanks with a flow of air bubbles to be cured, giving them their distinctive black colour.
• Spanish green: After resting for a day or two to soften the skin, the fruit is immersed in a curing solution to retain the green colour, then fermented for two months before being pitted and stuffed with a variety of flavours.