Making Peace with Olives

These fruits prove that being bitter and oily doesn’t mean you can’t be popular. Anney and Lauren pit their wits against the science and history of olives.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hello, and welcome favorite protection of Hiart Radio. I'm Annie
Rees and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we're talking about olives.
I love olives, Yes, yes, and it's a long time
of I I used to know joke. I would get
like a temper weare and I'd just fill them with
black olives. Okay. I would eat for lunch in elementary school,

(00:30):
which apparently both makes me a weirdo uh in terms
of elementary school students because I got picked on for it,
but also to a pleab fool in the world of olives. Yeah,
because you're you're talking about like the like the like
the like sliced black olives. Oh they were whole black
as they were whole, but okay, but they were like

(00:51):
the right black ones. Okay, Yeah, which apparently is like
I liking the kid version of something or the very
plain version of something in the all the realm. Yeah,
well get in and we'll get into that a little
bit in in a minute. Yes, well, I love the
green one stew and I did. Then I would drink
the juice. I loved to want pizza. No one else did,

(01:11):
so that was like a really special occasion or either
could get like the half and half. Sometimes I can
get away with it. But they've been on my mind
lately because my mom and I have a Newish Christmas tradition,
all any tradition where when we put up all the decorations,
which is a very stressful, strenuous, long time thing, bloody Mary.

(01:33):
Well that's probably either helps or doesn't help, depending so
it feels more fun. Good. Yeah, we were able to
safely do that this year. And she made hers like
with bacon and celery and olives in it. And she
said something along the lines of, if I can't go
to the restaurant, I'll bring the restaurant to me. That

(01:54):
sounds like a great bloody Mary. I'm like, man, I haven't.
I haven't gotten myself a bottle of zing zang in
a hot minute, so it might be time. Yeah, this
is a good tradition. You should hop on board. Oh gosh, absolutely. Um,
I've just been eating Christmas cookies while I decorated for
Christmas like a like a whole Um, he's a bloody Mary.

(02:20):
See anything wrong with that company at all? Um? It
could be delicious. I'm not sure. Actually, A gingerbread cookie
and a bloody Mary sounds just fine. It could be
it's worth experimenting with for sure. It is okay. I
think I'm going to do that this weekend, so we'll
see what happens. I also do love and olive. I

(02:44):
don't think you're talking about elementary school. I'm like not
totally positive that I had experienced in olive as of
elementary school. Maybe I did in like a in like
a like a seven layer dip kind of situation. Um,
I don't think I liked them. I think I thought
that they were like bland and tae stless and silly
until I encountered non black ripe olives. Um. Maybe in college, Like,

(03:10):
I don't think it was until like after the turn
of the twenty feet century that I had in alive
that I didn't think was kind of bowl so um,
but now I love him. Now I love him, and
I it might have been actually, no, this is totally
what it was. Uh. Um. In college, I had a

(03:32):
friend who loved vodka martiniz and she got me into
vodka martinis. And because these olives were soaked in alcohol
and also probably a better quality alive than I had
previously been eating, I was like, oh man, I love
I love I love olives. I almost just said I
love alcohol. That's also true, drink responsibly, yes, So yeah,

(03:54):
so my my love for olives then got me into
jin martinis, which then made me like gin and then
kind of got me off on a whole other cocktail things.
So technically I have olives to thank for that. Whoa
go olives? Yeah yeah, I was trying to remember why,
because it's no one in my family likes olives like
I do, Like I couldn't. I have no idea what

(04:14):
got me on the olive track, but I did read
a lot of articles about you know, as a kid,
you can put them on your fingers, so that oh yeah,
totally if that's what what it was. And to be fair,
like I will totally eat a lunch of like straight
olives now, so I did today. In fact, no j
green olives. I almost did. I've got some colamados in

(04:37):
my fridge. Um, And if I had been slightly less
busy leading up to this, I definitely would have gotten
some as a snack. But I was kind of like,
no time even for pouring olives. Yeah, that's that's a
side of busy. That's that's pretty bad. If you the
pouring of transferring of olives into a bowl is out
of your reach. Busy, It's okay, I'm doing fun. Holidays

(05:01):
are coming up, y'all. It's gonna be great. Yeah. Yeah,
get your bloody, bloody mary but girls in there and
I'll be good. I guess this brings us to our question.
I guess olives what are they? Well? Uh, the olive
is a very oily fruit. Um. It's like a bitter,

(05:22):
greasy cherry. It's like a tiny plum that never wanted
you to eat it. But here we are the tiny
plume that couldn't convince you got to eat it. Uh. Yeah, okay. Olives.
Olives our fruit that grow on these subtropical evergreen trees

(05:44):
botanical name o Leia europa e a. I think latin
a Latin is a lot y'all um at any rate
um olive trees. Yeah, they grow to about thirty ft tall,
that's about six to nine with these pretty silver or
gray green leaves and sprays of these fragrant white flowers. Um.

(06:04):
And they're a little bit picky about where they'll like thrive. Like,
you can get them to grow in a lot of
places by getting getting them to actually fruit and thrive
is a little bit harder, Like, they're okay with dry conditions,
but prefer kind of wet. Heat is okay, but freezing
is not. But you do need a chill winter to
get them to flower. So UM, basically the Mediterranean in
places that act like the Mediterranean is what you're going for,

(06:28):
which we will come back to in our history section.
And so those flowers um, if pollinated, will bear all
of fruits which is a droope um like cherries or
plums or peaches UM, which means that it consists of
a single seed encased in a hard shell, which is
itself encased in a fleshy fruit. UM and and and

(06:49):
all of is generally popular. Um, either rounded or pointed,
can range in size from about the size of the
ball of a thumb of a small human to like
the size of a ball the thumb of a large human.
We all know the thumb scale clear as they. Yeah,

(07:13):
look at the joining your thumb and think that could
be an olive. Yeah, there you go, pretty much, there
you go. UM. Once they have grown to their full size, UM,
you can you can pick them while they're still crisp
and green to yellow in color and sort of nutty
and flavor, or you can wait until they're ripe um
softer kind of red to purple to black and taste richer. Um.

(07:36):
And yes, there are also black ripe olives, which are
a type of processed olive m the ones that you
often get in the United States anyway, um, in cans
and sliced um. And yeah, those are black, but not
because they're ripe um. They have they still have the
crisp texture of a green olive because they're packed green

(07:59):
and then treated to turn and fix their color black. Um.
And they are kind of the butt of a lot
of jokes. And like the premium alive world, Yeah, I
felt very judged. I really did. Like I didn't know
this was a thing. Come in here, these all of
aficionado's making me embarrassed. Hey, any food that you like

(08:24):
is okay to like, that's fine. I was surprised at
al how immediately I was like, oh, it is pretty judgy.
Yeah yeah, um any rate um. Yeah. But because all
of the olives on a given tree, or you know,
within a given orchard aren't going to all ripen at

(08:47):
exactly the same time. Um, the best quality olives are
going to be handpicked just the right moment for whatever
given preparation you're you're looking to give them, which is
why some olives are part of why some olives can
get so pricey. And yeah, outside of the black ripe
olive or including it, I guess, um, those flavors that

(09:11):
you wind up with will depend highly upon the treatment
that they are given after picking, because we don't eat
olives raw off of the tree um or. I mean
you could if you really wanted to, but they're just
like hella, bitter like, not not tasty, um uh like.
First of all, they don't contain much sugar, and they

(09:33):
do contain a bunch of this this very bitter compound
called fuly european, fully european that sounds more right, but
something to that extent. Anyway, this bitter compound um, which
lucky for us, is water soluble, so it's pretty easy
to leach out. Um. So if you're eating olives, they

(09:56):
have been processed in one of any or or or
more to pull of any number of ways. Um. You
can use a plain water, a salt brine, a dry
salt cure, or a lie treatment um, all of which
give you a different end product. I mean slightly different.
It's not gonna you know, make it into a grape
fruit or something like that. But anyway, um uh so yeah,

(10:17):
so the LIE treatment is the quickest and therefore the
cheapest method. UM. These alkaline LIE solutions will be used
to soak the olives and reduce the amount of those
bitter compounds. Unfortunately, it does also reduce other flavor compounds
in the olive and does not allow for for part
of the other treatments that adds additional flavor um fermentation

(10:39):
because olives involve bacteria poop um. Yeah. Yeah. The the
growth of lactic acid bacteria and other friendly strains in
curing olives is part of what gives them their their tart,
funky complex flavors. Rarely olives will be fermented straight on
the tree or or other wise like out in the

(11:01):
sun without any of these additives. But but those are
like usually very specific, small batch kind of kind of things.
So yeah, in terms of treatments, um, not that that's
not a treatment, but in terms of like additive treatments, UM,
dry cring is the next quickest after a LIE treatment,
and in dry hearing, um that the olives are packed
in salt for a month or more and then rinsed

(11:22):
and repacked for sale. And so they'll wind up with
a with a strong, like briny, funky taste and in
a wrinkly, dryer flesh sort of like tender and and
gummy like or mushroom like um though though they're sometimes
packed in in oil or a brine to keep them
moist and and plump looking so so it can sort

(11:44):
of vary. UM A little longer is the process of
brine cring um, wherein the olives are stored in salt
water sometimes plus other seasonings for up to a year,
letting them slowly pickle um and this treatment preserves more
of the texture of the original fresh olive and and
more the sort of sweet and fruity flavors along with
the with a punch of salt as well. Um. And finally,

(12:06):
you've got the relatively rare process of water crring in
which you you just soak and rinse olives in plain
old water over and over until they like suck less
um and and this is this is the rarest and
often most expensive type um and and when left plane
it's kind of the most like straightforwardly olive e texture

(12:30):
like like straightforward to the original intent. Um. And and
the most straightforwardly fruity olive flavor will come through um,
though sometimes they are packed in seasoned brine for extra
flavor or sort of a texture difference. So again, UM.
Hundreds hundreds of different varieties of olives have been cultivated
for different specific treatments. UM. You know, with the the

(12:53):
inherent flavors and oil contents and textures of the fruit
themselves being played against the results of the processing and
the flavors of any herbs and spices and wines and
vinegars that you might add during that processing. UM. And
of course many varieties are also cultivated just for pressing
for their oil, but that is a whole different episode.

(13:16):
Not today, not today olive oil no m um uh
so yeah. The the result can be a wide range
of products UM, crisp to chewy two sort of squishy, um,
with all kinds of fruity or bright or citrusy or
dank or sweet or bitter or nutty or savory or

(13:36):
like anisey or otherwise herbal or buttery or sour and
salty flavors. Yes, so beautiful. I was reading about all
of these varietals and some of them I haven't tried yet,
and I want to. Yeah, yeah, same. I actually thought
this might be a case where I was going to
go in and realize that the black olive is not

(13:57):
even an olive. I thought I thought it was gonna
be one of those situations. So I'm relieved that I
at least was correct in saying I like all but yeah,
then there's like all this whole world of olives. Wow,
there more. Yeah, this is the Serious Eats article that
I was reading described this one variety is heart stopping,
and I was like, why am I not eating this

(14:20):
right now? I want my heart to stop about an
olive that I know. I wanted a flutter like flutter
based on it. All of yes, please right one day?
Yeah yeah. Shout out to Hannah Howard for making me
want things that I've never tried. I love it um

(14:42):
and yeah, all of these different types of olives. UM
can be used in all kinds of ways. UM as
a sort of seasoning and binder, in spreads and in sauces.
Um cooked whole or chopped into dishes cold or warm
or hot, eating straight for lunch, and you can stuff
them with dang anything. Once that pit is removed. Um,

(15:02):
you're you've got a hollow little vehicle for for extra flavor.
Um pimiento of course very popular. Um, but little bits
of preserved garlic or lemon, peel, blue cheese, almonds. Yeah,
all kinds of stuff. M a whole world of experimentation. Well,
speaking of what about the nutrition, what happens in our

(15:26):
some bacon and garlic and white olive? Jeez? I so yeah,
So it does depend on how they're made. Um. And
and they and they can pack a caloric punch from
from the high level of oil that they contain, and
can have a lot of sodium from that processing. But um,
but a lot of those fats are good fats. Um.
They do contain a smattering of vitamins and minerals. They're

(15:48):
low in carbs and high in fiber. They will help
fill you up. Um, you know, to keep going, Eat
with a eat with a protein probably and a vegetable.
Maybe eat a vegetable. I did. I had it with
a salad. So see there, that's great. Yeah, that's great.
Put some cheese on there in your gold. Yeah, there

(16:09):
was some Farmersan cheese. Yeah, so paste because I found
me so paste. Upcoming episode everybody getting ready for that one. Gosh, yeah,
it was an exciting find. Um, we do have some
numbers for you. Spain is the world's largest producer of olives.

(16:31):
Olives come from, yes, the Mediterranean. All olives end up
in olive oil, which Italy produces the most of. It
is both the biggest exporter and second biggest importer due
to a law that allows her olive oil that was
bottled in Italy but produced elsewhere to be labeled as Italian.

(16:53):
And yes, absolutely cannot wait to do an episode on
olive oil. Um. It was very hard to separate out
that that inform Asian from olives because olive oil is
such a big part of olives story. But nonetheless we
managed in that episode. Will come absolutely yes, not today,
no no, no, no, no, Like I can feel it

(17:14):
bearing down on me like it's gonna be a big one.
It will. Yeah. The US makes up less than one
per cent of the olive market when it comes to
producing olives. UM. And of those olives come from California
and it is very seasonal. UM. In a good season,
California produces maybe five thousand tons. But compare that to

(17:37):
Americans conception rate. U an annual three hundred and one
five hundred tons, so one thousand, five hundred tons. That
is a bunch more than the five thousand. Yeah, a bunch.
I couldn't find any legit sources on this, but some

(17:58):
things I read clean that they is a tradition of
planting in all of tree and a child is born
in Greece, and that maybe olives are all of trees
are involved in wedding traditions in Greece, So listeners, if
that's true or not true? Is right? In um researchers
believe the world's oldest living olive tree is located in

(18:19):
Bethlehem and that it's somewhere from four thousand to five
thousand years old. And alive trees do live a long time,
like like, it's not super uncommon for them to live
like a millennium. But yeah, four or five of those
millenniums is is impressive. I'm impressed. I am also impressed
olive tree, and so have people. It turns out, in general,

(18:43):
throughout history, the olive and the olive tree has been
has held a lot of power as a symbol for peace,
with the olive branch, fertility, victory, wisdom, prosperity luck. Um,
and we see this in historical records, writings, poems. I
want in all of poem I need to write in
all of them, songs art Vincent van go Alone painted

(19:05):
all of Trees nineteen times. Yeah, oh indeed, so a
lot of history. Yes, there is a lot of history,
and we are going to get into that. But first
we're going to take a quick break for a word
from our sponsor. Every back. Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you?

(19:34):
And who this This was another one that almost wrote
my brain. It was one of those where a lot
of the research papers that have been published recently, which
I highly am appreciative of, I had to look up
like every other word just to make sure I was understanding. Yeah, yes, um,

(19:55):
and I mean surprisingly or perhaps not. There has been
a lot of debate about where where olives came from,
and there's been recent research into the genes of wild
and cultivated olives that indicates that they were first domesticated
in the Northern Levant, which is a historical region of
the Middle East including Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Syria, and

(20:17):
the modern state of Israel, and then from there the
olives quickly spread to manage readean or alternatively, there may
have been several different domestications, like maybe upwards of nine
separate times. All of us have been domesticated alongside the
development of humanity and societies at large. Since they can

(20:39):
grow in these rough, arid environments, they might have been
favored by civilizations trying to avoid conflict by maintaining a
healthy distance a social distance, but on the city scale
between themselves and other civilizations. UM. So that could mean
setting up in a less quote you know, desirable spot
when it comes to crops growing things. Um. These domestication

(21:03):
events are believed to have happened about six thousand years
ago UM, though eight thousand year old. All of pits
have been unearthed at ancient sites UM. And wild olives
are even older, found in Spain and the Near used
all the way back to the Neolithic period, which began
about twelve thousand years ago and ended between four thousand
five to twelve depending on which part of the world

(21:26):
you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, it's super interesting and um
and yet still the subject of like a bunch of research. UM.
Wild olives are shrubbier and um and drier, and different
folks have been cultivating them for different traits, um, you know,
ornamental use for their would for cattle and other livestock, fodder,

(21:47):
for the oil as a food item. Plus Um. It
seems like wild and cultivated olives have interacted a number
of times in a number of ways, um, including wild
hollows from other areas like West South and bits of
northern Africa and so yeah. And then over in Australia

(22:07):
there's a whole other thing. Yeah. Um, scientists are still
untangling the history for us and since it has been
such an important um, food and industry crop, um in
a lot of these places. Yeah, there's just a lot
to a lot to kind of sift through. Yeah. And
I do love. I love when you find these research
papers that are so in depth that I committed. I'm like, oh,

(22:29):
I actually gonna look up all these words, and it's
about the olive and people determined to get to the
the bottom of olives history. And it does seem currently
the consensus is there were several events domestication events. Um.
So there you go, that's what we have to say. Um.

(22:52):
And yes, these early wild olives were apparently extremely bitter,
like you would not eat them bitter. Uh uh So
even when it was first domesticated, people were probably grinding
up olives for the oil um. And of course olive
oil was hugely important and used for all kinds of
things outside of cooking and cosmetics and medicines in lamps. Yeah,

(23:17):
that the word oil, The English word oil stems from
the ancient Greek for olive, So there you go. It
makes sense. Uh. The wood burned wet, and I believe
I also read green um anyway, it burned in conditions
a lot of other woods might not, which was good
for caves for people staying in caves. And it didn't

(23:38):
produce a lot of smoke, which was also a plus
for caves. Probably probably green as in like the wood
could be green, as in the wood could be not
dried and treated exactly, not like the fire was like fire. Yes,
good to be clear on these points. Good to be clear.

(23:59):
And yeah, olive oil fueled the first Olympic torch Um
and Rhes four victors were made out of alive branches.
The story goes that the olive and its oil were
so revered in Greece that Athens is named after Athena
in honor of her creating the olive tree. Um and
of course, the Bible made several references to the olive

(24:20):
tree to declare war. In the Old Testament, you just
had to destroy someone's alive trees. I gotta say, if
I had a you know, a four thousand year old
olive tree, and you burned it, Yeah, yeah, yes, that's right. Um.
In first century CE, plenty of the Elder wrote, except
the vine, there is no plant which bears the fruit

(24:41):
of as great importance as the olive. Yeah. I know.
Ancient Romans were most likely the ones that realized that
you could cut through the bitterness of all why adding
salt um this after other cultures figured out. Soaking them
several times over a period of months in water also
helped with that, as did fermenting them. The Romans shortened

(25:02):
this whole process from months to hours by adding why
to the brine, and this allowed for people to enjoy
olives straight. The Spanish introduced olives to the Americans in
the sixteenth century. One of the first known groves was
planted in Lima, Peru in the midfifteen hundreds, and Spanish
planted olives in California at Franciscan monasteries and seventeen hundreds

(25:26):
and the crop really took off along America's West coast,
not so much the East coast. Speaking of you know
who really loved olives and wanted them to work on
the East coast, Thomas Jefferson. That guy, That guy. Uh.
He reportedly went on a vacation in seventeen eighties seven

(25:48):
where he saw a lot of all of Some people
describe it as an all vacation. And I can't figure
out if you like, went on an olive vacation or
if he just saw a lot of all of the
a lot of olives. In either case, he liked what
he saw, like what he tasted, calling the olive tree
quote the worthiest plant to be introduced in America um
and that it was quote the richest gift of heaven

(26:10):
goodness sentiments for the all of m. After his own
attempt at growing all has failed, he successfully campaigned the
South Carolina Society for Promoting Agriculture to plant five hundred clippings,
but those two alas failed HM yes, um and okay
a future episode, but the alive and or all of

(26:32):
Brian and the Martini uh usually people historians put that
at nineteen o one that wasn't recorded in writing until nine. Yeah, yeah,
we we we did an episode on the Martini, so
past episode, but we also we also didn't. There's no
definitive answer in that one either. I think there's just

(26:53):
no definitive answer. See this is I'm so glad you
said this, because I was pretty convinced we'd already done
a Martini episode. But I searched for it and it
didn't show up. And I was like, did I just
dream we did that episode? Because I have definitely dreamt
about episodes. I mean, that's the risk inherent of being
a food podcaster. But I was pretty certain we had Yeah, no, no, no,

(27:14):
we did. We did. I remembered it because I remembered
the discussion of the Martini glass. Oh, I seem to
recall talking about James Bond. That's what I And this
explains a lot about both of us. It does. It
actually does um something else perhaps that explains a lot

(27:36):
about both of us. I couldn't find a specific date,
and I was determined to. But all of us on
pizza have apparently been very common pretty much since the start.
I wouldn't say they were necessarily a popular ingredient all
of this time, all of this time, didn't mean to accidental,
but they've been an option from pretty early on. And

(27:59):
in nineteen eighteen, cartoonist ec Cigar Seeker created all the
oil for what would become the Popeye's Comic strip. And
this is the second time we've mentioned Popeye's the Comic
in like a month. Yeah, the record, there you go,
lots of I mean, we haven't done a spinach episode yet, no,

(28:21):
but I can't wait to talk about spinach because it
messes with my It's one of my few foods I
have an allergic reaction, but apparently it messes was my thyroid.
So I kind of, oh, gosh, okay, I mean, it's
no big deal, but I love spinach. So it was
kind of a thing like, uh yeah, yeah, we'll have
to um and and then uh, I did want to

(28:45):
mention that, you know, the early two thousand's and the
accompanying Mediterranean cuisine slash diet trend saw the rise of
the olive bar in the United States. Suddenly you couldn't
get a grocery store renovation without adding in cold bar
of bulk bin olives. Right, that's right, and which is

(29:11):
a thing that I love. But apparently, as with the
pandemic um. These bulk bins have had to switch to
being like small package bins after declines in sales of
over dang. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I'm not
like looking at a hot bar right now, going like,

(29:31):
oh man, that's definitely what I should do. Yeah, sort
of the opposite of what's happening in my life at least.
Yea yeah, um hoof. Back when we used to go
to lunch at work and stuff, there was a place
in our building if you went during like the weird
hours between three and five, they did kind of a

(29:54):
lot of Mediterranean based dishes, like small dishes, and I know,
like I think if you got the cheese thing, which
of course that's what I was getting, it came with
like a variety of five types of It's always a
nice surprise because I wasn't expecting it was like, oh surprise. Olives. Yeah,

(30:15):
I know a few people who dislike olives, like do
not want um. But yeah, I'm always like, yeah, just
just give me I'll take those. I'll take those off
your hand. Solution here, no problem, I'll hand you my
cucumbers you can have, huh, I all have your olives.
There you go. Yeah, yeah, the elementary school way trade,

(30:38):
although again that's not what we do anymore because yeah, yeah, yeah,
And I also like, yeah, say, I also did my
I think final grocery trip of one. We'll see if
I make it. You're not in yeah, Anny, are you
a time traveler? Oh no, oh no, ever move on please? Um? Yes,

(31:05):
And I had just read for this and again like
olive oil is a huge, big episode we're going to
do later. But the there's been like a bad year
with all of Italy specifically, which is the biggest producer,
And they were like, so if you notice that the
grocery store, the price is going to go up, and
boy did I notice? Yeah oil? So climate change, Well

(31:41):
yeah cool. Do you have some listener mail for you?
We do, but first we've got one more quick break
for a word from our sponsor. Very back, Thank you sponsor, Yes,
thank you, And we're back with m I made a tree. Yeah, um,

(32:19):
Valerie wrote, I asked my mom if she had added
coloring to margarine based on our Margin episode back in
the days when it was sold that way. She says
that she only did it a few times. She said
the margin came was a coloring tablet and you would
use a spoon or fork to mash it in. Also,
I asked her about their Victor garden. She says that

(32:39):
her family had had a coal bin that took up
most of their backyard, but that had been taken out
when their family got an oil burner furnace, so they
didn't have very good soil in their yard for a garden,
and all it would grow is called robbie nobody likes
and stunted carrots um. She remembered that when they had
the coal furnace, that cold chuck would regularly pull up
in the alley and the workers would put coal into

(33:00):
a big barrel and they would roll the barrel down
the alley. Important to the family's Colbin. I love hearing
about the history that she lived through. Thank you for
giving me a reason to ask her about it. Yeah. Absolutely,
I love learning about this too. And I think, as
we discussed in that Margin episode, this is about what
I would have done, like maybe twice I would have

(33:21):
added the coloring tablet, but like generally I don't care. Yeah, no,
that would have been like my fancy days. That would
have been like, oh man, the guests are coming over,
like break out that coloring packet or tablet or yeah,
or if you're trying you had a legal margarine and
you were trying to pass it off, butter, if you

(33:44):
have the OLEO police are coming over, you're like quick,
they finally got me. Um. And I do think that
stunted carrots are are pretty common occurrence. I my my
friends John and Brianna Um have a little backyard garden

(34:08):
and they have a little carrot patch that they've just
accepted is like a carrot patch for their dog Katie
because it just grows these little baby carrots and she
loves little baby carrots, and so she you know, it's
it's a good it's a good bribe to get her
to get out run around a little bit. Yeah, yeah, right,

(34:29):
Hannah wrote, I just listened to your Great Fruit episode
and you mentioned citrus Christmas traditions, and I thought I
would add my own. Growing up in Florida and coming
from a very stereotypical Florida household, I of course had
multiple citrus trees growing in my backyard. One of these
trees was a tiny lemon tree, more like a lemon
bush or shrub. If I'm being honest, that put all

(34:50):
of that energy it would have put into growing into
making absolutely massive lemons. Seriously, these things were bigger than
most great fruits and produce between a cup and two
cups of juice when squeezed. I have no idea what
kind of radioactive mutant lemons those things were, but they
were the best. Since I moved away from Florida, I've

(35:12):
learned that most people associate lemonade with the summer, but
alas this association is just plain wrong, as most lemons
do not ripen until December or January. That's right. My
childhood memories of having homemade lemonade, or indeed just taking
an entire lemon off the tree and eating it like
an apple, my enamel has definitely paid the price for
this now that I'm older. Always took place during the

(35:34):
holly Jolly season, alongside the creepy dancing Santa figurine and
other trappings of the holiday, which did in fact include
an orange in the toe of our stockings and a
pickle hidden in the Christmas tree every year. Although I
know pickles aren't aren't citrus, they are a fun Christmas
food tradition, so I thought i'd include it. P s.
I haven't listened to the rerun of the Gingerbread episode yet,

(35:57):
but I did listen to the original, and I just
wanted to say I've actually never had real gingerbread. Both
of my parents didn't like it, so whenever would build
gingerbread houses when I was a kid, we would always
use Graham crackers, and I always thought gingerbread was just
a Christmasy way of referring to Graham crackers. I will
say that the even square and rectangular shape of Graham

(36:17):
crackers do make them very easy to build with. Maybe
in honor of the Savor Classics Gingerbread episode, I'll go
by myself some gingerbread and see what I've been missing. Yeah,
I hope you do. Yeah, and that's really funny because
I also I did. I totally forgot. But when I
would make gingerbread houses as a kid, they definitely were
Graham crackers. Yeah, gingerbread and bold. Yeah, I don't. I'm

(36:43):
sure I've made an actual gingerbread gingerbread house at some
point in my life, but for for sure, they were
mostly Graham cracker houses. Yeah, it's easier, It's just it's funny.
Until until Hannah pointed that out, I totally forgotten kind
of silly that is, um. And also I love this
lemon tradition that sounds lovely. Yeah, gosh those sound now

(37:08):
I'm like, I'm like, yeah, like indeed, what kind of
weird mutant lemon was that? Because that tree definitely had
something going on with it. Um, but uh yeah, I
don't know. I don't know that. That's why I do. Man.
I miss living in South Florida for very few reasons,
to be super honest with y'all, but um, but one

(37:28):
of them is the thing where like everyone just has
citrus trees in their yard, and so you just want,
you know, citrus. You just go like, hey, Mary, can
I get a bucket of citrus? And Mary's like, please
take my mutant lemons. The wasps are coming, Please take

(37:50):
this citrus kind of thing. So we need to add
the mutant lemon to our superhero. Yeah, I can see
the image already. Lauren has gotten a taste of some
of my drawing skills over the years, so they're they're great.

(38:11):
You do a great job. Do you have a vision
and you and you portray, you portray something that is
that is clearly identifiable, that's clearly identifiable as what you intended.
I've never seen a drawing and been like, I don't
get donut from that. I've been like, that's a donut,
that's a donut. I'm glad I can draw a circle

(38:33):
with a hole in it. No, no, thank you, Lauren,
thank you. But I'll try to illustrate this soon. I
don't want my vision to fade away. Yeah, capture this
on paper, yeah, I you'll You'll note that I do
not contribute drawings, and that's because I don't draw as

(38:54):
well as you. And I'm like, just never mind. Maybe
one day I'll see Lauren vulgile vomb original. It's unlikely, friend,
but share. I can have hopes it's coming resolution time.
We'll see how how far this goes. But in the meantime,

(39:16):
thanks to both of those listeners for writing in. If
you would like to write to us, you can our
emails hello at savor pod dot com. We are also
on social media. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook,
and Instagram at savor pod and we do hope to
hear from you. Uh. Savor is a production of I
Heart Radio. For more podcasts to my heart Radio, you
can visit the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or

(39:37):
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always
to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to
you for listening, and we hope that lots more good
things are coming your way.