November sunshine, olives, food and friends

Just taking you back to All Saints Day at the beginning of this month...a day off for the locals, but we always have 'stuff' to do and should have been elsewhere with a weekend neighbour when at 9am next-door-neighbour Cristobal hooted his horn and shouted for us to be ready in 10 mins for a trip to his land to pick some olives.....(what happened to the mañana syndrome?!)

In the car we hopped with some buckets and off we went towards his land which is close to the village.  What I didn't realise was how far it stretches, and we drove many kilometres into the campo bumping along his track with nerve tingling drops to the valley below on either side.  Finally we arrived at a dried up riverbed and across the other side was a field of Olive trees, laden with ready to drop juicy fruit.  We scrambled over and walked to the first tree, ready to pick.....'No, no, más gorda (fatter)...was the instruction, of course silly foreigners would never find the right trees by themselves, so we were led to the one of choice. Wow!  The aceitunas were HUGE, the size of small plums.....both green and black, shiny and ready to fall.  So we picked away in the November sunshine, sounds of woodpeckers, the sun on our backs and nothing else.  Few words were passed, a better way to spend a morning you would be hard pressed (sorry!) to find.  As he succinctly put it to Stan, 'there now, another thing learned'.

Afterward Cristobal insisted we have a glass of wine at his bodega, when we arrived it was to find his family far and wide already there, plates of jamón, queso, pepino y  pan laid out.  Wine was poured, freshly foraged mushrooms laid out on the hot grill.......anywhere else you would feel as though you were intruding, not here in Murtas. Stupidly I asked advice on how best to preserve the olives, 20 variations of recipes and a row ensued....

It turned out to be a longer day than originally expected! Food wine and good friends tend to do that to you....but another one for the making - memories file........... Unfortunately I now have buckets of brining olives in my kitchen, still today they don't taste quite right, Cristobal says his are fine......