If you happen to have a Whole Foods Market near you, you should check out their olive bar. It's amazing. Tons of different types of olives. Calamatas are insanely delicious. One of my favorites. Even if you don't like the typically black and green olives at the grocery store, I'm willing to bet you'll like at least one type of the olives they carry at the Whole Foods Market.

So I discovered the other day that eating an olive right off the tree = yuck. Should have read this thread first. Going to have to look into brining my own olives. Hmm.

The Wildlife Zoo out in Litchfield?

Nope we have an olive tree.

I would like to see the list of things you'd eat if wrapped in bacon. In fact, the scientist in me wants to perform a quantitative analysis, while the douchbag in me just wants to wrap random stuff in bacon and see if you'll eat it.

Some nights my whole dinner consists of calamata olives, bread and wine. Makes me feel very Mediterranean.

It has to be good French or Italian bread though - Wonder Bread just doesn't cut it.

Wonder Bread isn't good for anything, really. Except perhaps as bait for exceedingly stupid fish.

Re olives and nutrition: one cup contains 25% of the RDA of iron, 20-ish% of vitamin E, 15%-ish of dietary fiber and copper, and has around 155 calories. In addition, as I already mentioned, olives are a superb source of healthy fats, which will help you feel full if your meat supplies are running low and will help you maintain your body heat.

Mmm, I love olives.

Usually go for green, kalamata, or dry cured. The canned "California" black ones are pretty bland.

+1

Try the gourmet olives stuffed with jalapenos, garlic, or blu cheese!

I like to mix several kinds of olives for salads and sauces

I love the stuffed ones. My market usually has almond-stuffed olives, too, which are divine.

There's a guy at my local farmer's market that sells an olive salad that makes a really good quick and lazy topping for pasta.

To the OP:

I just buy them with pits in. I know they're there, and I've never had an issue. I actually like pitted olives much less, unless they're the green w/ pimento, which I use for mexican martinis.