Livin' the dream

If you forget the early morning trip to the airport, today is looking pretty good. Sunshine dawn till dusk, kids occupied with a basketball day (CarbBoy) and building a DNA model in the library (TallGirl). So, I sorted the olives, started soaking them, and made some olive oil.

There was time for lunch outside, some gentle gardening (cuttings and repotting) and a long fun evening with the kids - who have declared themselves totally over trick or treating (though happily we had not finished the bowl of sweeties by the time the local mob came calling).

This olive was voted (by CarbBoy, my early morning olive sorting companion) the most apple-ish of all the olives. Later, almost all the olives ended up (sorted into mostly-greenish and mostly-maroonish) having a bitterness-reducing soak in water. Some people don't apparently bother with this step, but it is recommended by all the French sites I checked, so that'll do for me.

The remaining olives were ignominiously whooshed in the liquidiser, stirred for a very long time in the kitchenaid (dough hook - to do something complicated to oil particles), then squished rather incompetently. The potato ricer was the most efficient method I found, but has resulted in a lot of olive mush splattered around the kitchen. I'm not expecting much - but enough for one lunch would make me very happy.

Edit: I should also note that last night did see our first frost, and I was cursing the supermarket manager who patronisingly assured me that they would have de-icer in stock well before it was needed "We don't order it until December - this is not Scotland - ha ha ha" (no, evidently, because in Scotland you can buy de-icer year round so you don't have to scratch ice off the windscreen with your least favourite credit card at 5.30 am).

Tonight is supposed to only dip to 6 degrees. It is currently 2 degrees. So that's weather forecasters to be cast down to the 7th circle along with supermarket managers (and the car hire folk from Saturday. I'll get to that.) Must be getting quite crowded and hot down there, but then I guess that's the point.