Divina founded National Olive Day in 2015 as a way to share the culinary history and traditions of this amazing food.
When I worked in California, I saw lots of olive groves when I came down from the mountain. I even saw a giant olive sitting in a parking lot.
That olive is the world’s largest, and it sits in Lindsay, California. According to the Weird California website, there are two giant olives in California. The one pictured above is a black olive. Weird California says,
It was originally outside the Lindsay Company’s plant in town, but when the plant unfortunately closed, it was moved outside what was, at the time, fittingly, the Olive Tree Inn…The Olive Tree Inn, however, is now a Super 8 Motel. It is not too far from the junctions of Highways 137 and 65. It is located in the motel parking lot, sitting proudly on a pedestal. It is made of concrete..
From the October 2013 article “Growing Olives – Information” by Richard Molinar UC Cooperative Extension Fresno, retired, I learned
California is the only state in the nation producing a commercially significant crop of olives. Approximately 70 to 80 percent of the ripe olives consumed in the United States come from California…The top olive-producing counties in California are Tulare, Tehama and Glenn counties.
A-ha! Guess what! Lindsay, CA is in Tulare County. It makes sense that Tulare County would be the home of the world’s largest olive.
Have you ever wondered if an olive is a fruit or a vegetable? An article by Caroline Picard for Good Housekeeping answers that questions. Olives are
… technically fruits.
The stones inside [olives] act as the seeds for the Olea europaea tree. In any botanist’s book that means they’re technically classified as fruits — specifically a kind called drupes, a.k.a. stone fruits. This category also includes sweeter produce like mango, dates, apricots, cherries, nectarines, peaches, and plums..
You may also be wondering if olives are a healthy food choice. According to the article “Olives 101: Nutrition Facts and Health Benefits” by Adda Bjarnadottir, MS, RDN (Ice) on the Healthline website,
Olives are a good source of vitamin E, iron, copper, and calcium…Olives are particularly rich in antioxidants, including oleuropein, hydroxytyrosol, tyrosol, oleanolic acid, and quercetin…that may contribute to a variety of benefits, such as lower cholesterol and blood pressure.
While olives do seem to be good for most people, you probably don’t want to eat them right off the tree. According to the Olive FAQ on the DeLallo website
While olives are edible straight from the tree, they are intensely bitter. Olives contain oleuropein and phenolic compounds, which must be removed or, at least, reduced to make the olive palatable…There are a number of ways that an olive can be “cured,” though it is more like a fermentation process…[Olives are] cured in one of four different ways: natural brine, lye, salt or air curing.
One type of olive I would not celebrate National Olive Day with are these Pearls Olives to Go! taco flavored ones. They were given to me by an acquaintance who’d gotten then at a food bank. He wouldn’t even try them. The Man wouldn’t try them either. I’ll try most any food once, so I opened the package and popped one of these olives into my mouth. How bad could they be?
The package contained some of the nastiest food stuff I have ever consumed. I ate one. It was so bad I ate another a little while later to make sure it really was as bad as I remembered. It was. I threw them away. I don’t throw away unspoiled food, but I couldn’t figure out how to disguise the unpleasantness of an olive saturated with fake taco flavor.
I hope you find some delicious olives to enjoy while you celebrate National Olive Day 2020!
According to the National DayCalendar website, Sunday, April 19 is National Garlic Day. In honor of this upcoming holiday celebrating the aromatic member of the lily family, today I will sing the praises of fresh garlic.
I grew to love fresh garlic in my 20s. I put it in nearly every savory dish I cooked. When I heard of its medicinal properties (antimicrobial, antiviral, antifungal, according to the article “7 Raw Garlic Benefits for Fighting Disease” by Dr. Josh Axe, DC, DMN, CNS ), I began to eat it raw and drink it in a sort of tea. If I began feeling rundown or the least bit sick, I’d add freshly minced garlic to hot water with a dash of cayenne and maybe a splash of honey. I’d swallow the bits of garlic down and wait for it to do its healing magic. I traveled with my garlic press and fists of Allium sativum , and I took on its aroma.
(FYI: Garlic breath isn’t because of what’s happening in one’s mouth. According to the Web MD article “Why Garlic Is the Bad Breath King” by Andrea M. Braslavsky, garlic breath begins in the gut. In summary, “the gas [from the garlic] was going into the blood, circulating around the body, and being excreted in the breath and urine.” That’s why you can brush your teeth and still have garlic breath.)
After I became homeless, there was no time for fresh
produce, and I fell out of the garlic habit. Once I got a van, I experimented
with the garlic that comes minced in jars. That stuff was quite convenient (if
a little pricey), and was great until I ran out of ice in my cooler and the
garlic got warm. Even if it tasted ok, the garlic that came to room temperature
after the jar was opened left my tummy feeling unhappy.
When The Man and I started traveling together, he wanted
garlic, so we experimented with the minced garlic in the jar. This time The Man
was the one with the unhappy tummy, and by “unhappy,” I mean sick. The garlic
from the jar—once we ran out of ice in the cooler and it got warm—was tearing
him up.
After we gave up on minced garlic in the jar, I used garlic powder sometimes, but it always seemed lacking. When I saw dried garlic flakes in the store, I decided to give them a try. The garlic flakes were tastier than garlic powder, and we were satisfied whenever we sprinkled them on a dish. The problem occurred when I couldn’t find them in the grocery store. It seemed like even small grocery stores carried onion flakes, but garlic flakes were few and far between.
One day at the end of 2018, we ran out of garlic flakes, and
I couldn’t’ find any in the grocery store in the small Arizona town where we
were staying. I didn’t want to spend money on garlic powder I knew would leave
me feeling dissatisfied, so I broke down and bought two fists of garlic.
You may wonder why I never got back into the habit of
cooking with fresh garlic. I had a van and then a fifth wheel. I don’t have any
good reasons. I no longer had a garlic press and chopping up a couple of cloves
of garlic every evening seemed inconvenient. Fresh garlic is somewhat sticky
and it seemed to take too much water to clean the knife and my hands and the
cutting board. I guess the main problem is that I am basically lazy and
typically take the path of least resistance. I wanted something totally
convenient that would taste as good as fresh garlic.
I guess I’d forgotten how tasty fresh garlic is. When The
Man and I ate the first dish I added the fresh garlic to, we were blown away.
We could taste the garlic, and it added a depth of flavor no amount of garlic
flakes could compare to.
I’d been on the fresh garlic bandwagon for several months
without a garlic press. Every night I’d chop chop chop several cloves of garlic
to add to our meal. It was a bit more work than sprinkling garlic . powder, but
the extra effort was worth it because the fresh garlic tasted so much better.
I scored this sturdy garlic press for less than a dollar.
I got lucky one day when I stopped in at my local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. Each ReStore is different, and the one I go to carries a lot of kitchenware: plates, bowls, eating and cooking utensils, mugs, glasses, pots and pans. I always look on both sides of the kitchen aisle, hoping for a good deal on something I can use in meal preparation. On this particular day I was looking for a garlic press and I found one! It’s Chefmate brand and very heavy duty. This garlic press is likely to last for years. The best part? The price. The man working the cash register only charged me $1 for the garlic press and two forks. Hell yes, I’ll take a good quality garlic press for only 33⅓ cents!
Th press really helps me keep up with my love affair with garlic without a lot of muss or fuss. Hurray for my garlic press and most of all, hurray for fresh garlic.
In recognition of this popular food, today I’ll tell you a little story about a sandwich. It’s kind of a gross story which also involves pit toilets. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…
I’ve heard it said that humans can grow accustomed to anything. Anything? Well, probably most things, including the gross and the stinky.
This photo shows an actual pit toilet.
When I worked on the mountain, pit toilets at the very busy trailhead and the campground next to it had to be pumped several times between the middle of May and the middle of October. The truck that came up to pump the toilets was the same kind that removes the waste from porta-potties. A long, flexible hose was dropped down into the chamber (also referred to the pit or the vault) below the seat. A pump on the truck sucked up all the waste materials from inside the chamber and deposited everything into a big holding tank mounted on the truck. When the tank was full, the truck went down the mountain to deposit the waste I-don’t-know-where.
Even keeping the lid down couldn’t control the bad smell after the pit toilets were pumped.
The pumping process stirred up all the decaying waste material and created a HORRIBLE smell. If you’ve never encountered a large concentration of decaying human waste, let me tell you, it smells really bad. It stinks to high heaven. To put it simply, it smells like death, and death does not smell one bit pretty.
I wouldn’t say I grew immune to the stench of toilets being pumped, but at least after the first couple of times I encountered the process, I knew what to expect. As GI Joe taught us, knowing is half the battle.
Most of the visitors to the trailhead and campground were city folks; many of them had never encountered a toilet that didn’t immediately flush their waste away. On a regular day, the smell from the pit toilets was often enough to make them mighty uncomfortable. When the city folks were present for the pumping or its immediate aftermath, they were quite surprised and quite disgusted and quite unhappy.They had no idea shit and piss could smell so nasty.
One day the pump truck came up the mountain. We could practically smell it before we saw it.
This is the building in the middle of the parking lot that housed the pit toilets.
Here we go, I thought. I knew the visitors were going to be melodramatically grossed out, and I was sure to hear complaints.
The pump truck went down to the middle of the parking lot where the two pit toilets were located. I couldn’t see the two men at work, but I could hear the pump and smell the funk. Yes, as always, the churned up human waste smelled horrific.
Finally the pump was switched off and the quietude of nature prevailed. I knew the stench would settle, but at the moment the entire parking lot was enveloped in an awful aroma.
The truck came around the curve leading to the parking lot’s exit, and the driver stopped it near me. Groan. The driver hopped out with clipboard in hand and asked me to sign the form stating he and his partner had been there and done the job. I agreed, wanting the reeking truck away from me as soon as possible.
My favorite sign explaining how to use a pit toilet.
Just before I signed the form, I glanced over at the truck. What I saw gave credence to the idea that humans can grow accustomed to anything. The other pump truck worker, a young guy probably in his early 20s, was sitting in the passenger seat munching a sandwich.
The tourists were reeling, practically dry heaving and passing out, and this guy was sitting in the stink truck, nonchalantly having lunch. I wondered if he had no sense of smell or had simply become so accustomed to the stench that it was basically background noise–or perhaps more accurately, background stink. In any case, he seemed to be enjoying his sandwich, not at all bothered by the odor that was causing the rest of us so much grief.
National Dog Day celebrates all breeds, pure and mixed and serves to help galvanize the public to recognize the number of dogs that need to be rescued each year, either from public shelters, rescues and pure breed rescues. National Dog Day honors family dogs and dogs that work selflessly to save lives, keep us safe and bring comfort.
In honor of National Dog Day, I’m sharing a story about a cute little pup I witnessed repeatedly escaping from his master on a slow day of trying to sell jewelry and shiny rocks.
I was trying to sell my jewelry and shiny rocks at an
outdoor market near a tourist attraction, but there hadn’t been much interest
in my merchandise. Some days are like that. Even with plenty of visitors
milling about and lots of beautiful items on my table, I wasn’t selling much.
I had a lot of time to watch the tourists on that overcast
and chilly day. People watching has always been one of my favorite activities,
and I was enjoying seeing everyone come and go.
Quite a ways down the road that runs through the area where the market is held, I saw a small, fluffy white dog that seemed to be on its own. It was standing on the edge between where the road becomes the parking area. The dog stood there calmly, apparently surveying the scene, but I worried about how close it was to moving traffic. In my experience, tourists are often lacking in observational skills, and I was afraid a driver would not notice the little dog and run it down. Just as I was about to get out of my chair and walk over to the dog, it turned around and walked back between parked cars. Disaster averted.
Maybe 10 or 15 minutes later I looked up from the bracelet I’d
started making and saw the same little white fluffy dog much closer to me (only
two vendors over) sitting in the middle of the roadway. I looked around for
someone rushing over to scoop up and scold the dog, but no one seemed to be
missing it. Was the dog out there alone?
Again, just as I was about to get out of my chair and
approach the dog, it was no longer in danger. The fellow who’d been shopping
with the vendor two tables down from me strode out into the road and picked up
the pup and carried it to safety. Then he made a big production of snapping a
leash onto the dog’s collar. If he had a leash, why had he hesitated to use it
with a dog he must have known was a wanderer? Life is full of mysteries, but it
seems to me that a wandering dog should certainly be leashed in a parking lot
full of distracted drivers.
The fellow and his dog passed my table without a glance. It
was that kind of day.
Not five minutes later, I looked up from my work again and
saw the same little dog trotting across the road, making a beeline for some
bikers taking a break. His leash trailed behind him.
His person was at another vendor’s table, seemingly so caught up in shopping that he couldn’t be bothered to hold onto his dog’s leash. Perhaps the dog was a master escape artist and his person could do little to keep him where he didn’t want to be. The truth of the matter is that I don’t know the whole story, and I shouldn’t judge. When the guy crossed the road to retrieve the doggie yet again, I wanted to run over and tell him he didn’t deserve such a cute dog, but I didn’t. I stayed in my chair and hoped he’d keep the little dog out of harm’s way.
According to the National Day Calendar website, April 5 is National Read a Road Map Day. To prepare us for this holiday, today I’ll share with you my ideas about why GPS isn’t enough, make suggestions about what maps to use depending on where you’re going, and give you tips on where to find help if you need to brush up on your map reading skills.
When did everyone become dependent on GPS and a computerized voice telling us when to turn left?
My dad was a salesman during the early years of my life. When he went out looking for clients, he used paper maps to find them. When I was very young, we moved to a major metro area. My dad had not a single paper map, but an entire large, thick book that showed each neighborhood, each street, each back alley. The book was laid out with some mysterious logic I still fail to understand which involved flipping to a whole new page in mid trip. How did my father possibly read that map while driving? I can only assume he studied the map and planned his trip before getting into the driver’s seat and stopped in a parking lot to consult the map any time he had to confirm his route or start over and figure out new directions.
In 1998 I found myself at a music festival with a need to get back to my home base sooner than planned. I didn’t have a car and didn’t drive. I was facing a multi-day Greyhound bus adventure, but a friend of a friend of a friend pointed me in the direction of a woman who was headed to the same city as I was. She had an open passenger seat and room in the back of her pickup for my gear. After she accepted me as her passenger, I found she also had a TripTik Travel Planner from AAA. Does anyone remember these customized booklets that AAA members could request from the local office? AAA members could get request directions to a specific destination and the local office would provide turn-by-turn instructions. I spent a lot of time holding that booklet from AAA, as I was immediately promoted from passenger to navigator.
(True confession: I still managed to send us off in the wrong direction, despite the turn-by-turn instructions in my hand. In my defense, we were in the outskirts of Chicago, and the proliferation of road signs had me befuddled. Luckily the driver quickly saw the error of my ways and got us back on track ASAP.)
I can’t remember exactly when I learned about MapQuest. Perhaps it was in the very early years of the 2000s when I got my first laptop. Maybe it was before that, and I’d use my computer at work or go to the public library to get my directions via the World Wide Web. I do remember finding directions online and either printing them or writing each step out by hand. MapQuest let me down multiple times (including on so many occasions on a single trip to Missouri that I grew convinced that no employee of MapQuest had ever driven one mile in the Show Me State), until I swore to never use that website again. Now I’m a Google Maps gal.
The first time I heard a talking GPS navigator was 2009. The parents of the
guy who was then my boyfriend flew into the major city where we lived and rented a car because the guy and I didn’t have one. The car’s talking navigation system seemed to be more trouble to me than it was worth. We asked it to take us to tacos; instead it took us in circles as we tried to find a taco stand that apparently didn’t exist. I feared we would be directed to drive off a cliff or through a river.
Until I met The Man, I never let the navigation lady in Google Maps talk to me. I’d get directions from Google Maps, then write them out on a piece of paper I’d clip somewhere on my dash so I could refer to the instructions as I drove. I soon agreed with The Man that listening to the Google lady is easier than writing everything out, but it sure is a wrench in my system when she decides to send me on a wild goose chase. (I call them “wild Google chases.”) Why does the GPS lady get confused? Doesn’t her job require her to be omniscient?
And yet, I often wonder how our society got around before Google Maps or other GPS technology. When I think hard, I remember as a teenager having to ask friends how to get to their houses before my mother drove me over. Invitations to birthday parties often included small hand-drawn maps. Vacationers used road maps and those AAA TripTik booklets (if they were so fortunate as to be AAA members–my family never was). When folks got lost, they’d stop at a gas station and ask the worker for help.
Yes, I do appreciate GPS technology. I use it often. I’ve made friends with the Google Maps lady who guides me from inside my phone. (I call her Megan.) But for goodness sake, no matter how convenient GPS technology is, don’t forget your paper maps and don’t forget how to use them.
There are a few types of paper maps that you may need during
your travels. Be sure to get the right map for the job!
(I’m going to assume you’re traveling in the U.S.A. since
that’s where I’m writing from. I’ve you’re traveling in a country other than
the U.S.A., I‘d love for you to leave a comment describing how your use of maps
is different from the suggestions I’m giving here.)
For your day-to-day driving on the interstate and highways, use a decent road atlas. Rand McNally makes a good one. You can buy these bound sets of maps at bookstores or even Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart also sells a Rand McNally road atlas that shows the location of every Wal-Mart store in the U.S. This atlas would be a great investment for anyone who plans to spend a significant number of nights in Wal-Mart parking lots.SimplyRVing made a YouTube video all about this Wal-Mart atlas and how it can help you on the road.
If you’re planning your travels ahead of time, you can order an atlas online or through a local, independent bookstore. (Believe me, an independent bookstore will appreciate your business!) An atlas will show you the main roads to get you from town to town. The maps often show rest stops and campgrounds, as well as state and federal public land. Many of them also show basic maps of major cities and the most popular National Parks. If you purchase an atlas that covers all of North America, you’ll get maps of Canada and Mexico too.
If you’re only traveling in one state or region and you don’t have the space
(or money) for an atlas, you can probably get by with one or more state maps. You can sometimes find state maps in bookstores or Wal-Mart stores, and you can certainly buy them online. However, state maps are typically available for free at visitor centers or by mail if you contact the state’s tourism office ahead of time. I was recently in the visitor center in Deming, NM where there were free maps available for New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Texas.
Sometimes a stand-alone state map will be more detailed than
a state map in an atlas. It may show you county roads and tourists attractions.
A state map may also include basic maps of major cities within the state.
If you want to explore a state thoroughly, especially if you want to boondock for free on public land, you may want to invest in an atlas or atlas and gazetteer for the state you are exploring. These bound maps of individual states break the entire state into blocks, then enlarges each block to show not just county roads but also forest service roads, old mines, campgrounds, public land, historic sites, hunting zones, and more. Having a state atlas or atlas and gazetteer combo is a good plan if you want to find free camping areas that are off the beaten path. The two most popular brands are DeLorme and Benchmark.
If you’re going to spend some time in a National Forest or BLM area (especially a popular one), you may be able to get a map from the local ranger station. These maps will show Forest Service roads, natural attractions and landmarks, and campgrounds. These maps will also save you from buying a gazetteer if you don’t really need it because you’ll be boondocking primarily in one part of the state. (The map of the National Forest I worked in for four seasons cost $20, but the ranger station may have free handouts that will get you where you want to go. Don’t be afraid to ask for freebies.)
On the other hand, if you spend a lot of time in an urban area, you may want to get a good map of the city where you are based. Gas stations or Wal-Mart stores may have city maps, or you can order them before you hit town, if you’re the type to plan ahead. If you get to a city and need a free map of the area, try the local chamber of commerce. You don’t have to say you live in your van (if doing so makes you uncomfortable) when you explain you’re new to the area and need some help finding your way around. You could also go to the public library and print out some maps of the city that show the parts of town you plan to frequent.
Once you have your map, don’t just stick it in the pocket
behind your seat and forget about it. Get that baby out and study it! Trust me,
the best time to pull out your map is not when you are already lost.
If you’re using GPS to get to your destination, compare the route the
computer gives you to your map. Does what the GPS tell you make sense? Some camp host friends punched “Sequoia National Park” into their GPS, and after following the instructions given, found themselves turning down what seemed to be a dry riverbed. Oops! Had they consulted a map before the trip, they would have seen there was no reason to leave the pavement to get where they were going.
I’ve had Google Maps send me on wild Google chases even in cities and towns. Once when on the interstate, driving through the metro Los Angeles area, the Google Maps lady routed The Man onto Sunset Boulevard. Why? Why? Why? Google Maps often sent me on strange, roundabout routes through Porterville, CA. In any case, using a paper map to get familiar with an area before a trip can help do away with this type of nonsense. Simply being familiar with street names and the lay of the land can help make recovery a little easier if the GPS starts spewing incorrect information.
If you’ve never learned to read a road map or your skills are rusty, no shame! You can find lots of map-reading help on the internet. The Beginner Driver’s Guide will give you an informative overview of what different components of a map mean and how to use them. wikiHow has a thorough two-part article on “How to Read a Map,” including how to understand a map’s layout and how to use a map to get where you’re going. If you’d rather watch a video, there are several on YouTube dedicated to teaching folks how to read maps.
However you go about sharpening your map-reading skills, do
it before you get on the road. Trying to interpret an unfamiliar map while
trying to drive and read street signs is no easy task and could be a recipe for
disaster.
GPS is quite helpful in getting you where you’re going, but
it shouldn’t be the only tool in your navigation toolbox. Make sure you have
the correct paper map for the particular journey you’re on, and know how to use
it so you can reach your destination with less worry and stress.
As always, Blaize Sun takes no responsibility for your safety and well-being. Only you are responsible for your safety and well-being. Do your research and decide for yourself your best course of action.
