Last month, Musco Family Olive Co. offered to send me a sampler package of their delicious new olives, including:
- Fresh Cured Olives – hand-picked, then cured immediately to retain their firm texture and natural color variations.
- Reduced Salt Olives – large, black pitted olives with 25% less salt and pimiento stuffed manzanillas with 75% less salt than their traditional counterparts!
I’m not a big fan of olives, but I was heading home at the time, so I offered them to my parents. Here’s my dad’s review…
Like many kids, I grew up with canned olives as an occasional treat. My mother even put chopped black olive sandwiches in the school lunches for me and my siblings. Yes – chopped olive sandwiches! Just sliced white bread, mayonnaise and chopped black olives. My early vegetarian lunch experience, I guess. We also used to put olives on our fingers, simulating a tiny boxing glove on each finger. As an adult, I almost never eat canned olives. And Elise’s mom did not pack her school lunches with chopped olive sandwiches. So what happened?
I can’t specifically answer why or when I stopped eating canned black olives. We serve specialty deli olives like kalamata and manzanillas at parties but don’t look for canned olives in the aisles of Safeway.
Nevertheless, I took six cans of olives with me to work at the hospital for a tasting contest, courtesy of Musco Olives. There were six different types of black and green olives, including two with reduced salt and two stuffed with pimentos. 13 of us rated them on a scale of 1 to 5, from which I calculated simple mathematical results.
Here we are diligently tasting the olives.
Here is the rating sheet we used.
There was a fairly wide range of preferences, which I suppose is not surprising. Personally, I noticed little differences in the taste of the olives without salt. Overall, there were two olives that stood out from the rest (received the highest ratings): Pearls Green Olives and Early California Reduced Salt. However, there was not a clear loser, as the other four types of olives received pretty good scores also.
This experience reminded me of my grammar school days with black olives, and that olives are a convenient choice for low-calorie vegetarian snacks. While I prefer different kinds of olives (the aforementioned types purchased in the deli section), these canned olives are tasty and could be eaten as snacks or appetizers (e.g., part of a cheese platter), and they offer the convenience of shelf life.
Now is the part where you get to try and win this same sampler, complete with a can opener and olive picks! One person will win that, and three runner ups will get free product coupons, compliments of Musco Family Olive Co.
To enter, leave separate comments below with any of the following (the more you do, the more entries you get):
- tell me any memory that includes eating olives
- share a recipe/use for olives that you have in mind
- tweet about this giveaway mentioning @elisehippie
- check out their website to learn about their environmental initiatives
This giveaway is open to US residents only. I’ll pick the random winner and runner ups on August 30th.
These olives are also great for easy summer entertaining – they’re a healthy alternative to chips, but still offer a nice salty, crunch and satisfying flavor. Plus, they are gluten free, vegan, and kosher.
Yum! I love olives. Even that sandwich sounds good. When we were little, my cousins and I would also put black olives on our fingers. We would pretend our finger got smashed in a door and try to trick the adults.
I only recently started liking olives. I never had them growing up and now I love throwing them into my salads everyday!
i love olives! And like you, when my brother and I were little we would put them on our fingers and walk around with them on our hands slowly eating them off. This would only happen at special occasions (like Christmas and Thanksgiving) because that was the only time the infamous canned olives would make an appearance in my household. 🙂 I really hope I win– I think bringing back some olives in my life would be a yummy and nostalgic.
oh my gosh how fun! i bet your coworkers love you:) i love olives – i always throw them in frittatas or in Mexican dishes!
My sister and I always loved black olives. I can remember my mom putting them out for parties, and we would eat them all!! Mom would yell at us, and tell us to “eat one at a time!”
Love olives! I used to put them on my fingers too 😉 I still eat olives pretty regularly. They’re great for a salty pick me up ( green), and I wouldn’t even dream of a taco night without black and green! Mmmm….olives
I checked out the environmental initiative. Way to reuse the pits! That’s awesome.
I retweeted 🙂 (@veggie_v)
i looove pasta salad with chopped up olives! yum!
I used to love eating olives as an appetizer, before dinner when I was younger!
The first time I had olives besides the black ones from a can on pizza was when my mom brought home a little tub from the olive bar at the new grocery store. I had never had much of an opinion about them one way or another, but after having had the good ones, I fell in love.
I love olive tapenade. Here’s a recipe for one: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/kalamata-olive-tapenade/
Checked out their environmental initiatives. The part about the pits was especially interesting.
My mom used to give me a ziploc bag full of a whole can of black olives to snack on growing up..yum!
Similar to you, my best olive memories revolve around wearing them on my finger tips at all family gatherings!
One olive memory is getting black olives on pizza. My family always ordered one supreme pizza so black olives were included and I loved them. As I got older, I found more and more people who hated black olives on pizza. So now other people automatically give me all of their black olives. 🙂
I, too, used to put black olives on each of my fingers. My husband, right out of the can!
One of my favorite recipes with olives is watermelon, feta cheese, and cured black olives with herbs! Yum!
this is super gross to some but i would sip from the olive jar growing up and still do haha. i love the brine! when i tell a bar tender to give me the dirty martini…i mean extra dirty! i finished this comment by stuffing 3 spanish queen olives into my mouth.
Yet another way we are alike…I am not a huge olive fan. Which is odd since my mom and sister LOVE olives. So I guess if I were to win, which I doubt, I would give the olives to one of them. All of my memories of olive eating are my mom and sister eating them and me carefully picking them out of things, lol!
I love olives! When I was a kid, I used to beg my grandmother for the green olives out of her martini…and she would pick out the gin soaked olives just for me! I don’t think my mom ever knew that. 🙂
My memory of olives is my mother serving them at holiday dinners. She had a special crystal dish. I believe it is called a relish dish. It was divided in two and the green olives went on one side and the black on the other. I liked the black and my sister liked the green. As an adult I like all olives!
One of my very earliest memories is of sitting on my mom’s kitchen counter, assembling burritos, and putting a big black olive on each little finger. =)
I want to revisit my chunky olive hummus, which my toddler just adores!
Loved reading about their environmental initiatives! Cool how they dispose of the olive pits.
I remember putting them on my fingers growing up during holidays. My 8yr old daughter loves olives. She love going to the olive bar at Mother’s Market
In an effort to eat more healthy fats, I just started adding olives into my regular rotation. I’d really like to try to make an olive tapenade or bruschetta with olives. Is there any better combination than olives and tomatoes?!?!
I have been eating olives of every kind since I can remember–green, black, kalamata, etc. Growing up, olives were a staple in our house. My family now only likes black olives, but our pantry always has a supply of black olives.
At my grams and opas they would serve pickles and olives for an appetizer at every holiday. I would always eat them before dinner and after dessert too.
I like olive sandwiches, though we use cream cheese and green olives. So good!
We’ve been eating olives like crazy lately. I used to think tapenade was weird and then I fell in love with it. I also have fond memories of wearing the black ones on my fingers (I don’t really like green). My stepmom used to make this yummy taco stacks and green chiles and olives were mandatory. So yummy!
{hugs}
I used to put black olives on each finger and eat them one by one. Now my kids do the same!
I’d make pasta puttanesca — spicy and yum!
I checked out their website — I had no idea there was special, salt-absorbing grass! That’s cool that they use it to help the soil.
Olives on top of a veggie pizza during overnight sleepovers with my girlfriends!
I would use these olives on top of my chopped grilled chicken salads with tomatoes and feta cheese! 🙂
Tweeted! https://twitter.com/Serene_streams/status/237357296777306113
I love that on their 280-acre headquarters they are driving towards a 100% renewable production process – that’s awesome! 🙂
I have loved olives my entire life! I was considered a weird kid, since while all of my friends, siblings and cousins would eat those rubbery black olives at holidays, I LOVED the green ones served alongside. My favorite lunch meat as a kid was olive and pimento loaf, (my mom called it Santa Claus bologna, since it had the red and green in it.)
My favorite olive memory, though, was at a family gathering in 1992. My little brother, who was 17, and my son, who was 2, disappeared for a few minutes, then came running into the living room with pitted black olives on all of their fingers, calling themselves the olive monsters. We laughed so hard! My son is now 22, and he still fondly remembers that game he played with is fun uncle.
Kim, we had the same setup at every family gathering too! Divided crystal dish, green olives on one side, black olives on the other. 🙂
Oh that sounds delicious! I am going to try it!
I love olives! I must have expressed this early on in my relationship with my fiance, because now every time we go to my future in-law’s house, my FMIL has a plate of olives waiting for me.
I love to make pasta sauce with crushed tomatoes, kalamata olives, and capers. Salty, tasty deliciousness.
My olive memory is putting olives on my fingers and eating them that way all through childhood. My two kiddos eat them the same way now 🙂
My favorite use for olives is tossing them into a big spinach salad loaded down with veggies!
I love how environmentally friendly the company is. The idea of using the Nypa grass to control the salt in the soil is pretty cool!
i loved olives on pizza as a kid, and on everything now!
Environmentally friendly and olives. The perfect pair. 🙂
ahhh, i love your dad. seriously. mr. dieden is THE BEST. remember that time you had that random picture sitting on your coffee table and i picked it up and said, “who’s that hot guy?” and you said, “ummm, that’s my dad.”
so sweet that your dad brought the olives to work and put together a tasting. took pictures. and then wrote about it for your blog. that’s love.
xoxo
Favorite memories are olives as appetizers at family holiday parties!
I’d put olives on top of my supreme pizzas I bake in the oven!
pizza isn’t pizza without olives . hummus isn’t hummus w/o olives . my favorite sandwich is an Udis Gluten free bagel with galaxy dairy free onion chive cream cheese, cucumber slices, onions, tomatoes, capers and piles of olives
Love their eco-friendly environment beliefs – unique olive pit disposal methods too!
my favorite olive memory . i had a cat who LOVED black olives .. we would share with her .. such a smart black cat!!
We would stuff them with squeeze cheese and serve them as appetizers. When you are in college it is about the little things!
We used to stuff them with squeeze cheese and serve them as appetizers in college.
Every Thanksgiving my cousins and sister would devour the dished of pickles and olives on the table and bit off the ends of the black olives and put them on our fingers and pretend we had black nails- kinds are strange!
Utterly CLASSIC college food! Love it!
I checked out their environmental initiatives. They’re doing an amazing job.
I have a memory of my college roommate and me sharing a bowl of olives in the dining hall. We were both olive fanatics and could just eat handfuls of them!
For a recipe, one time for Halloween my husband and I filled pitted black olives with cream cheese to look like eyeballs 🙂
I lovelovelove olives!!
I would always put them on my fingers and wave at my sister, and later try to eat hers off her fingers!
Recipe? Um… Way back when dairy was in my life i always put them ontop of cottage cheese! (gross??!)
I grew up with the good old canned olives too! one of my favorite memories is asking my grandma to take me shopping to get items to make my mom an Easter basket. Mom never cared for sweets so I bought the “fancy” things she liked, one of which was anchovy stuffed olives!
my favorite pasta salad: whole grain pasta, roasted red peppers, nicoise olives, chickpeas, fresh chives & basil and a vinagrette made with olive oil, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, pasted garlic, S & P
The company uses the olive pit waste as biomass fuel, very cool!
Favorite olive memory – I remember sucking on them as a kid as I thought they were such a funny color, shape and texture too!
For recipes I love using olives in hummus and I have to top my pizzas with olives too and would love to give these a try!
Great environmental “Green” standpoint to use their pit waste by recycling it into fuel energy! Awesome!
Olive memory – I remember sneaking into the fridge and eating pimento stuffed olives, yum!
Using olives in a recipe – I’d love to throw them on top of a veggie pizza – or into a martini, does that count as a recipe?
Awesome!!! “The power for RENEWS™ starts with the olive itself. Musco pits billions of olives each year, pits that were previously thought of as a waste source. Now our pits are, as Discovery Channel put it, “Powering the Future.””
I *love* olives. As a kid I put them on my fingers and chased my big sister around, pretending I was a monster with really interesting(?) claws.
Some unique recipe ideas: In high school I always added them to veggie stirfrys (though I haven’t for a while). Also, they are awesome ground up in scramble eggs, or in hummus, or other dips. Also, because I’m not vegetarian, I’ll cook chicken with lemon juice, green olives, and rosemary– I imagine that this would be an awesome way to roast potatoes and other veggies, too!
I was an olive fanatic as a kid! My family would go to Olive Garden and I would literally eat breadsticks and a cup of black olives as my meal. I had to put the olives on the tips of my fingers and eat them off one by one. I’m sure my parents loved taking me out to eat!
I love olives! I put them on top of devil eggs; add olives to my salad and on a veggie piazza.
My family loves black olives. Every family get-together includes a veggie tray with carrots, usually cauliflower or broccoli and then lots of olives. By the end of dinner the olives are always gone but there is still the other veggies leftover.
Olives on homemade pizza, YUM!!
I adore olives. Yes my cousins and I all used to put olives on our fingers, it was a tradition at any holiday gathering!
I remember absolutely loving green olives as a kid. I didn’t care for the black ones, but the green ones with the red pepper in the middle were the best!
I make a really great olive spread. I coursely chop green olives, black olives, and green onions in a food processer, along with a couple cloves of garlic. Then I mix this with equal parts mayo and cream cheese. It makes a delicious spread for crackers or for rollint up in a tortilla and slicing into pinwheels.
marcia.goss@gmail.com
Tweet.
https://twitter.com/mgoss123/status/239750859842523138
I read on their website that soil salinity is a problem. They have solved it by planting grass called NyPa, which loves salt and gobbles it up!
marcia.goss@gmail.com
My dad and I were the only ones in my family that liked olives and we would constantly fight over the jars in our house 🙂
Thanks for the chance to win!
gina.m.maddox (at) gmail (dot) com
tweet–https://twitter.com/CrazyItalian0/status/240811876718624769
gina.m.maddox (at) gmail (dot) com
I learned: The olive pits are ignited at extremely high temperature in a cutting-edge, clean-burning biomass furnace. The energy released is then used to heat Musco’s wastewater, distilling impurities and creating a tremendous amount of steam pressure.
gina.m.maddox (at) gmail (dot) com
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hi shelley – you won the runner up prize, see this post : http://www.hungryhungryhippie.com/sahale-crunchers-giveaway/
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hi … i was notified that i won coupons,. thank you . and think i may have emailed my shipping info to the wrong email . did you get it?? thank you
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