"Are olives pickled?" asked Juanita, and Mariquita said:
"How queer it seems that all the things we eat have to go through so much before they can be eaten. I did not know that olives had to be pickled."
"Yes, mi niña, and we will play that we are visiting an olive grove, and we can see the way the olives are picked and made ready for food. See, here are the trees, and the fruit is picked from them and placed in baskets. There are two kinds of olives used, green and ripe, the green ones are picked just before they begin to turn soft. These are separated from the others, and the bitter taste is removed by soaking in fresh water for a long time, or some picklers soak them for a shorter time in a solution of potash lye. This softens the skin and extracts all bitterness, but the olives must be soaked in clear water, which is frequently changed to get all the potash off. Then they are placed in weak brine, and afterward in stronger, until they have the salty taste which we like so much. Then they are put in small barrels and taken to the bottling rooms, where they are bottled and labelled for the market."
"How is the oil made?" asked Fernando.
"That is harder to do, but it is very interesting to watch. The fresh olives are carefully picked, dried a little, and then crushed. Old-fashioned stone mills are used to crush the fruit, and the mass is pressed to extract the liquid which contains all the watery juice as well as the oil and pulp."
"What do they do after it is pressed?" asked Fernando.
"They let it stand for a month and the refuse goes to the bottom. Then the oil is poured off and allowed to stand another month, when the process is repeated. After the third time the oil is ready for use. The best oil is made in this way, as it keeps its colour and flavour better by the settling process than when it is filtered.
"In some places the olives are placed on a platform and the millstone is placed over them. This is turned round and round by means of a pole to which a donkey is hitched, and the mass which is turned out is placed in rush baskets, which are put under a press which is screwed down by five or six men, so that the oil is squeezed out, but that is a very old-fashioned way of making oil, and there are better ways now. They still use this, however, when there is a big crop, and they want to get the fruit made into oil as rapidly as possible. Great care must be taken that everything is clean and that the oil does not become rancid, or it will all be spoiled."
"Is everything we eat so interesting?" asked Juanita.
"The things we eat and wear, too," her uncle answered, "and nothing in all Sevilla is more interesting than the way of making silk."