My olive curing recipe

Olive Pickling Instructions

There are two stages in preparing olives. The first stage is all about getting rid of the bitterness and this takes about two months, less for the darker, black olives, while the second stage is where you start adding flavour.

First stage, involves soaking olives in water for a week and then brine for 6-8 weeks. Some people use caustic soda on the green olives, but I do the old fashioned recipe which uses salt only.

Here's what you do from woe to go:

Pick olives when the fruit begins to turn from plain green to pink and purplish black. After picking treat them straight away while they are still fresh and hard. Remove any soft or damaged olives and rinse in clean water in a bucket. Make a fine slit in the side of each olive, using a very sharp knife. This cutting will draw out the bitterness and will allow the water and salt soaking brine to penetrate the olive.

Place all olives in bowl with fresh water and make sure they are under the liquid. You can place a plate on top to keep the olives submerged. Pour the liquid away each day and replace with fresh water. After a week alter this routine so that the soaking liquid consists of 10% salt. To make this solution and ensure the salt is dissolved, bring the salt and water mixture to the boil and allow to cool before adding to the olives. I cook up a few litres of this solution and store it. The amount you need will depend on how many olives you have. Use this salt solution for soaking the olives and every three days or so change the salt water. Do this until the olives are no longer too bitter, which may take 6 to 8 weeks. Then the olives are ready for the second stage.

Second stage
Pour off and measure the last lot of water so that you will know the volume of salt brine that will be required. Measure that quantity of fresh, warm water into a pan and dissolve the salt, this time at the rate of 1/2 cup of salt to 10 cups of water. Place olives in clean sterilised bottles with some dried garlic, some chillies and a teaspoon of lemon juice per litre. Then pour the salt water brine over the olives they are completely submerged. Top up bottles with up to one centimetre of olive oil to stop air getting to the fruit and seal the lids on. No further preparation is required and the bottled olives will store for at least 12 months in a cool cupboard.

When you are ready to eat your olives, pour out the strong preserving solution and fill the jar with clean, cool water. Leave in the refrigerator for a further 24 hours. (The plain water leaches some of the salt back out of the olives.) At this stage you can also add any or all of the following flavourings: grated garlic, basil, oregano, chopped onion, red capsicum, lemon juice and lemon pieces. You can also use the olives just as they are, along with other things as a pizza topping.

Curing your own olives

Perth's Mediterranean climate makes olive growing ideal and many varieties of olive trees are grown in gardens here. But I am always amazed that many olives go unpicked. Do people just grow them for the lovely foliage? Probably. Well maybe it's not that surprising garden olives get left on the tree as the first time I tried to cure my garden olives, it was a total disaster. They were so bitter and ended up being thrown out. Back then I made two mistakes: (1) I was impatient and didn't wait long enough for the bitterness to go out of the olives and (2) I tried to do the green olives, which are more difficult to cure.




By the way green olives are NOT a different variety, but just unripe olives and they need special treatment. They are harder and more bitter. If you are a newbie/wannabee olive curer and want to give this a go, try first with the black ones, or with olives that are just turning pinkish dark, like the ones in the top photo. I actually picked these from someone's verge tree. I will post my olive curing recipe tomorrow.

Why buy an Android tablet?

I've been thinking about the proliferation of tablets and the competition (or lack of competition) for Apple's iPad.

The question is why would you buy an Android tablet?

This question was posted on the Businessinsider website. Here's a summary of the responses. Android tablet offers:

• Price
• More competition
• More variety
• Openness
• Flash support
• Support for PDF
• No DRM
• Drag and drop via USB like it's another drive
• Avoid Itunes

CNET has looked at the range of current and upcoming tablets and presented them all in a comparative table.

And Garner predicts that the gap between Apple & Android tablet market shares will continue to decrease. Apple’s iOS currently has 83.9% market share which is expected to drop to 68.7% later in 2011. But it will stay at a healthy 63.5% in 2012, retaining almost half of the market (47.1%) by 2015.

If you want to follow this topic check out Crave: the gadget blog from CNET.

An architectural treasure south of Perth

I came across this book recently - "The Fairbridge Chapel : Sir Herbert Baker's labour of love" by David Dolan and Christine Lewis and it reminded me that I was intrigued by this chapel when I saw it for the first time last year on a visit to Fairbridge Farm. The architecture looks so unusual compared to the style of most Australian colonial church architecture (not that I am an expert at all). It certainly has a Cape, as in Cape Town, look about it.

The Fairbridge Chapel is known as the Chapel of the Holy Innocents and was designed by the famous architect Sir Herbert Baker who also designed buildings all over South Africa.

"Baker was a great believer in Kingsley Fairbridge and his work at Fairbridge Farm that when the Child Emigration Society approached him in 1928 about designing a chapel for the Farm School, he was more than happy to oblige. In his autobiography Architecture and Personalities (1994) Baker explained, " I have such admiration for the work of Kingsley Fairbridge, inspired by Rhodes and a Rhodes Scholar, in his farm schools that I gave designs of a chapel for the first Farm School at Pinjarra in Western Australia."

More about Herbert Baker architecture in South Africa here

Baker designed the Union Buildings, the official seat of the South African government in Pretoria, South Africa.

It is well worth a visit to Fairbridge Farm just to see the chapel. It is less than a 60 minute drive south of Perth, near Pinjarra.

Fly in fly out

I won't be posting for a few days as I am off on a whistle stop trip to Sydney to attend a research data management forum.

It is the 2011 Research Data Management Policy Summit, hosted by the University of Sydney.

We are participating in an ANDS Seeding the Commons project that requires our university to draft a range of policies and procedures around research data management, so this summit will be really useful.

My aim is to resume the Blog Every Day of June when I get back on the weekend. Happy blogging to y'all and keep up the posts.

International Year of Forests my forest photos

Western Australia has precious few forests and all are in the South West of the state. Here’s my photo album tribute for 2011 the International Year of Forests. These photos were taken around Perth, Pemberton, on the Cape to Cape trail, Yallingup and Dwellingup.


Walkers in the forest


Flowers after forest fire



Walking the dog through the Karri forest



Burnt out Marri tree covered with moss




Coastal Melaleuca trees



Catspaw Flower



Karri forest



Marri and grass trees


Kangaroos on the edge of the forest

At the movies

I have seen quite a few movies over the last month of so and here are some of my recommendations and links to other sources of information.

OF GODS AND MEN Wonderful, highly recommended. It is based on a true story, set in the early 1990s about a group of French Trappist monks living under the threat of hostile elements in the Algerian community where the monastery is located. 5 stars

GET LOW I found this very slow moving, but it has some wonderful acting from Robert Duvall, Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek. 3 stars

SNOWTOWN Oh dear I can't rate this, other than saying it is horrid and I felt quite traumatised after some scenes. In fact we walked out after 45 minutes. I agreed to see it without really finding out what it was about…silly me.

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS oh yeah, it is a bit Hollywood but a good 1930s Depression time period piece and I did not mind that it was quite changed from the book. Austrian actor Christoph Waltz steals the show. 4 stars.

INCENDIES a very grim story of war and its impact in Lebanon, but well done. There are some excellent French Canadian films around. 4 1/2 stars

HERE I AM I can really recommend this - a great new Aussie film, well told story of indigenous woman's struggle coming out of gaol and moving into a women’s refuge in North Adelaide to get her life together. It’s sad but also inspirational, battling against the odds, with some wonderful funny moments and great music. The Aboriginal cast are wonderful and include some experienced actors and some new faces. Warwick Thornton (of Samson and Delilah) is the cinematographer. The film premiered to a standing ovation at the Adelaide Film Festival earlier this year and I can see why. 5 stars.

Students use of Summon, article in New Library World

My colleague and I have had an article published in the Emerald journal New Library World. This is based on a study we did where we observed students using the Serials Solutions webscale discovery tool, Summon.

Gross, J. & Sheridan, L. (2011). Web scale discovery: the user experience. New Library World, 112 (5/6) 236-247.

The DOI is: 10.1108/03074801111136275

Purpose – This study aims to look at how a small group of university students used the new library web scale search discovery tool, “Summon”, and whether they encountered any difficulties pertaining to navigation, ease of use and the quality of the search results.

Design/methodology/approach – Researchers conducted a series of usability studies in which students were observed as they conducted some typical library resource searches using the new discovery search platform.

Findings – The paper analyses the data, describes and reports the findings of the usability tests. The study found that the new homepage design of providing a single search box was an effective interface for users. The students found a single search box discovery solution was simple to use, and seemed to deliver satisfactory results on a selection of typical library search tasks. The study confirms some of the promise for web scale discovery, but points to new lines of enquiry in relation to the nature of assistance that students will need in the future, particularly in relation to their need to evaluate information.

Originality/value – Web scale discovery searching is an innovation in the online searching of library collections. The study revealed how a small sample of end-users experienced the new type of searching and serendipitously identified a new issue that warrants further investigation

Report: The value of libraries for research and researchers

One of the most interesting reports to come out in recent months is the UK report on libraries and research which is a must read for all academic library managers.

The value of libraries for research and researchers

The report was jointly commissioned by RIN and RLUK in the U.K. and it presents the findings of a systematic study of the value of the services that libraries provide to researchers, and of the contributions that libraries from a wide range of institutions make to institutional research performance.

The key points are compelling and clearly state the benefits of libraries for research:

1. Good libraries help institutions to recruit and retain top researchers

2. Libraries help researchers win research grants and contracts

3. Libraries promote and exploit new technologies and new models of scholarly communications

4. Repositories increase the visibility of the institution and raise its research profile

5. Outward-facing libraries contribute to institution-wide initiatives

6. Specialist staff work in partnership with academic departments

7. Connecting with researchers enhances the value of the library's services

8. Dedicated spaces provide a better work environment for researchers

9. Easy access to high-quality content is a key foundation for good research

10. Libraries are a physical manifestation of the values of the academy and of scholarship

Books read so far, in 2011

I'm trying to read more this year. Here's a list with comments on the books I have read so far in 2011.

The Good Earth by Pearl Buck
a classic that has stood the test of time

Burying the Bones by Hilary Spurling
a biography of Pearl Buck's life in early 20th Century China

Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban
I had not read JR before and was blown away by his erudition and wonderful descriptions of sailing the inside passage, from Seattle to Juneau

Coasting by Jonathan Raban
an earlier book by JR, about sailing around the British Isles

Larry’s Party by Carol Shields
my expectations on hearing positive reports about this book from friends when it first came out, were not quite met

Enchantment and Sorrow by Gabrielle Roy
Gabrielle Roy is not well known in Australia at all, but is one of the most famous French Canadian writers. She wrote in French and this is a translation of the first part of her autobiography, set in Manitoba in the 1920-1940s. If the French Canadians had it rough in Quebec, those in the isolated French communities were even worse off.

Flashman Papers by Macdonald Fraser
well what can I say. Politically incorrect, but very flashy in a boy's own adventure way!

The Resurrectionist by James Bradley
a strange dark tale about "body snatchers" in 19th Century London. It is based on the story of the Burke and Hare murders. I will seek out some more of James Bradley.

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
you must read this post-colonial classic from Nigerian writer

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Must read some more of CMcC have seen the film of The Road and the book is equally stark and grim

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
terrific

Mothers and Sons by Colm Toibin
short stories, set in Ireland, all around this theme, each quite different.

Dancing Backwards by Salley Vickers
one of her latest, but not as good and her previous books such as Miss Garnet's Angel and The Other Side of You

Ruby in her navel by Barry Unsworth
Forget the silly title, this is a terrific well researched historical novel set in Sicily in the 12th Century, when Sicily had a Norman king (Roger) and Saracens and Christians worked along side and shared power for one brief period in history. Very informative and enjoyable. I am an Unsworth fan.

Barry Unsworth by Pascali’s Island
this is one of Unsworth's earlier books set in pre- WW1 in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire. Good read

Five Bells by Gail Jones
this is the first book of Gail Jones that I have read. It's set in Sydney on one bright summer day and tracks the intertwining lives of four adults and a child. The title comes from classic Australian poem Five Bells by Kenneth Slessor which I have also been delving into. A wonderful book. The various story lines propel you forward and the language is beautiful and poetic. The subject of the poem, Five Bells, is echoed in the novel as well.

The Angel and the Octopus by Simon Leys
some great essays here and I especially enjoyed the ones about China under Mao.

Blog every day of June 2011

Last year a group of librarians on Twitter brought together by @flexnib embarked upon a blogging challenge and set themselves the goal of posting one blog post a day throughout June.

It's on again and starting today and I've decided to give it a go and see if I can maintain the pace and write something interesting.

I hope to also revive my blogging enthusiasm which I have to admit has flagged since I started devoting more time to Twitter.

Here's the getting started post from Libraries Interact, the Australian Library group blog, where all the participants names are listed.

Best of luck to all those who have decided to join in, it will be fun to see how we go. I imagine half way thorough the 2nd week will be the time we strike writer's block!

The Twitter tag for this is #blogeverydayofjune