Home made OLIVES?!?!?!

My olives - after many had already been eaten

I live in the northeastern part of the US, so I don't get to see olives growing on trees anywhere close to where I live. But my lineage includes Italian and Mediterranean (Sicilian) blood, and I love olives - every incarnation of them - and my young boys are learning. My husband remains unconvinced - and it's the one food he will not willingly even try.
Ok, so, I did try a "candied" version of olives, purchased in Chinatown more than 15 years ago, and I will NEVER need to do that again. And black canned olives should just be BANNED, but otherwise...olives are my friend.
So, last November, when I brought home 2 small plastic wrapped styrofoam trays of bright green, hard-as-rocks, globes, the kids were curious, but my husband was not even remotely amused. I'd brought the enemy home to roost.
I, however, remember my grandfather bringing them home and making them into delicious morsels of briny goodness, so when I'd seen them, sitting lonely and abandoned in the reduced produce section of the local veggie mart, I had to give it a try.

Grampy - ca 1956 (10 years before I was born)

I googled, and searched my memory and taste buds...but the memories are so old and no in my living family remembers how grampy made his olives, just the vague recollection of a mallet, salt and oil. So I had to start from scratch with info found on-line.
I wasn't even sure how my experiment would go so I only have pictures of the finished product.
I looked at a lot of recommendations on many sites, but
I ended up using the notes and process written by Hank at Honest Food.
I slit each olive with a sharp knife down to the pit, and I put them in a canning jar with fresh water, put a small plate on top to push all of the olives under. Then put the jar in the "garage" cabinet in my kitchen, and changed the water - trying for daily - for about a month.
Honestly, it was during the holiday season, so there were times when I'd forget about them for a day or two....and I may have done this for closer to 5 weeks, until I was good and ready to look up the brine recipe again.

Grampy with my mom and uncle

Somewhere around the 2 week mark, when I would change the water I'd smell the familiar olive oil smell as I drained and re-filled the jar. During this time, my kids were skeptical, my husband was tolerant...
He was fairly certan that this experiment would end up as compost.

I took vacation time from my day-job during the Christmas/New Year week and decided that I should probably do-up the olives when I was relaxed and not running from one place to another...and before they really did become compost.

So I re-did my google search, found Hank's site again, and pretty much followed his brine recipe verbatim. It is really really easy:

Green Olive Brine:

1/4 cup kosher salt
4 cups cool water    
1/2 cup of white wine vinegar
plus herbs 

I went with the following of his recommendations: bay leaves, coriander, lemon rind, a chili,  rosemary, and garlic.
 
As Hank said - "these water-cured olives taste like olives" — mine are only very slightly bitter, and they are much crisper and firmer than any you will get at a deli counter.  

He also says that they will last a year in the fridge....I will be lucky if they last a couple of months of judicious rationing...next time  - yes, there will be a next time - I'm making more!