Cure your own OLIVES

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Allow the olives to cure for a week, pour them into a second box and then back into the original burlap-lined box again. This mixing procedure should be repeated once every three days until the olives are cured and edible (it usually takes 30 to 35 days). Along the way, pick out any individual specimens that become soft or get broken open.

After a month-when the fruit will have become well shriveled-separate out the salt with a kitchen strainer or that plastic sand sifter the kids use at the beach.

The colander is then used again to dip the olives for a few seconds into boiling water. After they've drained, let them dry overnight in, say, cookie sheets lined with paper towels.

Once the fruit is thoroughly dry, mix about a pound of salt into each 10 pounds of olives and store your processed harvest in a cool place. The olives will keep this way for about a month, but if you want to store them for longer periods, put them in your refrigerator or freezer.

If you're into Greek, Italian, and Spanish cooking, you'll find dozens of ways to eat your olives. They're especially delicious, for instance, in tamale pie and spaghetti and my favorite use for them is as a relish.

To prepare cured olives as a relish, just sprinkle the fruit with olive oil and mix thoroughly until each one is completely coated with oil. That's it! And no coating of oil is needed at all to make the processed olives ready for tamale pie, spaghetti, and other cooked dishes.

So. If you live in an olive-growing region, quit missing out on a good bet. Instead of raking up all those messy ripe olives, pick them before they fall, spend two dollars and a little time, and process yourself ten pounds of Greek-cured olives.

And believe me: that quantity of the delicacies would cost you a bundle at the delicatessen. And when you proudly serve yours to your friends, the fruit will be worth twice as much because you cured it yourself.

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