It does sound like fun curing your own. If olives grow so well in your area, perhaps a post on Freecycle or Craigslist might bring you a bounty of chemical-free organic olives. IMO harvesting anything from a pesticided, herbicided, and whatever-cided golf course is asking for trouble. Who knows what those heavy chemicals do in your body after you eat them let alone what the harvested fruit's cells have taken up through their roots? It's the same reason why I don't pick blackberries on the side of the road. Further back in the briers the fruit is just as sweet and the chances of them being full of lead greatly reduced. I don't think bleach, sulfur, lye, or salt treatments would release the bad chemicals from the fruit's cells, though they would for those inherent to the fruit (which causes bitterness in olives). Chemicals, metals, and -cides have no taste when pulled into fruit cells. JMO Nancy

jeri-, Sounds delish with tomatoes, olives and spinach. If it is the costco pesto in the squarish container that needs to be fridged?, i know that one. I like it. A life-saver in the dead of winter when i want something quick and fresh tasting. Nice and nutty, good garlic flavor. Hard for us to use up once opened so i freeze it in small containers. A tbsp in a salad dressing is good!. Also nice in a bean salad. When i drain my pasta i save a bit of the pasta water...just a 1/4 cup-ish in a pyrex. When your pasta is drained it will continue to steam being so hot. The first thing tossed into it will slightly cook and be absorbed. (why i don't add the pesto first....the basil will not taste as fresh). A small amount of marinade like a fruity vinegar with some of your olive brine, just a tbsp of each. A bit of good olive oil and again just a tbsp or less. (if it is the same pesto i know, it is made with mostly sunflower oil...just a tiny bit of olive oil further down the ingredient list). It is oily enough for me so i don't usually add any extra oil...and not about calories at all. More about an oily tasting pasta salad. If the spinach in your deli salad is firm, add it with the pesto later on when the pasta has cooled a bit. I add a bit of that saved pasta water to my pesto but judge that before adding. I'm always using different brands of pasta and i can never tell what the 'steaming' factor might be. If you want the spinach to be slightly wilted, toss it in when the pasta is hot adding with your marinade 'brine'. DH likes a certain pasta that i've been having trouble with. It is a spinach green leaf shape and a bit thick, and very starchy. It seems to like some extra olive oil to 'seal' it. Meaning to coat it and hold that starch. Otherwise it releases starch into the rest of the 'salad'. Tricky to try and reproduce a favorite, and often expensive, deli version. Fun though if you pull it off. I'm trying to crack the code of a great deli spinach egg salad. I think the spinach is Matador and just started a tray of seed starts for a fall crop...it is very thick and meaty, not thin and wilty. A bit nuts but i'm determined, : ) I did buy some over the winter and it has really good fridge shelf life. Also quickly blanched it froze well. Without the acrid iron taste that some leafy spinach has...

The green thing is different. Garlic and onions do the blue-green, usually when cooked in butter or lemon. I just looked it up and it's supposed to be sulphur compounds in the garlic reacting with minute amounts of copper in the butter or lemon juice. I guess that produces verdigris. :) Freaked me out the one time it happened to me, but it's safe to eat according to everyone on the web. But pink tinge? I'd think it would be hard to grow mold in brine, but olives will mold in air and could transfer it. Or it could be iron oxidizing. Or color leaching from the olives. I didn't find anything definitive when I searched other than learning that red was a stage of ripening between green and black. And I found this: [with contact with air during curing] "olive will oxidise and turn an offensive brown". I just found a blog about pickling garlic where reader comments asked about the garlic turning pink, so I think Linda's right that the garlic was the culprit, though the garlic pickler also though mold. It could be another chemical reaction, rather than mold, though.

More info please? This is an opened can (sealed last for ages)? Of whole olives? No brine? I've never had olives go moldy and they hang out in my fridge forever. Sometimes, they stick around long enough (a very long time) to become unappealing or squishy, but not moldy. But they are in a proper container, usually the olive bar vacuformed takeaway container (which seals well enough not to leak), and in their brine. Olives do freeze well, like on top of pizza or other foods, but I've never just frozen as is. I think they'd be best in a vacuum sealed, or at least air squished/sucked out bag, no brine, but I haven't tired it.