Normal Families, and Pitting Olives
One of our family sayings is, "I wonder what normal families talk about at mealtimes?" I think it was Tui who coined it a few years back, when most of the offspring were still at home, and one mealtime we were all sitting round the table involved in one of our regular discussions about word derivations or usage. This is the kind of discussion which makes it essential, in our house, for a dictionary to be kept on the dining table (next to the Crockford's Clerical Directory). We were some way into this discussion, when this rather younger Tui added her two-pennyworth: "I wonder what normal families talk about at mealtimes?"
This came to mind during this evening's meal (now reduced to just three of us at table) when we began to speculate on the commercial process for pitting olives. I'm afraid to say that Ask Jeeves didn't help much with this - frankly, I don't know why I bother to retain him - and as so often it was Google that came to the rescue.
We now know that most of the machines for commercial olive pitting are manufactured around Seville in Spain, and exported throughout the world. The essential process was as we imagined, but some questions remain unanswered, particularly: How are the olives positioned and held in these machines? But you can read as much as we found out at the Olive Oil Source.
If anyone happens to have one of these machines at home and could describe it to us in more detail, I'd love to hear from you.
This came to mind during this evening's meal (now reduced to just three of us at table) when we began to speculate on the commercial process for pitting olives. I'm afraid to say that Ask Jeeves didn't help much with this - frankly, I don't know why I bother to retain him - and as so often it was Google that came to the rescue.
We now know that most of the machines for commercial olive pitting are manufactured around Seville in Spain, and exported throughout the world. The essential process was as we imagined, but some questions remain unanswered, particularly: How are the olives positioned and held in these machines? But you can read as much as we found out at the Olive Oil Source.
If anyone happens to have one of these machines at home and could describe it to us in more detail, I'd love to hear from you.
posted by Tony at 11/23/2004 08:12:00 pm
4 Comments:
Don't know if it's your age, or the fact that you've forgotten your eldest daughter... but I'm fairly sure it was I who coined the phrase. Tut tut.
Sun x
Apologies, dear Sun; no doubt you are right; I just didn't think it was that long ago the phrase became part of our shared speech!
Why are the daughters called Sun, Li, Tui?
I found your blog when I was looking for the pit removing process..
My son and I were pondering the same question....
Just how do they get the pits out..
An olive pitting and stuffing machine has a drum rotatable about an axis and provided with opposing pairs of clamping members angularly equispaced about the axis and respectively engageable with opposite ends of olives fed in succession generally tangentially to the drum. The drum also comprises respective tubular cutters axially aligned with each pair of clamping members and displaceable to cut an end out of the olive, a plunger axially aligned with each pair of clamping members on the opposite side of the drum adapted to pierce the olive through the other end and push out the olive pit, and a pimento inserter also aligned with the clamping members and effective to insert a folded piece of pimento as the stuffing in the interior of the olive. The plunger, cutter and pimento inserter all rotate together with the clamping members as part of the drum and with the respective olive and all are displaceable by engagement with respective circular stationary cams so that the entire sequence of operations takes place in less than a full revolution of the drum and without any interruption in the continuous movement of the olive from the point at which it is engaged by the clamping members to the point at which it is discharged from the drum.
The machine for pitting olives and for stuffing the pitted olives with an edible paste, such as anchovy paste, a plurality of axially opening bonnets are arranged in a circle for rotation about an axis through a succession of stations. At a first station, a pit-containing olive is placed in each bonnet and held there by a fastening bush. Subsequently, the pit with an adhered tapin is punched from the olive; the pit is severed from the tapin and only the tapin is retained. As the pitted olive is rotated to a further station, a succession of orifices of a nozzle connected to an injector for stuffing paste is temporarily opened to the olive cavity. Then a gelification agent is applied to the paste contained in the olive, the saved tapin is restored to the olive as a cavity closure, and the fastening bush is withdrawn, freeing the stuffed olive from the machine.
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