Olive Surprises

I visited Christmas markets in Vienna with my roommates in december 2012. I did not plan to buy many things, but I found a stall with olive wood products. I admired the beautiful wood for a long time and at the end I bought at least a small cutting board.

My husband and me agreed that the board is too beautiful for cutting, so we just use it for watching. After some time I started to wonder if it was possible to buy a block of olive wood for carving. I discovered a few online stores and found many more exotic woods that could be worth a try. About the same time I discovered the wood database and the article about allergies and toxicity. I was surprised to learn that I could be poisoned if I used a spoon from yew, laburnum or oleander wood. This also reduced my shopping list of exotic woods. Fortunately, olive wood turned up to be safe, so I ordered it. The wood database showed that olive wood is 1,5 times harder than apple, but I was willing to risk.

The carving was easier than I expected. The wood has a high oil content and it seemed wet inside, although it was quite seasoned. It was much like carving from green wood. The only difficulty was the interlocked grain, so that I had to change the direction of cutting to avoid splitting the handle. The wood has a strange fruity, oily and a bit fermented odor - at first I found it funny, but later I got to like it.

When I tested the new spoon, I found it has slightly bitter taste, similar to dried black olives. This is caused by oleuropein, a powerful antioxidant.