How I learned to love Prunes and Olives

PRUNES

 I didn't like prunes at first. Nasty dried, black things. With tooth-breaking stones. 

Olives, you often see, sometimes free, on bars. Prunes, you don't see so often. But I recommend you try and get used to both of them. Why prunes? I used to hate them.

 

However, we had to include prunes in our cure cancer breakfast after my husband developed a lymphoma lump on his neck overnight. The prunes were to relieve constipation in the dry ingredients of the breakfast mixture of plain porridge (or occasionally cereals), fresh fruits, and a nuts and seeds mixture.

Our first revelation was the discovery that prunes were pruneaux in French, which means plums. Prunes are actually dried dark plums. The word plums is a whole lot nicer.

Prunes came in four types. 

1 Those tinned in sugary syrup. Best taste. But with stones.

2 Those tinned in apple juice. Without stones. Not such as good taste. But healthier. Less annoyance from stones and most importantly, less risk of cracking one's teeth.

3 Dried in packets.

To revive the dried prunes, we tried soaking them in cartons of apple juice. At first, sweetened apple juice. Later, we found a supplier of fresh apple juice from Australia.

At first we saved the leftover syrup. The idea was to not overdose on syrup. But when we opened a new packet of dried prunes and had leftover syrup from the tin, we had the idea of adding syrup to dried prunes, and then adding our own apple juice.

Now, I find that I am keen on the prunes. They are succulent and moist. 

But what about savoury foods, olives? Olives can be green or black.

OLIVES

Watch out for stones. You can buy olives without stones, but they may be more expensive. youtube had videos demonstrating how to remove stones from olives.