When Olive Met Tomato : A Complicated Love Story

The second Monday in October commemorates the blending of European and American cultures, a topic fit for celebration and sorrow

Greek temple, c. 5th century B.C., and centuries-old olive tree, Agrigento, Sicily, 2015. Author photo. Author’s handsome husband holding an olive.

Here’s one of the top items on my travel wishlist — a day of Sicilian agritourism to pick olives with experts and learn more about the most iconic tree of the Mediterranean.

This wouldn’t be like apple picking in Virginia where you grab your own produce to take home.

It takes time and skill to cure olives into something you want to eat.

Olives taken right off the tree are inedible. So a day trip of olive harvesting would be a chance to learn about the process of cultivation that fed and fueled the rise of European civilization.

There’s a reason why the story about the founding of Athens involves an olive tree.

As the tale goes, Athena beat Poseidon to win naming rights to the city. Poseidon made a showy gift of a salt water spring, nice to look at but unusable.

Athena offered the people of the city an olive tree. Not only beautiful, this tree provided tasty olives and versatile olive oil. It provided shelter and, when spent, fuel for fires.