Green Olives , Italian Style - continued

I'm on the last leg of my first experience with curing olives.  It's been an interesting experience.

This is the 10lb box of olives, the day they arrived.  October 13, 2011. 

I was amazed to see their bright green color.  They were rock hard and had a tart, almost-green-apple scent too.  I thought they were so pretty the above photo is now the background image on my cell phone.

At first I thought I'd have to weigh the olives down so they'd stay submerged, so I wrapped a couple of bricks in foil, covered the container with plastic wrap and put the bricks on top.  The bricks became water-logged and it didn't really seem to be a big problem to have a few exposed olives so I abandoned that practice on day 2.

I changed the water daily during the soaking process and the olives slowly became that drab-green color most of us are used to with green olives.  Some of them have very dark patches, almost like they are ripening. 

This past Wednesday, I packed 12, pint jars of olives in brine - about 1/2 of the olives I ordered. They'd been soaking for about 3 weeks.  I'm very new to canning and didn't purchase enough jars so I'll have to finish up this next week.  Steven is going to check the shed for all the canning jars we brought home from Grandma's house, which will most likely be quart jars so we'll have some larger jars for family gatherings.  I'll need to pick up rings and lids, I'm sure, but the larger jars should speed the process up some. 

Josephine's recipe did not say how long they should be packed in brine before opening but I think we'll wait another 3 weeks or so before we try them for the first time.  I can hardly wait!