I Googled “How to Pit an Olive” and IT BLEW MY MIND. (You Need to Know This.)

So yesterday I’m making this pathetic puddle of a salad, right? My salads are the worst. We keep TRYING to make good salads, but the salads always turn out tasting like a Greek man’s back sweat. Never tastes like a restaurant salad, which I figure should at least taste like a Greek man’s mistress.

But that’s okay because I’m really here to talk about the very important matter of Kalamata olives. Man do I love me some Kalamata olives. (Even though Evernote keeps trying to autocorrect them to “Kalamazoo” olives—amateur move, Evernote, amateur!) The problem, however, is that you can rarely find pitted Kalamata olives here in Costa Rica (where I am still quarantining with the spiders). All the Kalamatas are decidedly unpitted. So I find myself wondering: who wields this evil power? Who is the one who has decided that THIS is the product to stock on shelves? (Just sayin’: I bet the buyers at the little grocery store next door don’t actually eat Kalamata olives.)

So here’s me, right? Here’s me, for the last *de-cade* since we’ve had our place here, painstakingly taking each unpitted Kalmata olive and placing it onto my cutting board yelling, “Off with her head!” At which point I take my knife and perform sloppy rudimentary surgery, hacking away at the bits around the center seed, leaving me with a pile of pointy pieces of olive that look a lot like I’ve just severed a liver. I am also left with anxiety over the matter because, what if I cut off the tip of my finger? What if I end up with a pointy piece of pointer in the pile? ALL IN THE NAME OF TRYING TO MAKE A DECENT SALAD, WHICH I KNOW WON’T BE A DECENT SALAD, BECAUSE OUR SALADS NEVER ARE.

So yesterday I thought: you know what, motherfucker? There has got to be an easier way. I really enjoy the fact that it took me ten years to think to myself: maybe I should Google this? But alas, it took me ten years to think to myself: maybe I should Google this. And then I did. And then up popped this video. AND THEN I ALMOST FAINTED.

Did you know??????????

Did you KNOW the secret to depitting Kalamata olives?????????????!!!!!!!!!

And more importantly, have you known all this time and KEPT IT FROM ME?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!!?

You don’t need to cut around the pit! You don’t need to let an olive best your wits! All you need to do is…(I really can’t believe this)…take the side of your knife…(still can’t believe it)…and press down on the olive…(what is happening!!!)…and IT’S DONE. Seed slips out out of its skin like I slip out of a négligé!

I put SO MANY OLIVES in our salad last night because I couldn’t stop doing it! Press, peel! Press, peel!

And then I realized what Book #2 is obviously going to be (picture the deep-voiced voiceover guy saying this in a movie trailer): Ash Ambirge figured out all the hard stuff early on in life: how to run a business, how to travel the world, how to carry deceased family members through security without being mistaken for a coke dealer. Now it’s time for her to go back to the basics and learn all the essentials adults are supposed to know: from pitting olives to using a drill to saving for retirement (hint: using sanitary napkins as envelopes not the best system)—and even discovering the eternal secret to WASHING CLOTHES. In this reverse coming-of-age book, Ambirge shows that even those without role models can still become their own…so long as they can figure out the instructions.

Telling you. I’m writing that. Or maybe it’ll be a column. “Some Day I’ll Drop Dead,” I’ll call it, which is exactly what my mom said to me in the kitchen once when I was a teenager and she tried to teach me how to make a meatball. “I’ll have private chefs!” I told her. (Plural.) “I’ll have a gardener, too!” And then the funniest thing happened: she did drop dead and I never learned how to make a meatball. Or, apparently, pit an olive.

So you know what? I’m going to call on YOU to be my mother for a day.

I, Ashley Ambirge, am solemnly calling upon you, my reader, to bestow me with one essential life skill that you think I should know. Or maybe it’s not even a life skill: maybe it’s just an obvious fact, like how to cut an onion. I mean, Jesus, I just recently found out you can remove the pit of an avocado by hitting it with the sharp side of a knife. So many pit-themed lessons! So many things you can do with a knife! Who knew? (Answer: everybody knew. Everybody.)

And you never know: maybe I will write that column. Maybe we’ll help all the other young women out there without mentors. Wouldn’t that be the best column? I’d credit you for your contribution, obviously. And then we’d talk about things like hanging drapes! And sharpening your scissors with sandpaper! And the fact that there’s actually a little arrow on your gas gauge that tells you which side of the car the gas tank is on! (All of which blew my mind, by the way.)

So, whatcha got? Tip? Skill? Life hack? Essential tip that moms teach their kids that I should know? Seriously, I even made a form. Will you gift me with your knowledge? Be my mom for a day? My birthday’s coming up on June 24th, so I will throw myself a fiesta FULL of knowledge presents from you. 🙂

Send Me Your Tip >>>

Love you long time!!!