I am looking at something in line with under $10 a pound. A lot of what I have seen is 8 oz. for that price.

LOL--I'll take that as a no...

There is one company that salt-cures them and then packs them in olive oil (not extra virgin). I have heard that olive oil is extracted from the pit and inferior but I wonder if it's still healthy. Any ideas?

Hi banana who, I've had some good Kalamata olives from the salad bar at our local, upscale grocery store. They don't taste like vinegar so that is the clue. I haven't been able to locate the bottle/container to buy them, however. When I asked someone, they said they didn't know where to buy them in the container so every so often, I take a small container and cover the bottom with the olives and throw in a few veggies to identity it coming from the salad bar rather than the olive bar as the olive bar is much more expensive per pound. The olives aren't marked with any special tag. They are sitting in a brine that has olive oil in it and they are pitted.

Also, have you tried looking in a Middle Eastern grocery store? I've picked up a plastic slab container in the past that had Kalamata olives whose ingredients were salt and olive oil. They weren't pitted but that was fine. I had to wipe away some of the salt as it was a bit overpowering.

The last idea is if you live where olive trees grow, like in Phoenix or such, you can wait for the olives to get ripe (black) and pull them off the tree. I tasted one that was off a broken branch when I lived in Phoenix and it was really good raw. I thought about growing my own tree here in Ohio in a pot. I'm not sure if I will follow through as I already have some delicate plants in pots and don't know how much more room in my apartment I can set aside for my plants in winter time.

Good luck! Therese

Thanks. I actually have been buying them from Trader Joe's. They are supposedly cured in salt and vinegar but they are in a jar on the shelf so can they really be raw? I suppose so. I remember gonig to a raw food restaurant in Chicago and they sold raw olives in jars on their shelf. I will tell you--these kalamata black olives are SO much better than the black olives in a can! I will never buy those again. Plus I heard they are treated with lye.