Dried olives, you say.

Dried olives are absolutely not easy to achieve. Because they are very olive-oily, it's been a real effort to get them to a state where they will powder for my Trotula tooth care recipe experiment this weekend!

Firstly, I squeezed them very thoroughly, then put them in a slow oven to dry. 8 hours on the first day. blot with paper towels. 6 hours the following day and there are crispy bits around the edges and some chunks definitely look like they could be powdered. The next morning, however, they still looked like they could use a little more drying out, so back into the oven. Eventually, I decided they'd have to do and that enough of it would powder down.

Fingers crossed. They still look pretty oily, even though they're a bit crispy.