Tapenade

I have these genius friends who can sew and knit. They get together every Monday to craft. One lady, D, makes all her own clothes! And they look really great, not all falling apart like a certain pair of paisley shorts I made in HomeEc 28 years ago. I work Mondays, so I miss craft night, but recently there was so much craft in the air, they held a special night on Friday. I accepted the invite to join them with a little trepidation. W said if I wasn't crafty, I could just bring my taxes, or balance my checkbook. Little does she know I do that less often than knit a scarf. But I knew exactly what I would do.

There have been these hanging bags of olives in our mud room for months now. They were starting to get oppressive, these salty bags of procrastination. My head would crash into them on occasion, and then I'd have salt hair for the rest of the day. I had potted some up in olive oil--but honestly, how many olives can one couple eat? Also, I noticed that some of the olives tended to be a little too soft so I didn't want to give them to people as gifts.
But then I remembered: olive tapenade. It doesn't matter if the olives are soft if you just blend them up into a paste! So an hour before craft night, I untied the olive bags, washed them of their salt, and set off to be, for just one night, an olive pitter from heaven.

While M and D worked a sewing stations, I sat at the kitchen table and peeled off the fleshy of about one thousand olives. My fingernails turned black, salt stung my hangnails (no i didn't wear gloves), and we talked about such high-minded topics as Thai rap pants and their cultural ramifications. What a lovely evening. Once home, I whirled the pitless olives with some olive oil, then placed the olive spread in jars. True tapenade would include capers and anchovies, but I don't have bags of those just hanging around...The olive tapendade is tasty with crackers, on bread, with deviled eggs, and probably, shoe leather.