Marvelous Olive Tapenade

Tape-what?!?!  Olive tapenade (sounds like tah-pa-nade) is a spread made with olives, garlic, olive oil and Parmesan cheese.  Oh, it is so good.  My pal's husband makes this heavenly concoction and I just had to get the recipe.  Her husband went to culinary school so he doesn't mess around.  He makes GOOD food.  This appetizer never fails to impress and people are shocked that there really aren't that many ingredients and its pretty fool proof.  If you can dump a few things into a food processor and press on, you are good to go!  So if you are stressing about something marvelous to make for the big party tonight or any time, give this a try!

Here's what you need...

Sullivan's Olive Tapenade

Equal parts green and black olives (one jar/can of each)
Olive oil - start with 1/4 cup - I typically add more to keep moist before serving
Approx. 3 cloves garlic
Parmesan cheese - 1/4 cup (its recommended to use a mix of the cheap stuff and good stuff)

Place ingredients into food processor, blend.  Serve on crackers/crisps.

Enjoy!

Leftover melted chocolate?

We recently had a snow day so I had to quickly come up with activities for my daycare kids. You have to understand, these kids will hang me by my feet if they get bored enough.

After they played in the snow, we decided to make chocolate covered marshmallows. Each kid decorated one with their choice of sprinkles. It was great, the kiddos had a blast.

This post isn't about chocolate covered marshmallows though. I think you smarties can easily figure out how to construct a c/c marshmallow. This post is about the leftover chocolate I had.

I decided to make club crackers with peanut butter slathered in the middle. At first I thought about dunking the whole peanut butter sandwich in the chocolate, but quickly thought it might be fun and more appealing to drizzle the chocolate on top. Fun and appealing it was. They turned out pretty cute too. I made about 10-12 sandwiches and they were gone by bedtime. And no, I didn't eat them all! I'd call that success.

Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Club Crackers*

*M&M's have nothing to do with this concoction. They were just conveniently hanging out in my kitchen so I used them. Also, please don't be jealous of my fancy paper plate.