A cream cheese based cracker spread, made with stuffed olives and simple seasonings, great for dipping veggies, for tea sandwiches or your favorite crackers.

Olive Spread

First things first.

If you don't already have an affinity for all things olives, you won't like this spread. Ya pretty much gotta love olives, which I do. 

Briny olives and anything pickled make for a quick snack for me.

I love it all - from kosher dills, to bread and butter pickles, pickled okra and every kind of olive. And a muffuletta sandwich slathered in olive salad? Um, yes please!

Macaroni Salad with crunchy veggies, in a mayo and sour cream seasoned dressing, and tossed with black and green olives.

Macaroni and Olive Salad

I love pasta salads, even if they aren't all that photogenic. Though this one is loaded with veggies for crunch, the central feature of this pasta salad is olives - both black and green - so if you don't love olives, this one isn't for you.

I've already included pimentos as an add-in with this pasta salad, even though I use a stuffed olive, or use your own favorite pitted green olives. I've actually even used olive salad before in place of green olives, when I've had some leftover from making Muffuletta Sandwiches, and it is an excellent, tangy addition, but if you prefer black olives over green, it's still a great pasta salad with black alone.

  A classic New Orleans Italian sandwich with layers of meat and cheese buried in a thick, dense bread and dressed with olive salad loaded, with olive oil.

New Orleans Style Muffuletta

If you don't like a lot of cold cuts, olives, or olive oil, but especially if you don't like olives, you'll want to skip this post, because the olive salad is the real star of the New Orleans Muffuletta. By the way - there are many ways to say muffuletta - even around here there are predominately two, "muff-uh-LEHT-tuh" or "moof-fuh-LEHT-tuh."