Olive and Nut Sandwich Spread

Thank goodness for sandwiches. Without them, I'd probably have had to learn to cook a lot sooner. But because of sandwiches in their supreme simplicity, I've been able to keep my belly filled with minimum effort or thought. My go-to sandwich filler consists of a few slices of deli turkey, a slice or two of cheddar cheese, a dab of mayonnaise, and a bit of mustard. Or peanut butter and jelly. When in doubt, always go with peanut butter. Put simply, I love sandwiches, so imagine my delight when I came across this page in Wartime Suggestions:

 

Why, yes, I could use some variety in my sandwich spreads! Now, which to try first. My temptation was to go with the familiar--the peanut butter option--and call it a day. But the whole point of this blog is to learn new cooking skills, and that wouldn't be very educational, would it?

So I went with one of the more...unorthodox...combinations. Introducing: Olive and Nut Spread. 

These are the instructions as listed in the booklet: Chop stuffed olives and nuts fine; moisten with cream cheese and mayonnaise.

Hm. Okay. How many olives? What kind of nuts? How much cream cheese? How do you make this?! Remember my discomfort with the "improvising" part of cooking? Yeah, clearly I'm not quite ready for this kind of test. So I took a deep breath, Googled it, and found this recipe with a few more specifics. Whew.

I gathered the ingredients below and got started:

6 oz. cream cheese

1/2 cup mayonnaise

1/2 cup chopped pecans

1 cup sliced olives

2 tablespoons of olive juice from the jar

Dash of pepper

Mix all ingredients together. Serve on sandwiches or with crackers.

Simple enough! First, I used my food processor to chop the pecans and stuffed olives.

Gulp. It admittedly looked a little questionable at this point, but I pressed onward. Next I mixed in the mayonnaise, cream cheese, olive juice, and pepper. Once finished, I took a small taste, and you know, it wasn't too bad. I could definitely taste the saltiness of the olives and the crunchiness of the nuts. The ratio of cream cheese and mayonnaise to olives and nuts is a little high, making this recipe resemble more of a dip than a sandwich spread. I couldn't imagine slathering it between two pieces of bread, so I scooped a dollop onto a plate with some Triscuits and attempted to feed it to Taylor as an afternoon snack. 

Not wanting to crush my fledgling chef spirit, Taylor took a bite and said, "Mmmm, let's have more later!" It's since been a few days, and I don't think he has eaten any more of it. 

I even attempted to share my creation with our friends Alex and Kyle this past weekend, and let's just say there was a lot leftover when it was time to go home. I think this is the kind of recipe where you either really love it or you just politely endure it for the sake of your friend's feelings/blog. Even Wartime Suggestions alludes to this phenomenon--take a closer look at the recipe listing:

It's expensive, but you may want to try it once in a while. Will keep nicely for several days.

In other words, "This is a strange combination, we know, but heck, why not mix it up a little? It'll take multiple sittings to get through the batch, but that's what your Frigidaire refrigerator is for. So splurge on those olives, you crazy kids!"

Overall, this recipe isn't a homerun at my house, and I likely won't make it again. But let's just say I am invited to an olive-admirers' convention and they specifically request the Olive and Nut Sandwich Spread. In that unlikely hypothetical scenario, I would reduce the mayonnaise in this recipe and let the cream cheese do the heavy lifting. It might launch this dish into cheese ball territory, but it would certainly help cut some of the tangy aftertaste. Wow, look at me! Maybe I'm learning a little something about cooking after all.

Frozen Vanilla Cream

With so many Wartime Suggestions to choose from, it was difficult to decide on the first recipe to try on the blog. Actually, that's not true--as soon as I flipped to this section of the book, it was pretty clear we'd be having dessert first.

Eager for the sweet reward of homemade ice cream, my husband, Taylor, jumped in to help. So, full disclosure, he mixed the ingredients, and I photographed. Baby steps.

Okay, here we go! First we gathered the following ingredients:

1 can (1 1/2 cups) sweetened condensed milk

3 cups milk or coffee cream

2 tsps. vanilla

2 tsps. lemon juice (not pictured here, oops)

1) First heat one cup of milk, then add the can of sweetened condensed milk and blend. 

We chose to make use of our KitchenAid stand mixer for this recipe, which, I might add, is likely what the original readers of Wartime Suggestions would have used for mixing, as well. Bonus points for keepin' it old school.

2) Add the remaining two cups of milk and lemon juice and blend. Then pour the mixture into the freezing tray and set the freezer's temperature control at the coldest position.

We don't have a "freezing tray" and our freezer is pretty much always in the coldest position. So we took some liberties with this step and poured the cream into a Pyrex container. Oh hey, there's the lemon juice! We got this.

3) When frozen, remove mixture to mixing bowl; add vanilla and whip with electric or hand beater until mix becomes light and creamy.  

After a few hours, we pulled the cream from the freezer and poured it back into the mixing bowl. It wasn't quite frozen, but it looked a little like icy sludge in spots and it was getting late, so we decided it was as good as it was going to get. We swapped our beater attachment for our whisk attachment, added the vanilla, and within a few minutes our mixture was light and creamy. By whipping so much air into the mixture, it also multiplied! We ended up needing an additional container for the freezer. 

4) Return quickly to freezing tray and allow to finish freezing. When dessert is completely frozen, remember to turn temperature control half way back to normal position for holding until serving time.

We didn't mess with the temperature controls, so once the cream reached the freezer shelf, our job was done. See that raspberry popsicle? I'm not ashamed to admit that I ate it as soon as our vanilla cream was nestled in its icebox bed. 

Okay, here comes the good part. After freezing overnight, we taste-tested a few scoops of our concoction. The texture was like...snow. Like soft, fluffy, first snowfall of the season snow. It was solid enough to scoop into a ball, but it would probably fall apart if you threw it. Not that you'd want to throw this stuff. This recipe has much less fat than typical ice cream, and contains no real cream, per se. (Which is great for me, as lactose isn't exactly my best friend in the world.) It is supremely sweet and light and instantly melts in your mouth, like super sweet vanilla milk ice. The deeper we scooped into the container, the icier and more compacted the mixture became, but the flavor was still just as strong. 

So would we make this again? Yes! With a few alterations. We might dial back on flavor by cutting a bit of the vanilla, and we might freeze the mixture in our pre-chilled KitchenAid ice cream bowl attachment to ensure more consistent texture. 

Now that we know the deal, we'll likely try other more intriguing flavor variations, like Marble Cream or Pineapple Milk Sherbet, to name a few. The sky's the limit, especially if you eat ice cream for dinner. Which I find to be quite necessary during the month of August, thank you very much.