This is one of those recipes to be filed under the ‘Why-didn’t-I-think-of-this-before?’ category.

I have loved cream cheese and olive spread ever since I first tasted it in second grade. It was one of the sandwich offerings in my school’s cafeteria (along with pimiento cheese…another lifelong favorite) and I simply couldn’t get enough of the whole creamy-tangy-chewy-but-also-smooth combo. I’d forget my lunchbox (with its Dullsville bologna and cheese)  on purpose just so I could have a cream cheese and olive sandwich on white bread, cut into triangles that were tightly wrapped in squares of wax paper by large women in hairnets earlier in the day.

Fast-forward to living in France, where cream cheese is not something I keep on hand in the fridge…but fresh goat cheese is. And, it came to me as I was rooting around in the fridge for something I could turn into an hors d’oeuvre. Goat cheese and olive! All it required was a little milk to make the goat cheese creamy and spreadable and…voilà. A fancy French take on a Southern lunchroom classic (that the French seem to love as much as I do…they keep asking me for the recipe).

Goat Cheese and Olive Spread

1 10 oz. (300 g.) log fresh goat cheese
3 to 5 Tbs. milk
20 to 30 pimento-stuffed olives sliced

Mash the goat cheese with the milk until smooth, creamy, and spreadable. Stir in the olives. Serve as a sandwich spread or with crackers or bread rounds.