A plea for tapenade recipes, please!

I now have several little slices in my right thumb from cutting up olives. You know those big barrels of kalamata olives (I�ve driven through the real Kalamata, and it�s an ugly, industrial town) that you buy at Costco and they�re usually really yummy? Well we got a batch that was so salty no one wanted to eat them. We put some on pizzas a few times, but there was still most of a barrel left, so I decided that I would try making tapenade out of them. All the recipes I have looked up include capers, which I detest, and I found one on the internet which didn�t, but then it didn�t have much of anything in it.

So Buddy Boy and I cut all the olives off the pits (hence the little slices in my thumb), and I have them now soaking in plain water to try to get some of the salty flavour out. They really are excessively salty. Tomorrow I�ll put them in the food processor with lots of garlic, black pepper, a handful of herbs from the yard (oregano, marjoram?) and we�ll see what happens. Some of the recipes suggested pine nuts, so maybe I�ll throw in some of them too. If anyone has any suggestions (no capers, please), I would be very appreciative.

I had a long chat with my cousin from Minneapolis/St. Paul this evening. My father was the youngest of three, and his brother who lived in Chicago had a daughter and twin boys. They were considerably older than me. Only one of the twins still lives in the Chicago area, the other has moved to New Jersey, and the sister is in Minnesota. She and her husband, their two daughters with spouses and grandchildren all descended on my mother for a five-day visit. The older daughter is the only one I really know, since my cousin and her husband would visit my parents when I still lived at home. I don�t think I�ve seen them since the summer of 1981.

So we had a pleasant talk, exchanged email addresses, and perhaps we�ll be in touch a little more often than before. That would be nice. I have so few first cousins (just that branch of the family now) and they live so far away, I think it would be a good idea to keep the family ties intact.

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