Olive and Cream Cheese Sandwiches a Baltimore Only Treat?

Question

My grandma used to make them for me, and I see them on the menu at some old school style delis downtown. My question: is this culinary delight a local Baltimore phenom, or is it more widespread?

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I remember eating them for lunch in Michigan in the late 70s/early 80s.

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I'd get them in my lunchbox in Seattle in late 70s/early 80s. I always thought they were a little weird, even though I loved olives on their own. Mom is from Seattle, Dad is from Massachusetts, but Mom does the cooking.

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I put olives and cream cheese (and reconstituted onion flakes) in tortillas and roll up and slice.

We also put olives and cream cheese in celery

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I grew up in Massachusetts and had them. I love them. Have you tried them grilled like a grilled cheese sandwich? The cream cheese gets a little soft and warm, the bread is buttery, crunchy. Fantastic!

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I took cream cheese and olives several times a week for lunch in NYC

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Never had it as a sandwich, but my Aunt used to chop walnuts really fine then mix with cream cheese and wrap on the outside of the green olives. YUM think I'll make some tonight. and maybe a Sandwich to go with them.

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That's my favorite schmeer on a bagel...prefer pimento-stuffed green.

oops, sorry - I'm in VA.

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Another Michigander here. My college snack bar (Kalamazoo College) offered grilled olive and cream cheese sandwiches, which I loved--crispy, gooey, salty AND creamy.

And the late, still-lamented, Drakes in Ann Arbor made the Stanford sandwich: Three layers of thin white toast, with olive salad, iceberg, and cream cheese. Delicious and dainty!

Now I have a hankering :)

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Massachusetts - a standard sandwich in our household growing up.

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Southern Californian, early 60s, my favorite lunch treat. My mother (CA) and I ate them as a special treat. I think this was more of an "era" thing than geographic.

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Sorry to go off topic, but this sounds really tasty right now.

This California native has never heard of these.

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I grew up eating them too and have recently taken to spreading a shmear on a multigraIn cracker and topping it with a dollop of tapenade. Very satisfying.

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What memories! This was one of my favorite "special" sandwiches as a kid. Mom generally made them on NY Rye bread, but occasionally, we got white bread for really special occasions. She grew up in Boston, but we were living in NYC. I don't know which location inspired this fabulous sandwich. 

My sister preferred cream cheese and jelly sandwiches. I never liked that sweet thing.

I still love olives with cottage cheese since it is very similar.

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We had cream cheese, olive, and walnut sandwich spread growing up. I still love it, though it's been some time since we've had it. Grew up in Northern Illinois.

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Brooklyn, NY. It was a lunchbox favorite. ALways made on white toast.

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My Mom made them for us in the fifties and sixties. I remember her using ripe olives and whole wheat toast. Winston-Salem NC
I have some olives in the fridge right now and may have to grab a package of cream cheese next store stop. I have a source for some really good sourdough whole wheat too!

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in florida, i had that spread on crustless tea sandwiches (finger sandwiches, as suites rightly recalls). white, soft bread.

in college, there was a place that turned me on to rare roast beef with the green-olive-and-pimento cream cheese on pumpernickel and grilled. so delicious!

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No.

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My dad made these for my lunches a lot. This was the early 80's, Northern Cal. I don't recall anyone else eating them, though. And it was always black olives.

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Never had the pleasure of a cream cheese & olive sandwich. Must. Try. One.

Can any of you fans explain whether the olives are sliced? Are they in circles, or lengthwise? Do they have to be green olives stuffed with pimentos, or would olives stuffed with, say, garlic, or jalapenos, or almonds be acceptable? How about anchovies? 

Does the type of cream cheese make a difference (solid vs. whipped)?

What else do I need to know?

Thanks!
Roxy

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Definitely not exclusive to Baltimore. In Manhattan, bagels with cream cheese & chopped olives (green, with pimentos) are pretty common. But I first had them at the Inkwell in Long Branch, NJ, in the mid '80s.

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Interesting... being a SW boy, I've never even heard of these until this thread.
Green olives sliced and pressed into cream cheese on bread - is that the gist of it?
Regular 'ol jarred green olives?

I should try this - I love olives. I love cream cheese. I love bread.
Any additions (besides walnuts - can't stand 'em)?

Thanks,

AzD

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Nicholson Baker's first (and to my mind still best) novel, THE MEZZANINE, is set in Boston, and its main character has a long and hilarious rumination on the olive and cream cheese sandwich, especially those found pre-packaged in delis. As I recall, he mostly wonders what the inventor of the combination discarded before he hit on the green olive and cream cheese combo.

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Bernie's deli in Fairfax, VA, serves olives and cream cheese on pumpernickel.

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My mom made olive and cream cheese appetizers - she used the party rye. Grew up in the SW Suburbs of Chicago. Just talked to my husband - he grew up in the NW Suburbs - he's never heard of them.

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It seems every bagel store in Brooklyn offers an olive cream cheese spread. I like it on either an everything or garlic bagel.

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Olives and cream cheese is a magical combination. My mom used to get roast beef/cream cheese/black olive/yellow mustard/sprouts in a pita from a shop in Belmont Shores in the early eighties, 25 years later, it's my favorite. I also like to stuff large black olives with cream cheese, it makes a great snack or app for holidays. Cream cheese and green olives sounds divine. If I make a sandwich, what kind of bread should I use? And can I put yellow mustard on it, or is that sacrelidge?

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I was raised in western Virginia (yes, I'm a hillbilly!) and grew up on the stuff. My mom chopped up green olives and stirred 'em into room temp cream cheese. Many was the day I got them in my lunch sack.

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Now extinct Nashville sandwich shops like Candyland and Vandyland always had cream cheese and olive sandwiches on the menu. My 92 year old great-aunt still loves them.

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Thanks for reminding me of this old fashioned deliciousness. I have just revisited good old home-made pimento cheese sandwiches and will now introduce my grandchildren to this treat (made with green olives w/pimentos please). I am also thinking about (for our more sophisticated palates) trying this with a green olive tapenade or olivada mixed with the cream cheese. In theory it sounds good to me...perhaps as a spread for crackers...may be too strong for a sandwich? A good project for today.

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My favorite is a THICK (must be enough cream cheese that you can leave teeth marks in each bite :) slab of cream cheese on a kaiser roll, with coarsely chopped big green olives. My local delis (Cleveland OH) all have them on the menu.

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My family used to get cream cheese and chopped olives at a sandwich shop in Princeton, NJ, growing up in the 50's - 60's. Also tuna with chopped olives, or tuna, cream cheese, & chopped olives if we were extra hungry.

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I grew up in Virginia with my grandmother making them for me. She grew up in Michigan and lived in New York and Pennsylvania before coming to Virginia in the 60's. Yum! Had forgotten about them.

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LOVE sliced green olives mixed in with cream cheese! My local breakfast/lunch spot has this in the display case, along with a gazillion other iterations of cream cheese to schmear on your bagel of choice. (Okay, well maybe that's hyperbole - not really a gazilllion - more like 9 kinds.)

Even more than just sliced olives and cream cheese, I go a little crazy when bits of crisply-cooked bacon are crumbled into it. Pack some o' that into a sandwich on white toast or date-nut bread - oh boy!

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They are popular in North Carolina among oldtimers.

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Back home in Marshall, Illinois in '55, my mom had read about these somewhere and brought a platter of them to my 8th Grade graduation party. I think I had one and she had one and a couple of other people got brave as well, and then I had'em for lunch for a week. I thought they were swell, but Adventurous Eating was not real big around there in those days.

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I grew up in the Bronx, and Westchester County, NY and in the 60's my mom used to cut them into triangles and put them in my lunch box at least once a week. YUM! Only thing is I hated the pimento and always had take it out of the olive first!

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Illinois, 1940's, cream cheese with black olives and chopped pecans. Best on whole-wheat bread. But, speaking of olives, in Upstate New York, 1940's, the birthday party sandwich of choice was egg-and-olive (chopped hard-boiled eggs, chopped or sliced pimiento-stuffed green olives, and mayonnaise). Somehow I have dropped the first from my repertory (seems too rich now) but have kept the second---put plenty of lettuce on the sandwich.

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In the 60s/70s, Mom made olive nut tea sandwiches by mixing softened cream cheese, chopped pecans, and chopped pimiento-stuffed green olives and spreading it on white bread with the crusts removed. I have used low-fat and no-fat cream cheese with fine results. I pulse the olives and pecans in the food processor and add cream cheese until it's the desired taste/saltiness and consistency. I've also served it as a spread with crudités and crackers. 

Beth, Lexington KY

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I ate them as a kid in Pennsylvania (outside Philly). My Dad introduced them to me - and he was from Baltimore. But I always thought it was a quirky thing that he came up with. Didn't know it a legit sandwich. My friend and I used to add salami when it was in the fridge. Yum.

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Can we admit that mixing anything with cream cheese is good??? Cream cheese and pineapple anyone?

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My daughter took an olive and cream cheese sandwich on white bread when she started 3rd grade in 1987. We are from PA and she wanted them because her school buds were eating them. She loved them

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Not at all. In Southern Illinois, 1930's and 1940's, my grandma made cream cheese, black olive, and chopped pecan sandwiches. They were especially a birthday party item along with "egg & olive" (mashed hard-boiled eggs with sliced stuffed green olives and mayonnaise). I think both of these are best on whole-wheat bread, and both are ace sandwich fillings.

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We grew up on cream cheese and olive sandwiches. My mom has fond memories of taking Amtrak to from Buffalo to Rochester as a girl in the late 50's and ordering cream cheese and olive sandwiches from the the Amtrak restaurant. I have a little farmer's market stand, and I make a cream cheese/olive/scallions/cheddar spread that sells very well, and reminds me of my childhood and those catholic school friday lunches. Kind of an update homage to the past.

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They were never around much in Colorado but I have eaten them as little sandwich appetizers before. I have a friend from Michigan who told me about olive burgers and how they are really popular there. He desribed them as not olives mixed into the beef but the olives being on top of the meat. I keep reminding myself to make one one of these days. Perhaps an olive- cream cheese burger would be good?

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funny that this topic re-emerged, as i was just talking with one of close friends (who grew up in Massachusetts), and she was saying how her grandmother used to feed her cream cheese and olive sandwiches, and how she thought that that was the it's it of haute cuisine (as a kid).

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No. Grew up in Oklahoma to a Chicago-born mother; she used to make it for me.

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This thread has been fun to follow and has inspired a tasty little snack of wheat thins with cream cheese and olives. And, yes my Texas born mother made olive, cream cheese, and pecan tea sandwiches for festive occasions in the early 60's and the combo has appeared at my table in South Texas and New Orleans ever since.

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One of my favorite childhood sandwiches,my mom used to stuff celery with same, easy addition to "cocktail bites"; my mom was from philly so...

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Definitely not a Baltimore-only phenom. I grew up in western Virginia, and had it often. Now I live in Florida and still make it on occasion.

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I grew up in southern OH, and my mom would sometimes stuff celery stalks with cream cheese and olives as an appetizer for a special occasion meal.

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My Jersey-born Mom made cream cheese and green olive sandwiches for me as a child in Wisconsin during the late 50s. Also made sandwiches from egg salad with sliced green olives and curry- a favorite of mine to this day.

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My father always made them for us. Cream cheese and green Spanish olives with pimientos. His mother made them for him in the 30's & 40's in Massachusetts. She was from Vermont via Quebec, Canada. ? Not sure if she got it from Canada or her town in Massachusetts which was mostly inhabited by Italians.

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Never spied hide nor hair of these puppies out here in west Texas. But I aim to rectify that situation here directly.

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I never tire of these sandwiches. One of these days I'll muster enough self-control to try grilling one before devouring it...

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Sliced green pimento-stuffed olives & cream cheese on white bread were one of my mother's favorite sandwiches to pack for our school lunches during the 50's/60's back in NY.

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Wow. Talk about bringing back forgotten memories! Yes, I did have them growing up in NJ. Now you've got me wanting to make it when I get home. Hope the cream cheese isn't the same color as the olives!

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A former coworker, who was born and raised in Tucson, introduced me to olive and cream cheese samdwiches- around 40 years ago. I still get cravings for them, although these days the bread is much better, to my delight!

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As the pack has already spoken and clarified that this was more baby boomer period food than regional food, you won't be surprised to learn that we were eating these sandwiches in suburban Connecticut in the sixties. I'll bet you a nickel that the popularity of the sandwich had to do with magazines like Family Circle and Woman's Day, that were sold alongside Time and Life and Newsweek at supermarket check out counters. Can't you just see in your mind's eye, the strange period foodstyling photo that would go with the recipe?

The sandwich is good, but what makes it really tasty is the way it is seasoned with memories. Which is why, when I saw it on the menu at the Sugarbowl in Scottsdale, Arizona, I simply had to order it. 

http://www.sugarbowlscottsdale.com/Sugarbowl_menu.html

Of course, The Sugarbowl itself is a delicious serving of the romance of fifties and sixties retail style. And they also have fantastic ice cream sodas served in glass, on a saucer, with a shot of seltzer on the side!!!

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It has to be widespread. I ate them in MN, courtesy of my grandmother; I ate them in Ca. courtesy of a friend's (Mid-Atlantic-shore-bred) mother. I ate them as a wee sprout in Oh., because the housekeeper, who was Ky.-born made them for me, and the same mixture was served here in Ca. not many years ago, only not as a sandwich filling but as a dip or scoop for crudite and plain crostini. That version may been thinned w/ mayo, and it came from a friend who was raised in Manhattan. I've also seen many versions in pre-war cookbooks, usually authored by home economists or dieticians.

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Lovely on.cocktail pumpernickel. Food process softened cream 
cheese with large green OlIves and almonds thin with a bit of milk or 
cream for spreading. An easier way if you live near a luxury hotel
is to go for "high tea".

Answer

We used to get Kraft Olive pimento spread sandwiches, which was pretty much olives and cream cheese.
That got me wondering if you could still buy it. The olive pimento has been discontinued, the the pimento spread is still available. A little jar for about 4 dollars, which got me checking for a recipe.
I found that it is very popular in the South. There are several variations, but here is what I made taking the stuff I like from each.
8 oz shredded sharp cheddar
4 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup mayo
dash (or2) of hot sauce
a little garlic
a dozen or so cheap pimento stuffed green olives

Throw it in the food processor, blend until a bit creamy.
I can't live without it in the fridge anymore. I almost wish I had never thought about it.

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I grew up in the South and remember it on spreads that went on Ritz crackers. (We bought the Kraft spread and it came in little juice glasses and I haven't seen it for sale in an aeon.) What were the details of the ones your grandma made?

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I grew up eating them in Philadelphia in the 60s/70s - but a coffee shop near me now (still Phila) sells an open face sandwich spread with thick yogurt and sliced kalamata olives - YUM! (plus I can pretend it is good for me since it is yogurt!)

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I live in Portland and started eating green olive and cream cheese on wheat when I was pregnant. I was mad for salty stuff, and would eat them for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Always with carrot sticks on the side. Mmmm, now i want one!

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I remember growing up in westchester,ny making names and faces at that strange combo my father liked and I thought was weird and disgusting, 50's and 60's, now I really like it too, another variation, that we use as more of a cocktail spread is cream cheese, anchovy s and anchovy paste and chives, mostly on pumpernickel

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There's a deli in Fairfax, VA called "Bernie's" that has a Cream Cheese and Olive on Pumpernickle on their menu with the subheading "A taste from the past for those who remember". Oops, I posted this earlier, my bad. Mods, delete if you want.

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I've made these all my life and I'm born and raised in Santa Monica Calif. 
don't know where I first had them to want to make them myself.
maybe my love of olives or cream cheese or bread.
I've done black alone green alone or mixed them, any way they're a favorite of mine but family says blech ;:-/

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My mother made these in the 50s/60s. Fancied them up, as others report, with chopped pecans. Good memories.

Fort Worth

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No, siree, Bob. I knew them in New England back in the '50s.

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My Mom introduced them to me as a pre-teen at George Watts' Team Room in Milwaukee in the '60s -- still one of my favorites!

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My mother and I used to shop at Kaufman's in Monroeville PA, and had the most delicious nut bread sandwiches with olive and cream cheese spread. Does anyone else remember these?

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I think of these on a tiered tray with a number of different texture & tastes + color mini sandwiches served with tea and a lovely flowery delicate platter lined with perfect lemon curd & raspberry tarts.

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Recall commercially prepared cream cheese and olive spread available in small town grocery store chain ("Big Apple") in Reidsville NC. Found in same section as chicken salad, pimento cheese etc. and came in the same plastic tubs. My mother and I made sandwiches with it (such a special food memory - this was sometime in 1960s). A few years ago when I tried to find it, it was long gone. I make it at home now, but it's not the same. RIP Mom, thanks for turning me on to cream cheese and olive (which by the way is mentioned in the poker game sequence of the 1957 film Designing Woman)!

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After reading this, I stopped at the store on the way to work, purchased sliced olives, cream cheese, and Ritz crackers...pretty good lunch. Might prefer wheat thins...Ill try them next.

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My mother used to make them for my school lunches, and she's from New York City. However, she also spent time on the Easteern Shore and in Washington, D.C., so I'm not sure where she got the idea. I'm planning on making some tonight for a daylong yoga retreat on Sunday. Yum!

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A coworker when we were just puppies told me about cream cheese and olive sandwiches- the olives were green pimento-stuffed and layered on top of the cream cheese. I loved it and will always remember her for that and a bunch of other fun stuff. Sherry, you're the bomb!

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I love that this thread is still alive. I never would have dreamed that this simple, slightly odd, but cosmically perfect sandwich would have so many fans and fond memories. There is hope...

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I always had cream cheese and olive as a kid in NC. One of my favs. Gonna make finger sandwiches tomorrow with the nuts. Wondering if I should roast the nuts.

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Yummy! Thanks for reminding me of this childhood snack:) My Mom made them with sour cream and green olives or cream cheese with black or kalamata. So 60's-70's. Going to whip up a batch and watch Mad Men! This was at Edwards AFB CA but my Mom is from Texas so not sure how we lucked into these.

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We had 'em for Sunday night supper in NH

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My Southern Illinois Grandma made them for me 80 years ago---cream cheese, ripe olives, and pecans.

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I saw Daphne Oz on a t.v. and she always liked this when her mother made it for her as a child.

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