Black Olive Tapenade

Olives are one of Abby's favorite foods. She loves just munching on them plain, but also likes olive tapenade tossed with pasta. We've always bought the Green Olive Tapenade from Trader Joe's, which is very good, by the way. But we were out, and pasta was for dinner tonight. Knowing how much Abby enjoys olive pasta, I made an attempt to make some from scratch.
I found a plain and basic recipe that I decided to try. Mostly olives, with some capers, salt, black pepper, parsley, garlic, and olive oil. I didn't have any parsley so that got left out, and I also added some lemon juice. This one was made with black olives, but next time I'll try the green kind. The flavor was quite good. Very simple and not too fancy. Some recipes had anchovies, or other herbs, or even pine nuts in them. The Trader Joe kind adds carrots and tomatoes, but no capers. I think the tomatoes will go in next time.

I got the official "thumbs up" from the olive girl. She actually liked it better than the TJ kind (yeay!) And it only cost about a dollar to make (since I used the cheap canned olives.)

Here's Abby's pasta. Olive Tapenade tossed with spaghetti with some parmesan cheese. She enjoyed every bite.