I’m obsessed with olives. Next on my list, bleu cheese stuffed olives. It’s an addiction, I swear.

Mike and I were at the store and I had been out of my beloved garlic stuffed, chardonnay marinated olives for a few days. The jar of Kalamata olives in the fridge wasn’t quite cutting it and I was on the lookout for something different.

I came home with antipasto olives. This jar held olives, peppers and garlic marinated in oil and vinegar. When I opened the jar, happily anticipating an Italian delight, I discovered oily olives with a hint of spicy pepper. I don’t mind things being hot, I love spicy food, but this wasn’t really spicy and it sort of ruined the great olive flavor.

There I was stuck with a jar of olives I was less than impressed with. I didn’t want them taking up space in the fridge and I knew that was exactly what they were destined for. I’ve got enough junk in my fridge (aha! another loose end and I will spare you those details!) I didn’t need to open the refrigerator up the day after Thanksgiving and have these antipasto olives staring at me.

Olives do stare… have you seen those pimento stuffed olives? They look like EYEBALLS! Don’t judge!

Do you follow FlyLady? Our cruising through the holidays missions have started, I can’t ADD clutter when I am trying hard to get rid of what I already have!

What to do?

I already had a big bowl of chicken breasts marinating for dinner. Mike and I put our heads together and inspiration struck – pasta salad!

I love pasta salads because they require no recipe. If you can boil water you can make a pasta salad! You can chop up veggies take your favorite vinaigrette and voila` pasta salad! The variations are endless and it’s a great way to use up leftovers too.

I boiled up some pretty, multicolored spiral pasta, tossed it into a bowl with chunks of mozzarella cheese, chopped salami, thinly sliced red onions. Then I drained the jar of antipasto olives ran my knife through the peppers, chucked the stems, and tossed the olives, peppers, garlic into the pasta. I finished by drizzling just a little bit of the oil mixture from the olive jar and a heavy slosh of red wine vinegar.

The pasta salad went over well, everyone had a heaping helping and Monday I’ll have a nice salad of spinach greens with a small scoop of pasta salad and chopped chicken over the top for lunch!

No guilt-inducing jar in my fridge at Thanksgiving!!!

But it gets even better! The same day I made my pasta salad and chucked the empty jar into the trash my good friend, Marianna visited the Avila Valley Barn after I told her how wonderful it is. She stopped by on her way home and brought me olives stuffed with garlic and jalapeno. I consider this nothing short of awesome on her part (Thank you, again, M!!! You are wickedly cool, as always!) and clearly a pat on the back from the universe for ditching what was bound to become fridge clutter!

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Check out all my posts in this “31 Days of Tying Up Loose Ends” series here.

And, you can check out all the other 31 Dayers here!