Feta Cream Cheese Olive Appetizers on St. Lucy Day

I know there are many cultural recipes and lovely baked sweets traditions associated with St. Lucy's feast day. Many have been posted here in past and recently for St. Lucy day celebrations. I saw these appetizers on Pinterest (from blog Diethood) and in my mind made a link to St. Lucy. Wanting to make sure I wasn't stretching it, I asked my son to look at the picture, too. "Hey, what do these look like?" "Eye balls," he replied and he knew if I was doing a post for Catholic Cuisine, it was for St. Lucy. So if a 15 year old sees it, they must look like an eye.

St. Lucy is often pictured in paintings holding a plate with two eyeballs. One of the legends associated with her indicates that as part of her torture, Diocletian had her eyes put out. According to those stories her sight was later restored to her by God.

These are a simple appetizer and actually quite tasty. They may be a more grown up fare as mine were never fond of feta when they were younger. I assume the recipe could be modified to exclude the feta and just use the cream cheese.

Ingredients & Directions:

1 can medium olives
8 ounces cream cheese
1 cup crumbled feta
1/2 cup crushed nuts

Drain olives and dry with paper towel.  Mix cream cheese and feta at room temperature.  Crush nuts and place in shallow bowl. Mold about 1 teaspoon of cheese mixture around olive.  Shape until rounded. Roll each in chopped nuts until covered. Set on plate and refrigerate 1/2 hour until chilled. Cut in half, through olive, making sure to leave the circle of black intact - looks like the iris of the eye and the hole looks like the pupil. Pin It