Ok my little bun buns, here it is. The tapenade you’ve all been waiting for! The salty sweet spread I have been bragging about for days. My favorite thing from the Natural Delights Medjool Dates Summit. The recipe I have been craving twenty four seven. DATE OLIVE TAPENADE! Vegan, gluten-free, no added salt, and no added sugar! 100% om nom nom worthy. Spread it on top of a crostini with a slather of goat cheese, and you will be in heaven! You must make this for your next party. Best appetizer. The end. Enjoy!
Date & Olive Tapenade
Recipe By: Bob Nidiffer
1 cup chopped Medjool dates
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup pitted Kalamata olives, chopped
2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp drained capers, chopped
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
Optional: 1/2 cup chopped walnuts – I actually loved it without them!
Goat Cheese
1 log soft goat cheese
Crostini
1 whole grain or French baguette
Olive oil cooking spray
Combine chopped dates and 1/3 cup water in a saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat until liquid evaporates and dates are soft, about 5 minutes. Transfer dates to a food processor. Mix in olives, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, capers, and chopped thyme and process into a spread.
Optional: Fol chopped walnuts into the date & olive spread.
Crostini: Preheat oven to 350. Slice baguette into thin slices and place on a cooking sheet. Generously spray the bread with a coat of olive oil cooking spray. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden and crispy.
Note: Can be made up to 3 days ahead. Cover and refrigerate, but bring to room temperature along with cheese before serving.
The Rabbit Food Pyramid Breakdown
Produce: dates (fruit)
Whole Grain: baguette (50g serving)
Protein: goat cheese (1/4 cup serving)
Plant Based Fat: olives & olive oil (2 Tbsp serving of tapenade)
In attendance were these fineeeee bloggers:
I arrived in Yuma to sunny skies at a warm 103 degrees and tons of Natural Delights goodies in my air conditioned hotel room!
Night one started with a happy hour full of Medjool date appetizers like mascarpone stuffed dates, and sweet Medjool date salsa.
After happy hour we made our way to Glen Vandervoort’s house for a beautiful dinner with other Bard Valley Medjool Date growers and their families. The Medjool date appetizers continued with prosciutto wrapped dates, and an olive date tapenade that was to die for. Just think, salty sweet deliciousness. I will be sharing the original recipe with you this week!
I came home from dinner to turndown and a box of Bard Date Company chocolate covered dates from Dave & Debbie Mansheim’s shop 
The next morning, we all met in the conference room for breakfast, history of Natural Delights Medjool Dates, and a rundown of their current and upcoming products.
Natural Delights is now offering Snack Packs of Medjool dates and their super popular date rolls. I love the convenience of these mini bags. They make for a great healthy on the go snack! I actually wish these would be in the check out lines at Whole Foods and other grocery stores. I would definitely grab mini bags of fresh Medjool dates versus a bag of candy any day!
Glen Vandervoort brought us freshly harvested medjool dates straight off of his tree for us to try during breakfast. Words cannot even describe how divine fresh dates are. They literally taste like caramel. For the rest of the day, all we (the bloggers) could talk about was how insanely amazing the fresh dates were!
After breakfast we visited the medjool date gardens!
We had the opportunity to go up in the cherry picker and harvest dates from a 30ft tree.
Safety First! Andrew Costanza: Bard Valley Medjool Date Growers Association’s Director of Compliance and Standards got us in our sweet harnesses before going up in the trees. How fab do Alyssa (
When dates are growing, they are covered in cloth bags to prevent birds from eating them, and any from falling to the ground. In order to harvest dates we shook the bags, untied the string holding the bag together at the bottom, and then let the ripened dates fall out of the bag and onto a tray.
Once the dates fall onto the trays, they are checked and sorted depending on their ripeness. As you can see the yellow date closest to the front is not yet ripe, the date in the center is only partly ripe, and the last one is just perfect.
Theresa (
Beth from 
“The Big Six”
Me standing with one of “The Big Six” Medjool date trees. As you can tell, they are soooo tallll!
After frolicking in the date gardens, we arrived at 
Health and safety required us to wear these super chic hairnets and visitor passes while inside. #lunchladychic
While at Datepac, we watched the dates make their way from being washed to sealed up in their packages.
After being washed, the dates go one by one down a conveyer belt which takes individual photos of each date with a fancy shmancy state of the art camera. Once the computer system receives each image, it determines the date’s size. A brief puff of air then blows each date onto next next conveyer belt according to it’s size. So high tech!
The packing grade scale doesn’t just go by size. It actually goes from highest quality and largest date, down to lowest quality and smallest date. The quality is determined by how tight or puffy the skin of the date is.
It was amazing to see how much of the process was actually done by hand. In order to sort the dates, it must be done by (extremely clean) bare hands to feel the skin’s texture.
We even got a chance to sort the dates and see if we could tell the difference between jumbo, large, extra fancy, fancy, mini, and confection.
After dates are sorted, they go to the packaging area.
Dates on dates on dates.
Another fun part of Datepac that we got to explore was the Date Roll area! We watched them make some fresh pistachio date rolls. The lower quality (not so pretty, but still tasty) dates are ground up (kind of like sausage), rolled in their topping, and then sliced up and packaged.
After our tour of Datepac, we had a beautful lunch at 
Once we got back to the hotel from lunch, we had a social media break for a couple of hours before our next event. Andrew (Director of Compliance and Standards) asked if any of us wanted to go on a spontaneous trip to the sand dunes in California. Funny because we were staying in Arizona! Five of us we’re up for the adventure, and away we went!
The sand dunes were absolutely gorgeous.
On our little adventure, we also made a quick stop in Mexico. Just kidding! Kind of…
We were so close to the border. No joke! We were in Arizona, California, and Mexico all within 15 minutes! Andrew dared us to go and poke our fingers between the border fence, but none of us took the dare, haha! The sign was a bit intimidating!
Kim from 
Cynthia (
After our trip to Mexico (ha) it was time for a Date Shake Competition! All of the bloggers were randomly paired into groups of two and we had a huge variety of ingredients to use. Nicole (
After our wild adventure to Mexico and Date Shake Competition, we had our final fiesta at 
The next morning a few of us who had later flights went on a tour of the 
