Bloody Mary Anti-Pasto Salad

Ingredients:

• Pickled items of various sorts: pictured is dill pickles, pickled asparagus, and pickled onions

• Peppered ham or Prosciutto (can exclude or sub if meat free)

• Mixed Olives of choice

• Mini mozzarella cheese balls

• optional if vegan: can sub cubed extra firm tofu with good results

• Fresh basil or parsley, or both!

• Sun Dried Tomatoes

• Worcestershire (optional)

• Horseradish (optional)

• Celery salt

• Black pepper

• Cayenne pepper (amount unspecified bc if you like it hot then you’ll want more and if you are not into spice you can either put a light sprinkle or none at all)

• Red Pepper Flakes if desired

Instructions:

1. Mix dry spices together

2. Toss mozzarella balls or tofu in spices to coat for both flavor and color

3. Optional: in a bowl put sun dried tomatoes. Drizzle maybe a couple tablespoons of worcestershire sauce as well as a small amount of horseradish (⅛ teaspoon maybe) and mix well so all sun dried tomatoes are coated

4. Cut pickled items, olives, ham/prosciutto, into desired size pieces (sometimes I leave the olives whole and cut everything else to match that size)

5. Mix everything together and top with a handful of fresh basil or parsley

***You can certainly add pasta to this to make an excellent pasta salad

Alternative recipe! Toasties!

1. Mash up or food process the olives, pickled items of choice, and sun dried tomatoes into a paste adding two shakes of worcestershire and maybe an ⅛ teaspoon of horseradish if desired

2. Make toast using a good crusty bread with some structure

3. Melt mozzarella on the toast

4. Sprinkle the salt and peppers on top

5. Spread a layer of the pickled paste

6. Top with ham or prosciutto