Delicious Dips & Holiday Cheer

It was a cold night for the North Bay last night when we headed up to Healdsburg in the heart of dry creek and Anderson Valley for the annual fundraising event for Healdsburg library. The theme was wine and food and I was asked to bring an appetizer on behalf of an organization I belong to, Sonoma Culinary Guild. It was my pleasure.
Delicoius Dips

Marie and I showed up sporting Christmas red clothes and an hors d'oeuvre of dipped stuffed peppers, big chubby ones, in red, orange, yellow and green. Against the background of our square white plate and teamed up with all natural crackers in several shapes, this was a visual as well as a flavor hit. One of the dips was made with cream cheese or low fat cream cheese, blue cheese and I used the last portion of quite, strong blue cheese, mashed together, lightened up with some low fat sour cream and then for the final finish, we toasted and chopped some pecans. The whole things blended together in the course of the afternoon and were really a taste sensation.

I think I first had this type of dip in a little in Savannah, GA about twenty years ago..it stuck with me. The next one was a secret dip I learned at the Oaks in Ohio, an Inn/Spa that is noted for its affordable prices and fabulous cuisine. In one class, we learned to take low fat ricotta (non-fat cottage cheese works too) and a few chunks of strongly flavored hard cheese, in this case I used an excellent, ultra sharp New England Cheddar. Throw them together in a food processor and process longer until you would ever believe, until they totally form a dense cream consistency. Then, decant into a refrigerator container and store. Don’t taste until the next day. It’s amazing, but just 20% of the higher fat hard cheese totally permeates the blander ricotta and the whole dip is absolutely yummy and heart healthy.

My final dip was made of yogurt. In this case, a nice whole milk one-still pretty low in calories. Which I spiced up with some finally chopped green onion stems and a handful of finely chopped cilantro or parsley would be good too. Blend that, add some cracked black pepper and pop it in the refrigerator to combine overnight.
Delicious Dips

As you can see, the theme we chose was healthy, which is a lot of people we know New Years Resolution plan, just eat healthier all the time not be doing anything stringent, but by enjoying the delicious flavor of natural foods and cutting out fat calories, especially saturated fat calories by swapping lower cal dairy products. We heard lots of “mmms” and “wow delicious”. Come to think of it, it could be paired with Sonoma County’s finest wines, by Segheio, elevated our hors d'oeuvre quite a bit. What are you serving for holiday parties? We’d love to hear, send us your recipes!

Best to you and yours,

Pamela