Thanksgiving Food Experiments: Making Curry Dip

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the year. For me, it is the holiday that all of my family and friends gather together for food, fellowship, and fun. We all enjoy getting together to catch up on our lives. It is amazing how much changes -children grow up, babies are born, adults move and change jobs -and how much stays the same -we are all still close to one another no matter what our circumstances.

The gathering is wonderful and we wouldn't ever want to miss out on the chance to catch up, but we have to have good food! Without the food, I am not so sure that we would spend quite so much time gabbing and just enjoying one another's company.

A started hosting a huge Thanksgiving bash about five years ago. I started with just serving lunch on Thanksgiving Day and then sitting around talking until 4:00 or 5:00 in the evening. I had one friend who would stay overnight and we should catch the great "Day After Thanksgiving Sales" early on Friday morning. Over the years, my Thanksgiving celebration has grown to take up a couple of days and spans five or six meals.

We usually start with lunch on Thanksgiving Day and then visit and talk. We pull out the lunch leftovers for Thursday night's dinner. Since we like to shop like crazy the next morning, we go to bed pretty early and then get up on Friday morning around 3:30 AM or 4:00 AM. We are usually shopping or waiting to get in a store by 5:00 AM on Friday. Our shopping ends by 9:00 AM and we pick up a fast food breakfast and head back to my house to take a nap -or everyone else naps-I fix a lunch that we usually eat late in the day.

This lunch is usually sandwiches made from the leftover turkey and ham and an assortment of dips served with chips, crackers and raw veggies. Up until last year, I pretty much relied on the dips that I would purchase in the dairy case or the deli case at my local grocery store. Last year, I had a taste for something a little different. I typically like dips with a mayonnaise base. So, I decided to make my dips from the powder mixes that are in the salad dressing section of the grocery store. I started with ranch and creamy Italian. I also made a cheese dip and bought a jar of salsa. But, I wanted something different from the ordinary -something with curry powder in it. So, I decided to try making a Curry Dip. I searched several websites and cookbooks for recipes and ended up getting ideas, but improvising as I went along. Here is what I ended up using in the dip:

About 1 ½ cups of mayonnaise. I have since learned that I prefer to use the new mayo that has olive oil in it.

2 - 3 teaspoons curry powder (depending on my taste for the day)

1 light shake of garlic powder. Most of the recipes I found called for chopped onion, but I just
can't handle onion, so I changed the recipe and gave it just a tiny taste of the garlic powder.

1 small pinch of dry mustard (I would guess about ½ teaspoon)

1 pinch of salt

Small pinch of black or red pepper to taste

1 small splash of hot sauce

1 small splash of lemon juice

Mix all of this together in your serving bowl and chill. Once chilled, it's ready to eat.

Note: Sometimes I will mix ½ mayonnaise and ½ plain yogurt for a little bit different texture.

Also, I tend to add things and taste the mix until I get the recipe to my liking. You might want to do the same as not everyone likes red pepper and hot sauce the way I do.

I serve this dip at my Friday late afternoon lunch with three or four other dips, chips, crackers, raw vegetables, and ham/turkey sandwiches. We usually go to a movie on Friday night and then come home and get the lunch leftovers back out and snack on them until we fall off to sleep. On Saturday morning, we get up and everyone gets ready to go home. While Thanksgiving weekend is a lot of work for me and it is a very busy weekend, I wouldn't trade it for the world. I also wouldn't trade my recipe tweaking (like with the curry dip) -even if it saved time. So far, my Thanksgiving Weekend bash (and the curry dip) has been a hit with everyone!