St. Cecilia's Day

“Oh Heaven forbid!  I forgot to bring the dips!  Is there time to go home and get it before practice starts? NO!!!  Horrors!”  With that, I woke up from my nap, grateful to realize that it was only a dream, choir practice was not about to start in fifteen minutes, and I had not forgotten the dip.  We were having a St. Cecilia’s Day party during the rehearsal, and my friend Martha had volunteered to cater the event, with a little help from me.  I was making my favorite cookie recipe (actually, one of my many favorite cookie recipes, as I am a tremendous fan of nearly all cookies,) veggies, and two dips. 

A while ago, Rebecca invited the Aunties to dinner, and prepared many delicacies, but the hit of the evening was the French salad dressing she made to put on iceberg lettuce.  She selected this because Dakki is such a culinary stick-in-the-mud, and usually only likes things she has eaten since the age of three.  This dressing seemed pretty retro, and therefore likely to appeal to her.  But surprise!  We all loved it, and gobbled up the entire batch.  It was one of the best salad dressings I ever ate, zippy and zingy, but not overly so. I thought it would make a nice vegetable dip, but in its salad dressing form, would be too messy.  So I increased the cornstarch to thicken it up, and voila!  A very successful dip.

You can find the original recipe here.  I increased the cornstarch to 1.5 tablespoons, and this produced a nice thick, but not too thick dip, which stuck to the vegetables without dribbling down one’s front.