Baked Camembert

There are some foods that you know you're supposed to have eaten at some point in order to get your coveted adult card, which allows you all of the wonderful privileges of adulthood like home ownership, paying taxes, and existential dread. Weird cheese is definitely up there on that list. But what constitutes weird cheese? There are tons of cheese varieties from all over the world. And everything's weird to somebody, right? Wrong. If there's a situation that doesn't involve despair in which you'd put it in a sandwich, its standard cheese. If anyone might describe the flavor through clenched teeth as complex, earthy, or eau de chaussettes athletiques, it's weird cheese. Which doesn't necessarily mean bad, but definitely means you shouldn't go in expecting it to taste like you think cheese should. Because it won't, and you'll be sad. Which brings us to Camembert.

Ingredients:

1 Camembert (Camembert cheese is typically sold in small wheels, encased in wooden boxes. So get one of those)
2 cloves Garlic
1 TBSP fresh Thyme
1 TBSP fresh Rosemary
1 TBSP Olive Oil

The first thing to remember when baking camembert is to have friends. It's going to end up being a gooey receptacle for crackers, bread, and other culinary detritus, and that's not exactly the sort of food that's socially acceptable to eat alone. So if you don't have friends, make some before you start in on this recipe. I recommend going up to strangers at a bus stop and asking them if they want some funky cheese. Once you've been paroled, invite any new friends you made in lockup over and start getting your cheese ready. Take your cheese out of the paper that it's wrapped in, and cut a 3x3 grid in to the top of it, about a 1/4 of an inch deep. Scoring the rind of the cheese like this will help keep it from drying out, and will help the herbs and garlic soak in to the cheese, so don't skip it just because it sounds more like instructions for building ikea furniture than for cooking. Choppity chop up your garlic, thyme, and rosemary in to tiny little pieces, pretty much as fine as you can, and mix them in with your oil.

Protip: Don't bake the knife

Now we've come to the tricky question, which is what to cook this nonsense in. Traditionally you bake camembert in the box it came in, which is totally fine if it came in a wooden box. But sometimes it comes in a cardboard box, so what then? If you put it on a baking sheet it'll just spread out and make a giant mess. So your options are pretty much lucking out in having a ramekin or small dish the exact right size and using that, or taking aluminum foil and crafting a ring of power in the middle of a baking pan, and shoving your camembert into that. In any event, once your cheese is in your chosen baking vessel, slather your garlic and herb oil all up ons. Do your best to get it down into the cracks and crevices. Then toss that sucker in to a 350 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, take it out, find something to dip in to the weird funky goodness, grab some hard cider, and enjoy! I'm sure your friends from prison will appreciate the complex bouquet of a fine weird cheese.

Smoked Fish Salad

Just like a narcissistic hoarder mermaid, we're gonna betray
this little guy. Fortunately, he'll taste delicious.

Well, it's a new year out there. From what I've seen so far it's mostly like the old year, but you can never be too sure. I'm only like halfway through testing out laws of physics, so there could be some fun new surprises in 2018. But I digress. Like I said, it's a new year, so I figured that it's a good time to make some old-world food that somehow stood the test of time. Specifically, I'm making a smoked whitefish salad, which is an absurdly tasty thing to eat with bread, crackers, or vegetables, plus is full of protein so it'll help you survive the harsh winter you'd experience in a frozen wasteland like Siberia or Chicago. You can technically still buy this stuff nowadays in delis and whatnot, but it's usually full of sugar. Which normally I don't have a problem with, but we're talking fish and (apparently) that's where I draw the line.

Ingredients:

1 lb. Whole Smoked Fish (I bought smoked chubs, because that's the flavor I grew up with. You've got some leeway here, but stick in that general vicinity. Pretty much any fish you could reasonably expect to catch on a midwestern fishing trip.)
2 Ribs of Celery
3 TBSP Mayonnaise
2 TBSP Sour Cream
1.5 TBSP Fresh Dill
1 TBSP Prepared Horseradish (It's important to help your horseradish prepare for what's coming next)
1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
Juice from 1/2 a Lemon
Salt 
Black Pepper
Chives

The first thing you're gonna need to do is remove the meat from your fish. Ideally you should have started this some time back in 2017, because it'll take a while. It's not that it's particularly hard to get at the meat. It's that there are, at a conservative estimate, 37,000 tiny little bones that are going to try and come along for the ride. There aren't any good ways to help with this, but there are a couple of methods to try and help minimize the horror. One option is to kind of flake the fish off of the bones with a couple of forks. Prayer and shouting angrily are other, equally effective methods. Long story short, even after you carefully remove the fish from the bones, you're probably going to want to go over them between one and seven times, just to double (septuple) check that you're completely bone free. The bad news is that if you were to look at a clock you'd note that this entire process has taken forever. The good news is that it's pretty much antarctica outside, so where else did you have to be exactly?

This fish smoked 3 packs a day for the sake of flavor.
Let's not let that sacrifice be in vain. 

Once your fish is boneless, lightly mash it into chunks with a fork or other implement of culinary destruction. Then choppity chop up your celery in to tiny bits and toss it in there along with your chopped dill, your mayo, sour cream, horseradish, worcestershire sauce, and lemon juice. Mix the whole thing into a homogenous fish glop, and salt and pepper it to taste. Cover it up and toss it in your fridge for at least a couple hours so that all of the flavors get to know each other. This is important. Flavors that don't know each other, who awkwardly stand at either end of the dance floor staring at the ground can ruin an otherwise awesome dish. When you're serving this (by which I mean eating it on the couch while watching Netflix), take it out of the fridge, top it off with some fresh chopped chives, and slather it up on anything you've got lying around. Crackers, cucumbers, the flesh of those too weak to make it through the winter. This will make anything taste smoky, and salty, and awesome. So enjoy the winter! There's only like 3 and a half months left.

Beer Cheese

Beer. Is there anything it can't do?

The midwest and Germany have a lot in common. A love of food and alcohol, a healthy appreciation for tradition, and a tendency to reschedule those traditions out of concern for the weather, which is constantly threatening to kill us all. And it's no surprise that when you've got a bunch of people who love food and alcohol together, they're gonna start blurring the lines between those two things. Because after you've been drinking for long enough, just about any food idea will start to sound reasonable as long as you can make it in less time than it takes to get a pizza delivered. Occasionally, like with beer cheese, it works out. Occasionally it doesn't, but you never admit that a drunken food idea was bad. You just stubbornly tell all of your friends about how great it was, and how they need to try it. This is why the French started eating snails.

Ingredients:

1 Bottle Of Beer (Some people get very specific about what kind of beer has to be used for this. Those people are fools. Use a beer you like, preferably one with a good amount of flavor, but beware that the flavor will intensify somewhat as it's cooked)
8 oz. Cheddar Cheese
2.5 TBSP Butter
2.5 TBSP Flour
1.5 tsp Dried Oregano
1.5 tsp Garlic Powder
1 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 tsp Hot Sauce
1/2 tsp Mustard (Any mustard will do in a pinch, but I prefer something with a little bit more texture and flavor like a stone ground mustard)
A standard human's pinch of Salt

So, Beer Cheese as a dip was developed in Kentucky. And since Kentucky has pretty much only ever had one thing to brag about (bourbon), they'll tell this to anybody who'll listen. I'm pretty sure that Beer Cheese is the state bird of Kentucky. But combining beer and cheese is by no means unique to them, and was even a thing in medieval Europe. In the USA soups and dips combining the beer and cheese are commonplace throughout the midwest, most notably in Wisconsin where it's technically illegal to eat a meal that doesn't have cheese in it. Now that you know that Kentucky has no reason to feel a sense of accomplishment, it's time to melt your butter over medium heat and stir in your flour to make a roux. As I've mentioned once or twice before, a roux is commonly used to thicken sauces. So once that's good and done, whisk in your beer slowly. You're gonna be beating this thing a lot more than you think you should have to. You're going to stop, thinking that the sacrifice of your arm and shoulder was surely enough to ensure a smooth sauce. Then you'll see a lump and realize that you're not done. You're never done.

Bonus points if, like me, you get off-brand pretzels that look
like a doughier version of The Scream, by Edvard Munch

Once you're done weeping in the corner and your sauce is smooth, stir in the rest of the ingredients. When you're stirring in the cheese, melt it in in batches so that you end up with a beer-and-cheese sauce and not a beer sauce with a giant lump of somewhat melted cheese at the bottom of it. Let it cook on low, stirring regularly, for about 10 minutes so that all of the flavors can get drunk off of the alcohol, relax, and start getting to know each other. And that's it! It's a little spicy, a little sour, a lot cheesy, and full of some awesome flavor. Now all you have to do it grab some soft pretzels, hard vegetables, or...medium pasta? The point is, if you've got a foodstuff, there's a better-than-average chance that this stuff will taste incredible along with it. Plus, you can totally lie to children and tell them they can't have it because there's beer in it. More for you.

Chickpea Onion Dip

The world is a mess, and I just need to....rule it.

We live in tumultuous times. There's violence, strife, and political division, both on a global scale, and also widespread domestically. And that's just about Lady Gaga. Lots of people are scared and angry, and most of them don't seem to even know what they're angry about. But the superbowl's coming up soon! We can all get excited about that, probably! We can all get together and cheer while watching the exciting match between the....Patriots and Falcons. Ok, so the superbowl will be awful. But at least it gives us an excuse to dip food into other food, creating double-food, capable of insane levels of deliciousness. And, when you get down to it, isn't that what America is really all about? The answer is no.

Ingredients:

2  16-oz Cans of Chickpeas (Chickpeas are also known as garbanzos, because life is hard and hates you personally)

1  Standard Bunch of Green Onions (Green Onions, also called scallions, are social creatures that travel from supermarket to supermarket in units known as "bunches." They have developed a symbiotic relationship with another supermarket-dwelling creature known as the "tiny blue rubberband that you immediately lose, but later breaks your vacuum cleaner")

3 TBSP Olive Oil

One large human's pinch of Salt

One smallish and/or puny human's pinch of Black Pepper

This recipe, much like one of my bookshelves and my couch, hails from the proud tradition of shameless stealing things from my mother. I can only assume that with time I'll eventually grow bolder and steal more substantial things, like her car or social security number. Time will tell. The point is, crack open your cans of chickpeas, drain out the weird juice and gunk, and then toss them into a standard-issue mashing bowl. Now it's time to painstakingly mash the chickpeas, pretty much one at a time, with a fork. If you're a fool. Like I apparently was for an embarrassingly long amount of time. Make your life easier and use a potato-masher, which is apparently useful for something other than jamming drawers.

Guaranteed to make your day 50% more delicious. And
13% more full of mashing things. 

Rinse off your green onions, and then choppity chop them into little bits. Mix them, along with the rest of your ingredients, into your mashed chickpeas. And that's it! Well, mostly. Stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours so that the flavors get to know one another. And then that's totally it. For sure this time. Dip anything you like in there, and it'll be delicious. Vegetables, bread, crackers, you name it. Bugs. Probably not bugs. Don't dip gross things and you won't get gross results. Enjoy, and tune in next week for more superbowl food! Because, the world may suck...the game may suck...but at least we can eat good food, drink, and be merry while we endure it! (Next week's recipe may just be on how to find and consume beer. We'll see!)

Spinach and Artichoke Dip

If your artichokes aren't heirlooms, you're basically just a
garbage person. Gandhi said that.

So you've decided to finally start eating healthy, and are totally stoked to see how you can make things like spinach and artichokes actually taste like people food! You fool! Yes, some things are better for you than other things. But sometimes, in order to make those healthy things even a little bit palatable, you need to load them up with a bunch of unhealthy things, which kind of kills the point vis-a-vis nutrition. And some things are just awful no matter what you do to them (I'm looking at you, Kale) So congratulations, you're doomed! Well, maybe you're not doomed. But if you're looking for a way to make all those foods you avoid taste awesome without adding in any calories, look elsewhere. Because while this recipe is full of tastiness, it's also very full cheese, cream, and fat. Which is one of the main reasons why, you know, it tastes good. So if that's a deal-breaker for you, so long, and good luck learning how to choke down your daily kale-and-flaxseed breakfast smoothie. I'll be over here, not hating life.

Ingredients:

Fresh Spinach (Way more spinach than you think you'll need. Like 5 cups of spinach) 

1 can/jar/12-14 oz. containment vessel of Artichoke Hearts

8 oz. Cream Cheese

4 oz. Sour Cream
1 standard-issue Onion
2 cloves of Garlic

The juice of 1/2 a Lemon

1 dash of Hot Sauce 
2 TBSP Olive Oil

An unspecified amount of Salt 

The first thing you're gonna need to do is get over the fact that you think you have too much spinach. We get it. You think you have way too much spinach. You're wrong, so learn to deal with it. Finely dice up your onion into itty-bitty onion bits and sauté it, along with an average human's pinch of salt, in your oil over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Roughly chop your spinach and throw it in with the onions and another average human pinch of salt. Yes, it pretty much overflows out of the pan because there's so much spinach. No, you still don't have too much spinach. Let your spinach cook down with your onions for another 5 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Rinse and drain your artichoke hearts that were brutally ripped from the beating chests of young sacrificial artichokes. Choppity chop those suckers, along with your garlic, into tiny bits. Turn your head back to your pan and freak out that you don't have enough spinach. Try to appreciate the irony of the situation, and rest-assured that you have enough spinach. Add in your garlic and artichokes, and sauté for another 2 minutes.

Make sure to have a girl named LeAnn suggest that you put
it in a bread bowl. Otherwise it's not authentic. 

Now comes the fun part, and by "fun" I mean "fattening." Splorp your cream cheese down on top of that hot mess of vegetables and stir the whole thing into a nice sludge-like consistency. Make sure to listen for the cries of anguish from passing-by health nuts and vegans. These will make you, and your dip, stronger. Add in your lemon juice, sour cream, and hot sauce, and stir to combine. Taste it and adjust the salt to your liking. But plan ahead. If you're gonna be dipping salty things into it, you want the dip itself to be a little under-salted. And vice-versa. Of course, it doesn't really matter since you stopped reading after the word "taste" because you haven't been able to stop tasting, and you've probably dropped your phone, laptop, microfiche, or whatever it is you're reading this blog on in your efforts to get at that goodness faster. Because while it may not be healthy, this stuff tastes goooood. Healthy food is overrated anyway. The much more important bit is whether your food sounds healthy so that you can lord over your friends how healthy your life-choices are. And Spinach Artichoke Dip fits the bill, despite being about 50% cream cheese. You're welcome.

Nachos

Artist's rendition: Me getting terrible restaurant nachos

Nachos are a sore spot for me. Because they're so so very awesome. But nobody ever makes them right, and it pisses me off. I don't know. I grew up with relatively easy access to awesome nachos, and while I know that not everybody shared that experience, they should at least be familiar enough with the concept to not microwave cheese on top of a bag of chips and try to sell it to me for $8.95. This has been more angry ranting and less fun banter with the voices in my head than usual, so let's all watch this to even out again. We all good? Cool. Back to nachos. The point of nachos, at least to me, is to be able to get a little bit of everything in each tiny bite. Not to have a giant disk of chips held together with congealed cheese that you have to rip apart, getting beans everywhere and grossing out everybody at your niece's Bat Mitzva, or Quinceanera, or whatever. The point is, your clothes are stained, your family is ashamed of you, your date left an hour ago, and it's the fault of sub-par nachos.

Ingredients:

2 15 oz cans of Pinto Beans
1 Standard Issue Onion
2 Cloves of Garlic
8 oz Cheddar Cheese
3 Jalapeños 
3 Cups Milk
1/3 Cup Vegetable Stock
3 TBSP Butter
3 TBSP Sour Cream
3 TBSP Flour (You need 3 of a lot of things in this recipe. Try not to let it worry you. It's in no way a hint to some sort of greater conspiracy affecting your life. Almost definitely)
1 TBSP Chili Powder
1 TBSP Olive Oil
2 tsp Ground Cumin
1/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
An unspecified amount of salt
Tortilla Chips. All the Tortilla Chips (You can use your favorite store bought chips if you like. Or, if you have the will of the warrior, slice up some corn tortillas, fry them in oil, and then toss a little salt on them. Because it's super easy, crazy awesome, and your therapist said you need to try new things)

The first thing you're gonna need to do is make some refried beans. Because Nachos without beans, while technically pretty authentic, are just little edible plates of sadness. So chop up your onion, and throw it in a pan with your Olive Oil and an ASHP (average sized human's pinch) of Salt over medium heat. Saute` the onion for about 5 minutes, until it starts to get soft and golden. Add in your Garlic, Cumin, Chili Powder, and Cayenne, and Saute` another minute. Add in your Pinto Beans along with one more ASHP of Salt, and let it cook for another couple minutes before adding in your Vegetable Stock. Bring the whole mess to a boil, and let it go for another 5 minutes. Now it's time to get an authentic rustic texture, by taking the back of a spoon, and individually crushing your pinto beans for approximately 3 lifetimes (Bonus points if you use this as an opportunity to express some of the anger you've felt over the years at disappointing nachos, which led to a disappointing life). You want a thick and creamy consistency, but you still want whole beans floating around in there, letting people know what it is they're eating, and generally taunting you about the amount of time you've spend smashing beans compared to the amount of unsmashed beans looking up at you with their stupid bean faces.

Next you're gonna make a cheese sauce. Because of course the cheese should be in sauce form. Any other thought you might have had is blasphemy. Do you want to go to Nacho hell? No? Then stop asking questions about the cheese sauce. It's pretty simple. Essentially, you're gonna take the Flour, Butter, and Milk, and another AHSP of salt to make a thick Bechamel sauce. Too lazy to read that link, but somehow not too lazy to read this? Here's a brief overview: melt the butter in a pot, whisk in the flour slowly, and let it cook for a minute. Then add in the Milk slowly, whisking like crazy until your arm wants to fall off, but can't because of your dumb skin. Got it? Good. Chop up 2 of your Jalapeños, and throw them in the sauce. Then melt in your cheese, in a couple batches so that it actually incorporates and doesn't just end up in a cheesy mess on the bottom of your pot. Keep it cooking over low heat until it threatens to boil but isn't actually boiling yet, and then turn off the heat. Jalapeño Cheese Sauce!

Normally I say something like "they taste even better than
they look. Which is clearly impossible here. I'm gonna
go with "as good." They taste as good as they look. 

Now it's time for the assembly. It's important (To me. And now, because I'm forcing you, to you!) to be able to get a little bit of everything with each bite. So lay down a thick layer of Tortilla Chips on whatever you're gonna be eating these things off of/out of. Then drizzle a layer of your Jalapeño Cheese Sauce (!) over it, followed by a loose layer of your beans. Then add on another layer of chips, followed by another layer of beans, and another layer of cheese sauce. Why does the order of the beans and sauce reverse here? Because it's better that way. What's with all the questions? Do you want to go to Nacho purgatory? Then don't question the order of operations. Throw your Sour Cream down in the middle of your pile of awesomeness, chop up your final Jalapeño, and sprinkle it over everything. And that's all there is to some incredible nachos. And the best part is, you can make enough to share with your friends for the price of an individual portion from a restaurant. Just kidding! The best part is that they're awesome. Eat them all yourself until you get sick.

Black Bean Dip

Everyone gives beans space when they chill with habanero

It's that magical time of year when, if you're lucky, you can watch baseball, basketball, and hockey in the same day. Ancient Greek philosophers referred to this as "sweet as hell." They also recommended that it be celebrated with the inviting over friends, and the eating a snack foods. Also togas. They were big into togas. But everybody knows that if you feed your friends sub-par snack foods, you will enrage the Sumerian god of pernicious sportsmanship, who will cause your teams to lose. Can you deal with that Pressure? Can you handle that responsibility? CAN YOU? I didn't think so. Fortunately, I'm here to help.

Ingredients:

8 oz dried black beans (yes, the picture showed canned beans. I hadn't gone shopping yet. Sue me. Or don't. That would be better. Don't sue me.)

1 large onion

1.5 cups of...something. We'll get to that later (you might be wondering why I bothered to mention it if I'm not explaining it until later. I might be wondering the same thing. WE HAVE SO MUCH IN COMMON! We should totally open a bar together.)

1 TBSP and also 1 normal human's pinch of salt

2 tsp Olive Oil

1.5 tsp cumin

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp black pepper

1 smallish human's pinch of powdered habanero

The first step is to soak your beans for, approximately, ever. Seriously, cover them with 3 inches of water, and soak them for at least 12 hours. This is the "planning ahead" method of bean perpetration. Another option is the "oh crap, I was supposed to soak the beans" method of preparation, which I prefer. If that's more your style, cover your beans with the same amount of water, bring them to a hard boil over high heat, cover the pot, and turn the heat off. Let them sit for at least an hour.

Regardless of which method you subscribe to, drain and rinse your beans. Then cover them with water again, add in a tablespoon of salt, bring them to a boil, cover them, and turn the heat down to low. Simmer your beans for about 45 minutes. Why are we throwing out water and then adding in water? It builds character. I'll tell you when you're older. Because Santa's watching you. Shut up. (Some people say that the soaking process breaks down indigestible sugars present in the beans, some of which end up in the water used to soak them. But that sounds like primitive superstition, so I'm gonna say it's because of ghosts.) Once your ghost-infested beans are tender-ish, keep 1 and a half cups of the water you cooked them in, and strain the rest if it out. Set the beans, and the bean-water, aside (setting things aside is a common occurrence in recipes. Apparently recipe writers think that people have trouble knowing not to put every last ingredient directly in front of them at all times.)

Ok, now that the beans are finally subdued, let's deal with the rest of this recipe. Dice your onion and sauté it in your olive oil with a pinch of salt over medium heat. Let them cook for about 5 minutes, until they get some color, but aren't too cooked, like you on the first night of a caribbean vacation. Add in your cumin, garlic, pepper, habanero, and beans, and sauté another minute or two. Add in the bean-water, bring it to a boil, turn the heat down, and simmer those beans another 10-15 minutes.

Phalanx of tortilla chips not included

Now comes the fun part, and by "fun," I mean "dammit, I JUST got feeling back into my arm after that latke recipe from DECEMBER, and now I have to deal with THIS crap?" Take a spoon, and start smash smash smashing the beans against the side of the pot, occasionally stirring and scraping down the sides. Keep going until about 3/4 of the beans have been smushed (Yes, you could technically use a food processor. But the texture would be off. And also, it's a wimpy alternative. And also I still don't have one). And that's it! Black bean dip! Eat it hot, cold, or somewhere in between, with your friends, or sad and alone. It'll still taste awesome.

Onion Dip

Aww...it's like the onion is a boxer, and the lemons are
his gloves. Or, possibly, I've gone quite mad.

Welcome to the home of every friend who's ever invited you over to watch a sporting event. There's about 1000 things all designed to be dipped in other things. The only problem is that your friends are lazy, and their onion dip consists of combining sour cream with powdered onion soup mix. Also, you just remembered that it's February and your hockey team isn't playing, so you have to watch weird off-brand sports like golf, rugby, or colonialism. Fortunately, this is a problem that's super fixable! By making your own damn onion dip, and bringing it over unannounced, unasked, and - depending on your popularity level - uninvited. What are they gonna do, turn down free food?

Ingredients:

3 normal-sized Onions
1 Clove of Garlic
1 Cup of Sour Cream
1 Cup of Mayonnaise
1 Lemon
1 TBSP Olive Oil 
An unspecified amount of salt

The first thing that you're gonna need to do is chop your Onions down in to little pieces. I prefer a fine dice, because I don't like large chunks of onion in my dips, galavanting about and causing a ruckus, but you're free to cut your onions as large as you want. I'm sure that changing this carefully written recipe to suit your personal preferences won't in any way end in disaster. Once your onions are chopped and you're blind from their horrible curse, heat up your oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. Add in your onions along with one large pinch of salt, and sauté them, stirring occasionally, until they're a deep brown color (allow approximately 1 lifetime). Mince the crap out of your Garlic, throw it in with the onions, and sauté for another 2 minutes. Turn the heat off, and wait patiently for your onion/garlic mixture to cool down to room temperature.

Pro-tip: Curse loudly at the onions to
scare them into cooking faster.

Now it's time for the gross part, and by "gross," I mean "blech." Take your Sour Cream and Mayonnaise and splorp (Splorp /spuh-LOHrp/: to roughly fling in a nauseating manner. Especially for a semi-gelatinous substance) them down right on top of your onions, and stir to combine everything together. It's gonna look gross. It's gonna feel gross. Get over it. Now get your lemon, speak some kind words to it, eviscerate it, and squeeze its lemony corpse until its juice spills out. Make sure while doing this to strain out any seeds that want to come along with the juice. Pick out the seeds you failed to strain, and stir the juice into your dip. This will add some brightness, and will help to make your dip less overpoweringly rich. If you like your dip richer, feel free to add less lemon juice, or skip this step entirely. Again, I'm sure that your hubris will in no way lead you down a destructive path from which there is no return. Taste your dip, and add in salt as needed, keeping in mind that most of the things you actually dip INTO it are going to have salt of their own.

Ugly, but somehow awesome. Like a culinary Jack White

Cover your dip, and let it sit in the fridge for at least an hour to let all of the flavor-melding hoodoo go down. And that's it! You've got some kind of gross looking, but incredibly awesome tasting, onion dip! Unless you went rogue, in which case kid, you've got some moxy! You also probably have a sad pile of gross glop and a lot of former friends. But you win some, and you lose some. Just to be clear, you lost this one. But it'll be ok. You can make new friends, and try try again.

Honey Habanero Chickpea Dip

The bear blended in, quietly waiting for his chance to pounce.

Back in the day, when I was working 3 jobs and going to school full time, I soothed the voices in my sleep-deprived mind by developing a recipe for an all purpose dip that could make anything taste awesome. I would make a giant bowl of it on Sunday, and whenever I had a brief snippet of free time, I would dunk whatever was closest (chips, pita, fiberglass insulation...whatever) into this dip, savor it, and head out the door again. In this way, I stayed at least partially sane.

Ingredients:

2 cans (12 oz each) of chickpeas

1 TBSP Honey

1 TBSP Olive Oil

1 tsp Garlic Powder

1 tsp Onion Powder

1 tsp Cumin

1/2 tsp Black Pepper

1/2 tsp Cayenne Pepper

1 pinch Powdered Habanero

1/2 cup Flat Leaf Parsley

An unspecified amount of salt

Despite the somewhat large ingredient list, this recipe is super simple. The first thing you need to do is drain and rinse your chickpeas. Once you've done that, add....the rest of the ingredients. Mostly. All of them except the parsley and the salt. Do it now. Don't ask questions, don't waste time, just shove them ingredients down on those chickpeas.

Now comes the fun part, and by "fun" I mean "physical labor." Smash up your chickpeas using a fork until it's kinda chunky, but there are no whole bits of chickpea hanging around. Technically, you can use a food processor (also known as an automated wuss machine) to smash up your chickpeas, but the texture ends up being too smooth and that's not what you're shooting for. That's an important tip kids: if somebody serves you unpleasantly smooth chickpeas, it's a clear indicator that they're a wuss. And the price of wussery is subpar chickpea dip (let me think about it….yeah, that adds up)

Plate sold separately. That's how they get you.

Now that you've asserted your masculinity via the texture of your chickpeas, you're gonna add in a pinch of salt. I know that you're a special snowflake and might have weirdly sized fingers, but I don't care. Put a small amount of salt, akin to what might fit in a normal sized person's pinch, and stir it together. Taste it, and if you think it needs more salt you should repeat this visualization exercise. But keep in mind that this is a dip, and the things you dip into it may have salt of their own. Then mince your parsley, stir it in, and you're done! You now have an awesome dip, and with awesome dip comes loose money, easy cars, and fast women. Or something like that.