Day 32 - November 5, 2009

Day 32:

The Bridgerland Culinary Arts class was invited to participate in the Lee's Food Show that is held every year around Thanksgiving. Today was the day we decided to do our test run. I had decided on doing artichoke dip, so I had 3 different recipes to test run and have everyone vote on. The first was a normal spinach artichoke dip with mayo, the second was a spinach artichoke dip with cream cheese and the final dip was artichoke and green chile dip. Everyone who would be participating prepped everything and set it out for the class to sample. We also had Tim the frozen foods manager from Lee's who invited us come out and try everything as well. In the end, I decided on making two different dips for the show. I ended up making the spinach artichoke with cream cheese and the artichoke and green chile dip. Both were very very good.

I ended up deciding to make dip for several reasons. The first was we were going to be serving around 1500 people. I wanted to make something that was easy enough to just throw together and not spend 4 days prepping for. Also, dip is a universal people pleaser...just about everybody I know loves a dip of some sort. I also know tons of people who love artichoke dip and not everybody knows how to make it. It's also something that you can stretch a lot further than other things by just spreading it really thin on the toasted bread slices or crackers and last of all...dip is good hot and it's also good cold. If my dip happened to sit out on my table too long, I knew even if it was cold it would still taste good. That way I wouldn't have to worry about keeping it hot the entire time.

The food show is November 14, I now knew what I was going to be making and was comfortable with my decision.