Today is October 10, 2010– also known as binary day. It was also the day that my friend Angela had planned on getting married. She died in early May so that didn’t happen. Her death rocked my world and definitely set forth a period of extreme introspection and some existential angst. (what the hell am I doing with my life, anyway?!?!?!)
This weekend I was determined to get out of the house and out of the mire of the funk that I have managed to let sit on me like dust. Clean that crap out. It’s not productive anymore. I’m going to have some fun.
So I woke up in the wee hours of the noontime and got on the road to meet my friend Ramona for the First Annual World Cheese Dip Championship. That’s right. An entire festival devoted to cheese dip.
Apparently the first cheese dip was created in Arkansas in the 30s for a Mexican Restaurant called Mexico Chiquito. It never occurred to me that everybody at some point didn’t throw a can of Rotel (a tomato and chili blend) and some Velveeta into a pot or bowl and heat that stuff up until it is gooey enough to put on chips. it’s just that ubiquitous around here.
So away we went. The event was slated to start at noon and last until nine in the evening. We got there at two and there were already stations running out of chips.
Danger danger.
That didn’t sway us. We discovered that the two cheese dip powerhouses in Arkansas Stoby’s restaurant and Mexico Chiquito were more than prepared for chips. So we kept getting in those lines and loading up on chips to use to try the other dips.
Mexico Chiquito and Stoby’s were serving the same dips that they serve in their restaurants and they were tasty as ever. Mexico Chiquito is a cheese based dip with spices instead of chunks of tomatoes and peppers so it’s smooth as opposed to chunky. Stoby’s isn’t really spicy but is more creamy cheese goodness.
So the round up.
Ferneau made a crawfish and green chili dip that tasted amazing. It was, however, chunky enough that I wanted to eat it with warm flour tortillas and in that sense considered it some sort of rogue faux fundido (like the fajita chicken and cheese dip concoction that gets called “pollo fundido” at my local mexican place). While I loved it, I couldn’t in good conscious consider it cheese dip.
There was a Tanqueria at the end but there’s was just too runny. Sorry.
There was a local chapter of the Sweet potato queens who served this dip with meat in it that was just pretty tasty. They called themselves Hogs and … err something. I forget. I didn’t take notes.
There was a spinach based cheese dip in the amateur division that had the combination of tomatoes, chilis, cheese, and spinach that was just yummy. Oh I discovered from another blog that it was from an insurance company called Meadors/Adams. it was gosh darn tasty. (thanks Arkansas Foodies)
Dizzy’s had a cheese dip that also got you a dollop of these great salsa on top of it. It was one of my favorites. The salsa itself was so good that I almost wanted to go back and ask for a serving of that by itself.
Apparently, they ran out of cheese dip around 3:30. I got the last non alcoholic beverage at the whole event around 3 o’clock.
Somehow in my very focused quest to get the last non-alcoholic beverage (A Dr. Pepper), I missed some sort of racial smackdown or altercation or something that ended up with one woman crying. I missed crying. How did in the hell did I miss crying? The only thing I remember is hearing “it’s 2010” See guys, I was really, really thirsty.
THEN
After we were stuffed, we went to see Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps. It was okay. I didn’t hate it but I was bored enough that I checked twitter halfway through the movie. This was the first time in my entire life that I have done that. It showed me the charisma of Michael Douglas. He stole the scene in every scene he was in. I was enchanted by Carey Mulligan’s pixie cut. I’m not sure if that’s a sign of the overall boringness of the movie or the stunningness of Ms. Mulligan’s hair. I’ll leave that up to you. So I give it a MEH!
