{"id":9567,"date":"2016-06-13T22:57:12","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T02:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orangette.net\/?p=9567"},"modified":"2016-06-29T00:52:34","modified_gmt":"2016-06-29T04:52:34","slug":"the-opposite-of-fancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orangette.net\/2016\/06\/the-opposite-of-fancy\/","title":{"rendered":"The opposite of fancy"},"content":{"rendered":"

In August of 2014 – which, for those who are counting, was twenty-two entire months ago –\u00a0I mentioned<\/a>\u00a0my friend Natalie’s “famous cucumber dip.” A bunch of you asked for the recipe, so I e-mailed Natalie, and she sent it promptly. The recipe is not fancy. It’s the opposite of fancy. I liked that about it, and I was very excited about the new chapter of my existence that was revealing itself, an existence promising\u00a0as much famous cucumber dip as I could get myself around. I was going to write about it immediately. But then a few days went by, and then more days after that, and some more after that. By then, it was sometime around New Year’s Day of 2015 and I was grappling with my annual post-holiday case of Inbox Overwhelm, under whose\u00a0wildly deranging influence I\u00a0hastily shunted\u00a0Natalie’s e-mail to a file called “Odds and Ends.” And there it stayed, forgotten but patient, until Memorial Day of this year, when Natalie showed up at our front door with a carton of sour cream, a cucumber, and a packet of Hidden Valley Ranch\u00a0mix<\/a>, and I remembered.<\/p>\n

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I’ll get this\u00a0out of the way right now and say that cucumber dip does not photograph well. It is a shy, retiring thing; it\u00a0does not make love to a camera. You’ve got to draw it out, preferably on a potato chip.<\/p>\n

I imagine there are lots of versions<\/a> of this recipe out there. I can tell you that Natalie’s isn’t actually Natalie’s at all, just like most of “my” recipes are not mine, but rather riffs on recipes and ideas that have been floating around from\u00a0cook to cook and kitchen to kitchen. This particular recipe, as Natalie tells it, comes from her friend Daphne Eck<\/a>. A number of years ago, she and Daphne went to visit a friend who was doing an artist residency in Minnesota, and they stayed in a cabin in the woods and had a “magical wonderland” of a weekend, watching fireflies, digging clay out of the river bed, and firing the pieces they built from it in the fire-pit-turned-mini-kiln. (Natalie does things like this, which is why I love Natalie.) Daphne made this dip at some point, and now, in Natalie’s memory, it’s tangled up with that weekend, Midwest nostalgia in edible form. She\u00a0now makes it for birthday parties, summer holidays, and last weekend,\u00a0the party to celebrate her husband Michael’<\/a>s\u00a0graduation from UW grad school\u00a0with\u00a0a dual Master’s in architecture and real estate development. For me, it’s tangled up in all of that, only I call it Natalie’s, not Daphne’s. Daphne: hi! And sorry.<\/p>\n

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We usually scoop up famous cucumber dip on potato chips, but\u00a0it’s also right at home on carrot sticks, celery, fingers, whatever\u00a0you like to dunk in dip. Happy almost-summer.<\/p>\n

P.S.\u00a0Several of you wrote to ask if I was giving up on my old love Orangette, because I hadn’t posted in few weeks. Please know that I’m not. If ever I’m not here for a stretch of time, it’s only because there are other things that need attention\u00a0in my offline life, and that’s not a forever thing, or even a bad thing. If and when this blog reaches the end of its lifespan, I will be clear and intentional about it. You can count on me, and I’m honored that you do.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

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Recipe<\/div>\n

Natalie's Famous Cucumber Ranch Dip<\/h2>\n

from Natalie Riha and Daphne Eck<\/h3> \n \n <\/header>\n\n
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