After a lengthy evening of sipping (and sometimes chugging) champagne, and fun filled conversation, it is now officially 2008. Someone pointed out last night that it will be extremely easy to turn the accidental 2007 into a 2008, which further brightened my excitement for the coming year and a common problem of mine.

Someone else also pointed out the chip dip was AMAZING. I took some photos during the easy 5 step process of making it to share with you, as we did a little tweaking to the recipe.

Step 1 – Get it together

What we used:

8 0z. Cream Cheese
8 oz. Sour Cream
1/2 Red Onion
4 Cloves of Garlic
1 Roasted Red Peppers (sliced is ok)
1 Package of Frech Onion Dip Mix
Garlic and Herb Seasoning
A couple spoons worth of butter
1/2 bottle of Freixenet Brut De Noirs

Step 2 – Before you Drink (5 minutes)

Dice the onion into small pieces (I like this guy’s way of doing it)

Dice the garlic cloves and roasted red pepper
Set out the Cream Cheese so it will be soft.

Now that we are through with knives, start pouring yourself glasses of champagne!

Step 3 - Heat things up a bit (10-15 minutes)

Take a medium sized skillet and place over medium heat
Melt the butter in the skillet, add the garlic, and enough champagne to cover the bottom of the pan.
Cook the garlic until it starts turning white. Garlic loses its “kick” once it turns white, and considering we are cooking it in the champagne, a small piece should start tasting sweet.

Now take your chopped onions, and add them to your pan. Also, add enough champagne to almost cover the onions. We’ll let them continue to simmer over medium heat until the champagne has been cooked off. At this point, all of the onion should be light pink and slightly translucent in appearance, and have a soft texture with a slight crunch. Remove from heat and let sit for a few minutes.

Step 4 - Mix things up (5 minutes)

We split our cooked onions and garlic into 2 batches at this point, because we did one dip with the red peppers, and one dip without. Place the onions into a mixing bowl, there will be some liquid here which will help the flavor of the dip. Go ahead and add in the packet (or 1/2 packet if your splitting it up) of French Onion Dip Mix, and the Roasted Red Peppers, Green Onions, Jalepenos, or anything else that sounds interesting.

Mix well, then add in the sour cream and cream cheese. Again, I am using half the cream cheese and sour cream in this picture, because I split the onions into 2 batches. Add the garlic and herb seasoning and fresh ground pepper to taste. Place in a container and chill for about an hour

Yes, that is what turned out to be a wise purchase of Chaser Plus in the top right of the above picture. At this point, it was actually 8:23, and the rest of the bottle of champagne was already gone. I’ll have to tell you about Champong, beer pong but with champagne… loads of fun…. which brings us to Step 5

Step 5 - Enjoy (all night long)

Other Ideas:
Cook some extra onions and garlic, and mix with sun-dried tomato and/or hummus to serve with toasted pita bread.
Chill the onion mixture, and add in cilantro and lime and mix with cocktail sauce for shrimp or oysters.
Use the leftover ingredients to make an omelet.

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• Champagne – A New Year Tradition
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