Mississippi Sin

I wanted to make dinner for my friends the other night. But I didn't want to spend a lot of money.

And all I felt like making was appetizers.

So all I made was appetizers.

We decided to call them tapas (Spanish little bites), but that's mostly a misnomer since I made a bread full of cheesy dip. There was nothing small about it.

I just makes us feel better.

So, Mississippi Sin.

I have no idea why it's called that. But I thought it looked really tasty.

See? Yummy looking.

I followed the directions pretty well except for two things: My grocery store didn't have French bread, so I went with the Italian (heck, it looked the same), and I didn't want to spend more money than I needed to, so I substituted the beef I use in my cheese ball for the ham since I already had a packet.

Side note about cost savings. I spent about 5 minutes staring at the sour cream in the case because the 8 oz. containers were 10/$10 and a 16 oz. container was $2.39, making buying two small ones cheaper than buying one big one to get the same about of ounces. I was having trouble making sense of that math since buying smaller is rarely if ever cheaper.

Anyway.

So after I mix everything together (using twice the required amount of green onion because I chippoed and froze two together), I turn to the bread. I don't slice some of the bread off the top first because that just seems silly. I just slice diagonally down into it. And after I take that piece out and rip it up to dip in the dip later, I hollow out the bread just a little bit more. I did this for two reasons. First, I wasn't sure the dip was easily going to fit. And second, I wanted more bread for dipping!

I dumped the dip in the bread bowl, covered it up as best I could, and stuck it in the oven until my friends arrived.

It wasn't as warm as I had anticipated when I pulled it out, but it was definitely a warm dip. I'm sure it being in bread was the big difference. We ate it. We liked it!

Even adding beef instead of ham, it looks very similar.

And then the ripped bread ran out, so we started trying to pull apart the bread bowl.

That's where we ran into a problem.

The bread was hard to tear. Obviously, because it had been baked a second time. And the bread right next to the dip was soggy. In a gross way. It looked like it had been sitting in water. Not appetizing.

But, hey. This is such a good dip, I'm certainly not going to let gross bread prevent me from making it again. Maybe even with the ham next time. I'll just put it in an oven-safe container.

And chunk the bread up on the side.

Conclusion: Use a dish.