So, let’s say you lucked out this year and you’re not hosting Thanksgiving.

That means that you won’t have to spend extra hours this week scrubbing toilets and dusting the toilet paper roll holder. (What? You never know what explorations guests will make when idle upon the commode.)

Anyway, your baseboards are staying delightfully crusty this holiday and for this, I am jealous of you.

Where ever you’re going, you won’t be showing up empty handed, right?

Well, save that 12 pack of Coors Light for President’s Day, because I have something better for you to bring – pimento cheese dip.

A few weeks ago, had I heard that same exact phrase thrown my way, I would have ba-haa-haa’d my way into squirting soda through my nose. Pimento cheese was that weird gelled block on the refrigerator aisle. It made me think of single wide trailers and a smoldering cigarette precariously tipped from cousin Lurleen’s mouth as she stirs pickles into aunt Beaulah’s potato salad.

But I’ve changed my mind. It’s quite the Bildungsroman: A few months ago, Mr. Hausfrau and I traveled to a wedding in North Carolina. Every restaurant menu we encountered had pimento cheese on it. No joke. Pimento cheese and crackers. Pimento cheese on burgers. Pimento cheese on biscuits. When I ordered my burger without the pimento cheese suggested on the menu and subbed american cheese, the waiter looked at me funny. And I looked at Mr Hausfrau funny.

It was a knowing look amongst two yuppie and sadly ignorant northerners that said, “Pshaw! Pimento cheese – how inbred and ga-ross! I suppose they think that stuffing is a vegetable, too!”

But the pimento cheese, or rather, its prevalence haunted me. Was I missing out on something? When we got home, I knew I had to get to the bottom of this. I did some googling and came across lots and lots of recipes for the pimento cheese. I also came across lots and lots of love for the pimento cheese.

Obviously, I had to make some.

When I tasted my concoction, I kinda couldn’t believe my taste buds. I decided to REALLY test this stuff out. I gave some to Mr. Hausfrau. He lit up and did his best Oliver Twist impression, “Mum, can I have some more?”

(Actually, it was a little more like, “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to give me?“)

And after that, I hung my head in shame and promised the heavens that I would never doubt those southern cooks. Mayo and cheese really DOES make everything taste better. I hope they’ll let me back over the border because nothing beats a southern biscuit.

Anyway, the pimento cheese: This stuff is creamy, rich and smoky – an awesome contrast to any fresh, crisp, and juicy stick of veggie. Spread generously on a cracker or toast point, this dip will make you hum with delight and not even realize it. It’ll make a believer out of you like it did out of me.

If you bring this for Thanksgiving, I promise that everyone will think you’re a rockstar and they’ll overlook the fact that you also brought cranberry sauce from a can.

And if your host is lucky, it will also distract guests from the dog hair on the television screen.

(Or the dog hair in the dip.)

Pimento Cheese Dip

2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, shredded
4-ounce jar of pimentos, drained
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/2 teaspoon honey

Dump all the ingredients in a food processor and puree until smooth. Refrigerate the mixture at least 30 minutes, allowing it to thicken and the flavors to develop. Serve.

Well, these. . . .

These . . . apparently leave me speechless.

These teriyaki bacon-wrapped dates are a fine, fine specimen of savory and sweet, gooey and meaty. They’ll leave your fingers absolutely caked with their sticky love.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. It leaves you a little sumthin-sumthin for later.

That’s gross. And really unsanitary.

These beauteous little appetizers are actually a riff on the one of my favorites: Rumaki. I first tried Rumaki at a New Year’s Eve party my boss had when I was 19 years old. It was as if my taste buds were awakened from a Rip van Winkle-esque slumber. I spent the next half hour stalking that tray of Rumaki as it was passed around. I must have looked odd, pushing unsuspecting women and children out of my way, chanting, “Bacon, bacon! Give it to me wrapped in bacon!”

To my dying day, I will blame it on hormones and claim that it wasn’t that big a deal and everyone else had too much to drink.

Geez, those lushes.

I decided to swap out the water chestnuts for dates here, for no other reason than my major problem with conformity. And I basted these beauties with Teriyaki sauce, for no other reason than my major crush on the word “baste.”

When they were done, I delicately plated these little treats up on a small platter to take pictures of them. But, when I got behind the camera, I realized they looked like cockroaches. And that just wasn’t cool, man.

I needed to show that these were indeed bacon and zoom in on their intricacies while i was at it. Because these aren’t some shallow little hussies. They’re glazed. They’re smokey. They’re a party in your mouth, but they also read Proust. Heck, I don’t even read Proust.

My point, which I am only now getting to, is that we’re entering into a season of holidays and parties. It’s likely you’ll be hosting something. Your guests are going to come to your house HUNGRY. They’re not going to have a sensible snack 90 minutes prior to their arrival. They’re going to starve all day to save room and calories for the feast you are going to spread before them. They WILL hover about your kitchen like fruit flies.

Do yourself a favor and throw a couple dozen of these morsels at them. That way you can carve the turkey in peace.

Teriyaki Bacon-Wrapped Dates

18 dates
9 slices of bacon
2 tablespoons teriyaki sauce

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cut the bacon slices in half (this is easiest done when the bacon is very cold). Placing one date at the end of one half-slice of bacon, tightly roll the date in the bacon, securing each roll with a tooth pick. Place the wrapped bacon on a sheet pan.

Bake the bacon-wrapped dates 20 minutes. Switch the oven to broil. Brush the dates with the teriyaki sauce and broil 1-2 minutes, until sizzling and a deep burnished brown.

Serve immediately.

Literally.

Meaning, promptly after shooting the photos of this heavenly mash, I sealed it up in a storage container and hid them away in the freezer. I don’t know who I’m hiding them from. Mr. Hausfrau doesn’t like sweet potatoes, so it’s not like he is going to come stalking through the house, all fire-breathing dragon-like, “give me the sweet potatoes or give me death!”

The dogs haven’t figure out how to open the freezer. But give them a few more years. I may come home to a big mess one day yet.

Realistically, I’m probably hiding them from myself because, realistically, I would like to swim down deep through those sweet potatoes depths, breathing and unfurling with each silky, sweet wave.

There I go again with my issues. Matter of fact, I don’t have issues – I have subscriptions.

These potatoes are so impossibly easy and impossibly perfect that you’ll wonder how it is possible you lived without them. They cook and braise in a little bit of half and half and their own juices while being babysat by the crock-pot.

On a side note, check out that crock-pot. I bought it something like 8 years ago at Walmart for fifteen bucks. Like herpes, this thing is a gift that keeps on giving.

I dream of having a beautiful fancy-schmancy crockpot one day from the likes of Williams- Sonoma. I have to wait for this one to give up the ghost, but it just keeps tickin’, and I can’t get any neighborhood squirrels to chew through this cord no matter how much nut butter I smear on it (I’m keeping the crock-pot unplugged, of course. What kind of animal do you think I am?)

Anywho, when the potatoes are all helpless and crumbling, they get pureed in the food processor. Dunzo. No need for any butter or sweetener, just some salt to coax out every last bit of flavor. You see, since the sweet potato juices have nowhere to go (like evaporating out into a roasting oven or leaching out into boiling water), it all stays right there, in that crock-pot, doing the Tango and making little flavor babies.

It’s a thing of beauty, of which sonnets and 80’s love songs are written.

“I’m all out of (sweet potato) love, I’m so lost without you!”

Send medicine. The stabilizing kind.

Just do me a favor – when you make this and hide it in your freezer, just be sure you hide it alllllll the way in the back. I have no shame when it comes to raiding other people’s freezers.

Mashed Sweet Potatoes
(heavily adapted from Cooks Illustrated)

4 pounds of sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
1/2 cup half and half
salt, to taste

Pour approximately 1/4 cup of half and half into the bottom of the crock-pot and layer the potatoes into the crock-pot horizontally. Once the potatoes are layered, pour the remaining half and half over the potatoes. Cook on low for approximately 6 to 10 hours, while stirring a few times to move potatoes around. Larger crock-pots will mean less layers and a faster cooking time. The potatoes are done when they crumble easily.

Transfer the cooked potatoes to a food processor and puree until smooth. Season with salt to taste. Serve immediately or store in the refrigerator/freezer until later use.