Starting the New Year on Entirely the Wrong Foot

My friend KT brings a hot cheese dip to every New Year's Eve party. It's the absolute most irresistable food I've ever encountered, which is a really serious statement from such a dedicated omnivore. This means that no matter how well my healthy eating resolutions have lasted through the holiday season (no eggnog! no fried appetizers! no McDonald's drive-thru while Christmas shopping! ONE chocolate truffle!), it all goes completely to hell the minute she breezes through the door with her Crockpot.

I've tried putting it in the kitchen, away from the rest of the food, with the hope that out of sight means out of mind. I've tried filling up on raw veggies before she arrives. I've tried sending all the leftovers home with her so I don't end up eating it for breakfast for the remainder of the week (although that year I somehow ended up at her house much more frequently than usual for a couple of days...). I've tried asking her to bring other things to the party - which she graciously does, along with the Crockpot of Doom.

So this year, I decided to quit pretending. I love this dip. I do all my New Year's party hostessing from my station next to the Crockpot, and I stockpile tortilla chips for the leftovers (ever since the year I discovered, via extensive trial-and-error, that it really doesn't taste as good as anything else). It's my traditional New Year's Day breakfast. I built this year's party menu around this dip; I set up a nacho bar with all sorts of toppings and made pitchers of margaritas....and inevitably, everyone stood around the Crockpot and ate this dip and ignored everything else. As they should.

Ridiculously Good Cheese Dip

3 tubes of Jimmy Dean's Hot Pork Sausage
8 blocks of cream cheese (yes, that's 4 pounds. There's probably a Costco size available.)
2 cans of chopped or diced Mexican tomatoes
Chopped pickled jalapenos to taste

Brown the sausage and drain it. Put all the ingredients into a large Crockpot and cook on low. As soon as the cream cheese melts, open a bag of tortilla chips and begin testing to make sure you put in the right amount of jalapenos. Continue testing at regular intervals for 3 hours, scraping down the sides of the Crockpot so the cheese doesn't get all crispy on the sides before you officially serve it.

Leftovers keep beautifully in the fridge for as long as your willpower holds out.