Curried Butternut Dip: Spontaneous Cooking FTW

"Necessity breeds creativity" is probably something I should just tattoo on myself somewhere.

So about once a month my job has a potluck. We pick a theme, people bring a dish, TA DA. Half the time I forget about it and don't bring anything, which is never a problem because we always have way too much food anyway. But THIS time I did remember! Only I remembered about half way out to the car, which means I wasn't really that prepared. But it's ok, because I'm not afraid of the randomness. I embrace it.

The theme was "Fall." So I thought "Butternut Squash Soup" which would have been great if I had remembered to bring my slow cooker to work. Heating up that much soup for about twenty people is not easily done in a microwave. Thus, I had a dilemma and I headed to the nearest Trader Joe's to try and solve it.

The first thing that came to mind was this recipe my mom had used last Thanksgiving. It was a butternut squash soup and somehow cayenne pepper whipped cream was involved, and it was a big hit but I didn't remember much else about it. Still, it occurred to me that spicing it up could be good, so of course curry came to mind. And then it occurred to me that one way to have it cold would be to make it a nice thick dip to go with some pita chips.  And THAT is how the Curried Butternut Dip was born.

Yay for camera phones making this moment possible

So the end result was a whole 1/2 quart container of the Greek style plain yogurt, 1/3 a box of butternut squash soup, about a teaspoon of the curry powder and then cayenne pepper to taste.

The butternut flavor is pretty light, unless you add more of the soup and then the dip is then more liquid than cream.  I served it with some garlic naan bread and plain pita chips (wasn't sure which would go better). It went over great, people really liked it with the naan bread. Chalk another one up for creativity!