Julia Reed's Curry Dip — Dale Knows How To Host

View from the window of my Irish train. Some grazing cows who probably make delicious butter.

Canoe Show at Camp Honey Creek, Hunt, TX (from one of Luca’s summers there)

Me & Luca in our Camp Honey Creek Kickapoo T-shirts. Hunt, TX

My drawing for Blair & Brooke (story below)

One of Mom’s kiddo photos. Luca at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 2012.

Luca and Dad on those deathtrap chairs at the V&A!

Mom and Dad looking like British curry enthusiasts.

I’m on a train rolling through the lush Irish countryside, finally hunkering down to finish this blog post that I started in July. When I booked my seat I made a point of noticing what direction the train was going so that I would be facing the right way. I got on and, well, my strategizing didn’t work for some reason. I’m facing backwards. Once we got moving I switched to the empty seat across from me, facing the “right way”. And, that actually felt strange, so I moved back to my original seat. Who’s to say what’s right or what’s wrong? I’ve heard that when you dwell too much on your past, that’s depression, and when you focus too much on the future, that’s anxiety. Today it feels right to look backwards, depression be damned.

I’m in Ireland doing another artist residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre up North in County Monaghan, but I’m currently heading South to Cork to see some friends I haven’t met yet, Eileen and Kevin. On my first trip to the Centre in 2018 I mentioned to some fellow residents that I had family from Cork, the Dennys. They chimed in, “Oh! The Sausage Kings of Ireland!”. I found this amusing at the time because, 1. I was vegetarian, and 2. It reminded me of that scene in Ferris Bueller where he pretends to be Abe Froman, “the Sausage King of Chicago” to get a table at a restaurant. Upon further investigation, it turns out that Denny’s Sausage is kind of like Ireland’s version of Jimmy Dean. Not very sexy. I’m related via my dad’s mom, Alice. When presented with a few free days in the country prior to starting my residency, I thought it would be a good opportunity to swing down and check out the old family stomping grounds. I remembered that this woman, Eileen Gill, who I had been circling on Austin social media for ages, had moved to the area a few years ago. Now, I don’t actually know Eileen, but we share 103 mutual friends on Facebook so I figured it wouldn’t be too crazy if I asked her to meet for coffee. I didn’t understand that Eileen and her husband, Kevin, lived in West Cork, not the city of Cork, about an hour and a half away. (Eileen tells me that West Cork is like the Texas of Ireland.) Well, I’ll be damned if Eileen didn’t offer to drive in to fetch me from the train, show me around, and take me back to her place for the night. Irish Texans, man. My people.

So, I’m heading their way, grateful for the hospitality. I rolled into Ireland yesterday morning and staved off jet lag by walking around Dublin listening to music and looking at art, my favorite thing to do. I stopped by Hugh Lane Gallery where they have imported the painter Francis Bacon’s London studio piece by chaotic piece. I went to a book store, ate some curry, and just generally wandered, tiring myself out even more. When I got back to my hotel I, on a whim, checked out the website for Whelan’s where I had an epic night dancing with my buddy Sinéad Gleeson in 2018 and, DAMN IT, the 80s band Big Country were playing a show there that night. It was sold out. I grappled with myself, should I stay in and get some sleep since I had an early morning train? Or should I rally and try to see the show? This seems to be the case with me and Whelan’s. In 2018 I was literally in my pajamas in my AirBnB about to go to sleep and Sinéad messaged me telling me to get up and meet her out. I almost didn’t, but when in Dublin ….. and that evening ended up being one of my fave nights ever. So, remembering that, I manned up, actually put ON my pajamas (I forgot to bring cute tops, just dresses and studio clothes, so I jauntily tied my pajama top over my jeans and figured it would do), slapped on some cowboy boots and strutted over to Whelan’s. And they let me in! Oh my God. Always rally. It’s worth it. The crowd was mainly made up of enthusiastic older Irish guys who soon became my friends. In addition to Big Country’s ubiquitous hit “In a Big Country”, the band played their song, “Chance”, a real singalong crowd pleaser. I sent a video of this tune to my soon-to-be-friend-from-West-Cork, Kevin, and he replied, “Jeezus, when I was at Camp Longhorn back in 1984 this song was EVERYWHERE!”.

Which brings me to Texas camps. While Camp Longhorn isn’t in the part of Texas that recently flooded, it is an old school Texas camp with a very loyal following. I started writing this post in early July from Austin, just after the devastating flooding in Kerrville and Hunt. My daughter grew up going to Camp Honey Creek, just down the road from Camp Mystic, which suffered so much loss. My family is deeply entwined with the little town of Hunt. Chris grew up going to Camp Rio Vista with his cousins, Gregory and Jason. His other cousins, Brian and Blake, went to Camp Stewart. My good friend Julie went to Camp Arrowhead. My former mother-in-law, Dunya, went to Heart of the Hills. My friend Liz went to Waldemar. Everyone went somewhere around there. And, as a camp parent, I was continually schlepping back and forth each summer, dropping by for Tribe Shows and Closing Ceremonies, etc. My friends and I would host what we called “Adult Camp” every year after dropping our kids off. Our curriculum focused on minor outdoor activities and major day drinking at a rented house on the river.

My heart breaks for my home state. I remember reading in July about two sisters who were found dead holding hands after the flood. I immediately thought of my sister and our bond. This ended up being horrible foreshadowing because a few weeks later I was asked to create a drawing for the parents of these girls, it turns out that they were friends of Chris’ cousin and his wife. The girls’ favorite colors were pink and yellow, so I was tasked with creating a bouquet that celebrated them using those colors. Unless you have medical skills or deep pockets, one can feel pretty useless in situations like these. So, if my art can bring a little joy to someone, I’m willing to try.

I had already been feeling super homesick prior to the floods. This move to New England has made me realize that I truly am a Southerner. I mean everything is cool and New England has its merits, but I keep thinking about this line from a Scott Miller song, “I headed out to find what it is that makes a man want to go back home”. There is a precedent for this in my family. Dad went off to MIT and, after realizing how his home region defined him, he began pursuing his career of writing about just that. At 27 he got hired by UNC which moved him back South to Chapel Hill, where I grew up. Maybe 20 years ago, my aunt Lisa, after decades in Vermont, started spending time again in East Tennessee. Similarly, my uncle Bill, after decades in Southern California, moved his family to Western North Carolina. My uncle Michael, after a career in Pennsylvania, retired to our family’s hometown, Kingsport, Tennessee. And some folks never left: Aunt Jane in Charlottesville, Uncle Frank in Northern Virginia. I’ll always go back to Texas. And, I’ll always seek out Texans, even in Ireland!

As I gaze out the train window, I’m overwhelmed by beauty. I just looked up and saw two people riding horses through a field. It was a moment of magic that I almost missed. (They’re not on their computers typing away, but I’m grateful to have a few focused hours to gather my thoughts.) The other day I thought about the scene in the movie American Beauty where the emo kid made a video of the plastic bag that was playfully floating around. In the film there’s a VoiceOver that says “It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing and there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it, right? And this bag was like, dancing with me. Like a little kid. Begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that’s the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever. …. Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.” The reason I thought of this was because, while at the RISD property on the coast, I saw an empty garbage bag rolling across the big, green lawn like a tumbleweed. I was heading back to my car from the beach and spotted it blowing around. My first instinct was to ignore it, and then I thought, “I’m not in a hurry, I should pick it up”. So, I headed over towards it – it was several hundred feet away – and I’ll be damned if it didn’t play with me, leading me on a little chase, messing with me, and eventually taking me to this bamboo grove I had never noticed before. It took me right up to this opening in the bamboo where someone had carved a path in, creating a surprising little room, kind of a secret clubhouse. I poked around like a kid, completely charmed by the offering. When I walked back out into the sunshine, I said, “Thanks, Mom”.

Mom was playful. She was always taking photos of little kids she would encounter. I remember one of a young girl playing in the fountains at the Victoria & Albert Museum, and another of a little chunky girl in a princess dress taken from Mom’s seat atop a London bus. When I was walking down the street in Dublin yesterday a school had just gotten out and there were all of these little girls in uniforms being goofy and I thought “Mom would love this”.

I channeled old Dale the other day when I hosted a going away party for a friend. I made ham biscuits, hatch pimento cheese, and blanched asparagus with Julia Reed’s Curry Dip. Mom had some friend who used to say they were going to “hell in a ham biscuit” instead of hand basket. (Side note: I briefly had a vegetarian Southern food blog and stole that for my name.). In hindsight, the party menu’s common denominator was mayonnaise. Southerners love mayonnaise. My friend Kat and I hosted a Yoga & Art retreat in Austin years ago where we served a lunch that included both deviled eggs and pimento cheese. The next year we rebranded as “Kat & Sarah’s Yoga, Art & Mayonnaise Retreat”. Let’s just call a spade a spade.

I have these friends Heather and Jack in Rhode Island. Heather is a Texan and Jack is from Georgia, they help to ease the cultural divide. I was telling Heather a story and she was like, “Oh my God, I think you just out-Southerned Jack”. Here’s the story. When Mom died we had some family and friends over to the house after her funeral. Dad called up our favorite BBQ joint, Allen & Son, and placed an order so that we could have some easy food. When my aunt went to fetch it, the staff wouldn’t let her pay. It was a gracious gift. Well, we ordered WAY too much food, so there was lots of delicious pulled pork left over. Dad froze it. And then he started culinarily experimenting. One day he called me up and said “I cut some butter into the BBQ and made pulled pork paté”. Um, what? Adding butter to an already fatty meat?! That’s next level. After that Dad would bust out what my sister and I referred to as “the funeral paté” whenever we would see him. He actually brought some up to New York to serve at the wedding party that my stepsisters, my sister, and I had for him and his new wife, Linda. I’d like to think that that particular batch was made with fresh BBQ and not the leftovers from my mom’s funeral! (Although we Reeds have a very dark sense of humor, so that kind of tracks.). Anyway, upon hearing this Heather asked Jack if he had ever added butter to BBQ and the answer was no. I win.

Today’s recipe isn’t from Mom’s files but it is from a Julia Reed book she gave me called “Ham Biscuits, Hostess Gowns, and Other Southern Specialities”. I’ve mentioned Julia in this blog before. She was friends with Mom and Dad via the Southern Foodways Alliance and she was an incredible hostess. Southern seaports have a long history of using curry as a spice due to Britain’s relationship with India. Julia’s dip is very rich and very good. Make sure you have have a good batch of ice water ready to go when blanching the asparagus. (Flaccid asparagus is a real party pooper.)

JULIA REED’S CURRY DIP
(yields about 2 1/4 cups)

2 cups Hellman’s mayonnaise (Sarah’s note: I disagree and use Duke’s)
2 tablespoons Durkee sauce (Sarah’s note: I couldn’t find this in Rhode Island so I made my own)
2 tablespoon Heinz ketchup
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
3 teaspoons curry powder (like Madras)
1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
2 tablespoons finely grated onion
1 garlic clove, pressed
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
1 teaspoon celery seed
pinch salt

Combine all the ingredients and keep refrigerated.

BLANCHED ASPARAGUS
Here’s a link, I actually prefer it less cooked, so maybe 2-3 minutes.

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