Julie Bove > wrote:
: I discovered a new recipe! Well, sort of. I have actually been eating this
: but did not know it. This is an Italian dish. It is basically sticks or
: pieces of raw veggies, cut up and dipped in olive oil as you eat them. Some
: recipes say that you can additionally dip in sea salt as you eat. And some
: say that you can dip in mustard. The big difference here is that they use
: raw veggies that I don't normally eat, in addition to those that I do. Like
: artichokes and fennel. But some recipes call for lightly blanched veggies
: like green beans or lightly grilled ones like eggplant.

: I have eaten raw carrots in the past with olive oil because I read somewhere
: that the oil helps with the bioavailability of the nutrients in the carrots.
: But now I want to try this with other veggies, particularly the fennel! I
: have only had fennel once. I roasted it. And there just wasn't enough
: because we all loved it.

: I am just surprised that I never heard of this before! I have always eaten
: raw veggies but usually plain. Once in a while with hummus. I never saw
: the appeal of ranch or other dips. And at one restaurant where we haven't
: been in a while, we get the raw veggies with Italian dressing for dipping.
: That's okay but I like the sound of the plain olive oil.
So many things are delicious dipped in olive oil,like tose vegetables.

another great dip, I find for raw veggies is cocktail sauce, the kind
peopleuse on shrimp cocktail, etc. Easy to make. Just mixt ketchup or
chili sauce(the Heinz kind, not salsa) with white grated horseradish to
taste adn a little lemon juice and/or tabasco, again to taste and dip
away. It makes a nice zippy easy appetizer or, as they say in Yiddish
vorshpeiz(sp?) {zippy first course}

Wendy