Queso bland-o...

The third time I tried to make white cheese dip was anything but a charm.

Silly me. I thought making white cheese dip, the kind you get in Mexican restaurants, would be simple seeing as authentic ingredients are so readily available. I couldn't have been more wrong. It was pathetic how wrong I really was.

The first attempt came after strolling the cheese aisle and seeing a Mexican cheese on sale. I thought maybe this was the stuff that white cheese dip was made of, so I bought a hunk. That was the first $3.28 out the window. I should have just went to a restaurant, sat down and ordered a drink, and ate cheese there. It would have cost about the same. However, I thought I would be creative and recreate a favorite at home.

I took the fairly soft hunk and cut it up and microwaved it. Bad idea. It came out looking like feta cheese crumbles. It wasn't even close to melting. I was bummed, but crumbled it over the chips and popped it into the broiler. I thought maybe that would help. Wrong again. Not only did I waste the cheese, but the chips were a goner too. The cheese wasn't even close to melting. It just clumped up worse.

Trash. It. Went. Wendy's I drove.

The second attempt came about a week later. After the first debacle I decided to "research" how to make the cheese right. I Google'd it because that's what you do when you want to find out how to make/do something. I took diligent notes and even took my little scrap paper to the store with me. I didn't want to be wrong.

I was.

This attempt was far worse than the first. At the store I picked up the package of Mexican cheese it specified. On the package it says 'melts like a dream' and that sounded perfect for what I wanted. Perfect, in what parallel universe I don't know, but it was far from. The melting was a nightmare, not the advertised dream.

I should have known it was bound to fail when I had to unroll the cheese from the package. It was like laying turf in the lawn, if turf was an uneven rope-of cheese. This stuff didn't even attempt to melt. It just softened into a ball of glop. It floated in the milk, the entire mass of cheese floated like a buoy. It was a river raft.

Trash. It. Went. Wendy's I drove.

Glutton for punishment, I tried again. This time I tried Kraft Monterrey Jack. I shredded it and dumped it into half and half over a double boiler. Fail again.

Too much milk, not enough cheese and the cheese didn't melt smooth and resembled runny cottage cheese. At least this stuff was edible. I didn't have to drive to Wendy's.

Maybe I should just go next door and ask the neighbor how to make this stuff.