Saturday Snack: french onion dip

Long before I was vegan, I used to looooooove French Onion Dip. You know the kind: it came in the Lipton packets, that you just stirred into sour cream? I loved chips, and I loved that dip.

It seems like it should be easy to make that vegan, right? Just use vegan sour cream? Lipton packet are not so natural in their ingredients list. (Also, Lipton did animal testing a while back--just to try to substantiate their claims that their tea would make you live forever or whatever stupid claims they were making. Last winter, various news sources said they stopped it last year, after PETA arranged letter-writing campaigns. I can't get behind a lot of what PETA does, but it's pretty cool that they stopped that.) There are alternative versions: Simply Organic makes a French Onion Dip Mix. But I haven't seen that around here (and I'm always a little suspicious of dextrin/maltodextrin, since it can come from potatoes, and I'm allergic to potatoes), so I make my own.

Also, because we prefer a whole-foods-based diet, I'd prefer not to buy vegan sour cream, so I make a cashew sour cream at home. For dip, I change it up from my normal sour cream by adding some oil and water to help get it to the right texture.

Using the food processor my awesome in-laws gave me for my birthday!

While that's going, I caramelize some onions:

Then I mix everything together, adding some crispy fried onions (I opt for the organic and natural ones from the co-op, but French's work, too), onion powder, garlic power, pepper, and salt.

It's better after it sits for a while so all the flavors can meld, but we usually just dig right in.

People who can't potato chips like me: try cassava chips! (Pictured above.) Especially if you can find the ridged ones. They are very similar to potato chips, and so good with this dip!