Jack & Jill Put Up A Blog

Poor poor Spot. He seems to always get something…this time an eye infection. As you may or may not know, Spot will only chase a yellow tennis ball. However, at the beach, it would be great if he would chase a water toy because the sand sticks to the ball. Besides the fact that the sand on his ball frustrates him beyond beyond beyond…even bugs, he swallows tons of sand which leads to emergency bathroom visits. 

But, no, he inisists on the tennis ball and spends a large amount of the time working hard on getting that sand OFF his precious ball (see freak-ish pic above). I never see him dig, but at the beach he thinks if he digs out the sand that is around his tennis ball it will come off. This results in him kicking sand in every direction, sending pee infested dog beach sand in our chairs, clothes, eyes, and mouths. It’s lovely. 

Anywho, the kicking sand everywhere and swimming in the ocean resulted of course, as almost any special outing does, to the vet for…this time an eye infection. For being a good boy, the vet gave him a Charlie Brown bandana for Memorial Weekend.  He does like him some clothes.

Umm, I don’t know what to say. A statue and two dogs.

We swear we followed the directions. 

One of our favorite restaurants is in Denver Colorado called Vesta Dipping Grill.  Not only do they have a wide selection of proteins; seared tuna, grilled lamb, smoked duck, of course chicken, and my favorite madras grilled venison.  They have vegetarian choices as well. *suppress yawn* 

What makes Vesta Dipping Grill unique however is, you guessed it, the dipping.  My G’d the dipping.

To accompany your entrée you select three dipping sauces from over 36 dipping sauces (37) in three categories: Sweet, Savory, Spicy with names like Blake St. BBQ, Wasabi Cream Sauce, Steuben’s Chimichurri. 

Each dipping sauce, and they make pairing suggestions for you if you’d like, creates a completely unique experience for every bite. Many times the dipping changes your meal into a completely new dish.

The reason we bring this up is because one dipping sauce stood out from the rest.  The almighty “Black Pepper Aioli.”

Just hand us each a spoon.

And so we set out.  The directions were easy enough.

• six cloves garlic: pressed.  
• two yokes: yoked.  
• olive oil: half cupped.
• pepper
• simple - blend garlic and yokes. drizzle oil.  constant beating until thick.  Add pepper

What’s to mess up?  ’Parently plenty.

All we could taste was the burn of raw garlic swimming in a mess of a mayonaise.  Our Aioli sauce had an outcome that the recipes didn’t mention.  It sucked balls.  We added more oil. Wrong.

We wish we had a better outcome to report. We did try again and simply cut the garlic in half. Nope.  Still sucked.

The only thing we can think of, cuz we’ll be trying this again, is our choice of olive oil.  We think we bought a cheap brand.  Garlic is garlic.  Egg yoke is egg yoke.  But oil… there’s the rub.

We went with Extra Virgin First Cold Press.  For those that make this well (and you’re probably not reading my post about it anyway) you may recognize this as my mistake.  To be determined.  For we are determined.  To make my Black Pepper Aioli Sauce NOT blow.

Wine was good - that’s what’s really important. 

We want to hear from you! Tell us how it went for you on making a restaurant favorite! :) 

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