Eat Dip for Breakfast, Never Look Back
If you find yourself eating dip for breakfast, you are living your best possible life. I think about this every time I am eating dip for breakfast, which is frequently enough that I have noted it as a pattern, yet not so often enough that I am in immediate peril of succumbing to some mayonnaise- or sour cream-based malady or perish from nutritional deficiency. Several of my favorite dips (including Knorr spinach dip and no, they did not sponsor this story—I just like it so much I felt compelled to mention it up front) involve dehydrated vegetable soup mixes, so I’m all covered on that front. Which is good, because I have no plans to stop eating dip for breakfast at any point in the foreseeable future. Maybe I could substitute crudite for chips to forestall my physical decline, but I probably won’t.
If you have dip in your home in the morning, you most likely have friends. Most people probably aren’t making dip solely for themselves (and if they are, that’s just a different path to nirvana that they have elected to take, and I honor their truth) or even just one other human being. They’re making it for a party. Or they’ve been to a party and somehow managed to leave the premises with some dip on their person. There are no tiny dip recipes—a dainty dip for two—because abundance is one of dip’s greatest traits. Recipes don’t whisper for a stingy pinch or carefully-leveled spoon; they bellow out for full containers, cans, and blocks of cream, cheese, cream cheese, mayonnaise, soup, and pre-mushed beans. There is enough of me to share, they say. Assemble your friends and make so very merry. Also, put chips on your shopping list.
And then you’re eating chips for breakfast, which is another victory for the mind, palate, and soul—if not the nutritional content of your tragically mortal body. Close your eyes for a moment (I promise I won’t steal your dip. Okay, maybe just one chip, but don’t go being stingy.) and picture the last time you were eating chips and dip. You were happy, weren’t you? Maybe had a red Solo cup in easy reach, a game or tune on the speakers, a laugh at the ready. There was a couch and an ugly rug and possibly a cavorting pet or toddler because you were most definitely at someone’s home (again, likely your own), because dip—save for guacamole and sometimes hot artichoke for no real reason—is rarely restaurant food. Set up a dip table in your rumpus room, and you have established a cosmic nexus of pleasure, conviviality, and creamy abandon where your loved ones feel safe, sated, and pleased.
But—and this is crucial—do not burden your guests with the expectation of leaving even a dollop behind for you to savor come the morningtide. Rather—and this is self-care, not selfish—scoop aside a small portion into a lidded container, and secure a baggie-full of the chips that will most thoroughly please you. Bag shake is especially dismal when you’re mopping party gravy off your kitchen tile. And before you have restored your domicile to its pre-party condition (or maybe you’re one of those immediately after the party cleaners which, hey man—you extra earned this), take a moment. Pop the lid. Scoop deeply. Relive the delicious wonder of the night before, and the friends with whom you dipped the night fantastic.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the French gastronomer of yore famously said: "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." Well, good monsieur, in the immortal words of Freak Nasty: “I dip. You dip. We dip.” Especially at breakfast.
