The Age of Dip

July 13, 2024 11:26 AM

I have thoughts about dip. Particularly the 4-way ‘Dip Selection’ that became popular in Britain in the mid-1990s. And therefore I also have thoughts about the specific context of class narratives and family economies that emerged then. Holly Pester on dip for dinner [Vittles] CW: Eating Disorders
posted by protorp (10 comments total)

I know that I've posted this before, but this bit from Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier applies very well to this essay:

Now compare this list with the unemployed miner’s budget that I gave earlier. The miner’s family spend only ten- pence a week on green vegetables and tenpence half-penny on milk (remember that one of them is a child less than three years old), and nothing on fruit; but they spend one and nine on sugar (about eight pounds of sugar, that is) and a shilling on tea. The half-crown spent on meat might represent a small joint and the materials for a stew; probably as often as not it would represent four or five tins of bully beef. The basis of their diet, therefore, is white bread and margarine, corned beef, sugared tea, and potatoes–an appalling diet. Would it not be better if they spent more money on wholesome things like oranges and wholemeal bread or if they even, like the writer of the letter to the New Statesman, saved on fuel and ate their carrots raw? Yes, it would, but the point is that no ordinary human being is ever going to do such a thing. The ordinary human being would sooner starve than live on brown bread and raw carrots. And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food. A millionaire may enjoy break- fasting off orange juice and Ryvita biscuits; an unemployed man doesn’t. Here the tendency of which I spoke at the end of the last chapter comes into play. When you are unemployed, which is to say when you are underfed, harassed, bored, and miserable, you don’t want to eat dull wholesome food. You want something a little bit ’tasty’. There is always some cheaply pleasant thing to tempt you. Let’s have three pen- north of chips! Run out and buy us a twopenny ice-cream! Put the kettle on and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea! That is how your mind works when you are at the P.A.C. level. White bread-and-marg and sugared tea don’t nourish you to any extent, but they are nicer (at least most people think so) than brown bread-and-dripping and cold water. Unemploy- ment is an endless misery that has got to be constantly pal- liated, and especially with tea, the English-man’s opium. A cup of tea or even an aspirin is much better as a temporary stimulant than a crust of brown bread.

The specific foodstuffs (especially the 4-way dip) and political situations don't map exactly to American counterparts, but that general situation--of trying to make a party out of pretend-posh stuff that's really all you can afford--is very familiar. The book Cooking is Terrible, which is basically a book for people who often run out of spoons (the figurative kind, although maybe/probably also the literal kind) for cooking and sums itself up with "going to make it slightly more likely that you manage to eat something in the ten minutes between walking in the door and falling into the sweet embrace of the internet", has a whole section on "dips that are meals."
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:56 AM on July 13 [15 favorites]

Love dip, love this.

QFT: Decadence in poverty is a work of art in life, a releasing into indulgence. It is a reaction against precarity to create a style of behaviour instead of home. No one can take style away from you. Ask a dandy. When your styles of habit form a situation of stability – habits instead of habitats – you’ve got some agency, you’ve got a combination of actions and appetites. We can eat to create. Eat ourselves richer.
posted by chavenet at 12:00 PM on July 13 [6 favorites]

^ indeed chavenet, I was enjoying the writing already but those last few sentences made me pause and reread a couple of times in admiration.
posted by protorp at 12:53 PM on July 13 [2 favorites]

Lovely writing! I enjoyed this.
posted by merriment at 2:49 PM on July 13

Wow, I'd never thought about the aspirational nature of dips.

Dip stories:

After a social catch up at someone's house, (probably my first dip encounter), in the car on the way home: My parents informed us about double dipping, and that it wasn't socially acceptable. 'why didn't you tell us!!' I remember howling. Absolute shame and embarrassment. I was probably 10 or 11.

Proudly carrying the French onion dip to the sleepover location, only to fall and the bowl to shatter.

Dip was something we really rarely had, so this is vibing with me in an interesting way.
posted by freethefeet at 12:25 AM on July 14 [2 favorites]

A dip of some sort was always present at family/friends gatherings. Not a huge fan of the stuff, myself. Unless you consider salsa a type of dip, then, yeah.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:20 AM on July 14

We never had dip, and I think my father was kind of against it, whereas my mother was a fan of it. It makes sense—he was against anything with extra fat or that he thought was just "entertainment, not food." She would've preferred to lead a more normal, aspirational life, I think, and it was also a staple of events like art openings.
posted by limeonaire at 10:52 AM on July 14

Great post. I feel I have a lot to say about this, as a single mother during the 90's. Our thing wasn't crisps and dips, but taco nights. Santa Maria was the patron saint of single mother Friday nights in our neighborhood. I was cooking for a living and can make soup on a stone, so I didn't do those, but my friends did, and I enjoyed the exact thing she describes with them. The smoking, the drinks, the laughter. And also the everlasting precariousness. I'm sorry about the eating disorder ending. I'm pretty sure that happened with a few of my kids' friends too.
posted by mumimor at 1:13 PM on July 14 [1 favorite]

Where'd all the dip go?
posted by h00py at 6:02 AM on July 15

Grew up in the US, so outside of the specific dips and benefits context, but this brought back 100% of my childhood/teendom with an economically precarious single mom, in a neighborhood full of the same. The box of wine! The completely random assortment of items bought cheaply but meant to feel fancy. Some years it was incense, some years candles, some years gaudy wine glasses bought at the grocery with UPCs cut off of cereal boxes.

No food, though, because no benefits. Never a bite of food to spare except at Christmas and New Years.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:19 AM on July 15