Pictured: not my dip. I didn’t take a picture. It’s dip. Also: this entry may be slightly more profane than usual, as I seem to be in a bit of a mood.

So, you know how every so often you go to Applebee’s, and you’re like, Man, I could go for a damn appetizer right about now, and since everything else on the damn menu is fried you end up with spinach and artichoke dip, and it costs like seven bucks and there’s like an ounce of dip and four hundred chips and you end up scraping every last sad minuscule shred of spinach and artichoke dip out of the container it’s in because, one, that shit is delicious, it’s the best bloody thing on their menu, and two, you basically paid your seven bucks for like a bag of Tostitos and some dip and you’re bloody well eating every last molecule of that dip if you have to lick it off a napkin to do it?

No? Am I the only one? Well, don’t read the rest of this then.

I decided I wanted some goddamn spinach and artichoke dip to go with my guacamole (actually Thug Kitchen’s guacamole, but as the Thug would say, whatfuckinever) at my son’s birthday party. I found what looked like a capable recipe in one of the cooking magazines my mother in law has subscribed me to and sent the wife out to acquire the ingredients. She found everything– that is, provolone cheese, feta cheese, cream cheese, sweet roasted red peppers, quartered artichoke hearts, frozen spinach, and mozzarella (they wanted fresh, I assume the kind that comes still in liquid; we figured that shredded would be fine)– except for asiago cheese. Locating the asiago was up to me. The shit had already cost like a hundred dollars, and the asiago was another five bucks for like six ounces– and that was the cheap asiago.

I have always been told that cooking for yourself was much cheaper than eating out all the time. While my five cheese spinach and artichoke dip was bloody goddamn outstanding (favorite moment of the night: my M-I-L’s eyes actually fluttered when she took her first bite, and she has more cookbooks than I have regular books, as astonishing and impossible as that might sound) it cost more than a meal at Red Lobster would have– and that was just for fucking dip.

I can’t tell if I just have extravagant taste in dip or if if this whole “home cooking is cheap” thing is bullshit. I know I feel like every time I have to buy stuff for a recipe I feel like I’m getting taken to court over it. (God help me the first time I get off my ass and make Thai iced tea– do you assholes know how expensive cardamom is? It’s made from the blood of Christ. And not from the readily-obtainable transubstantiated Catholic shit either; I’m talking they got themselves a ninja and sent him back in time with a syringe.)

The boy’s presents included a drum set and a set of cymbals, which were not from my brother as they should have been but were from my wife and I, because we are lunatics. My brother bought him a bunch of bubble/lawn stuff, which I can’t even insult him for. I do not know why we did this. It is entirely possible– perhaps likely– that we are insane.

But at least we have cheese dip.

---

OH, RIGHT, I FORGOT edit:  On that guacamole– at a friend’s suggestion, I’ve chopped up a jalapeno and tossed it into what was left of the guac from yesterday.  It’s in the fridge so that the little jalapeno bits can get to know everybody else for a while before I try and eat it.  I’ll report back on whether I’ve made a terrible mistake or not.