People who don't know how to use a knife and fork properly, dud or no big deal?

i don't particularly notice table manners, which probably means mine are terrible

I only lick the knife when I'm at home.

i hope there is some hilarious difference between the way entire nations of people do this

You mean, if I were to say "A lot of Americans do this"?

Licking the knife is the most disgusting thing ever.

There are exceptions here obviously - ie food it is permissable to eat badly (eg, massive burgers) and food it is impossible to eat tidily. Some people manage to make a fucking foul mess out of even the simplest meals though.

i just eat food garfield lasagna style

Licking the knife is bad, but using a knife to pick your teeth is fine.

People like you don't deserve teeth.

licking knife disgusting by association w/ east 17:

I'm gonna kiss ya from ya head 2 ya toes and then
I'm gonna lick ya where you'd love me to go, yeah!
Oil ya skin within hold ya tight
Yeah, I butter the toast
If U lick the knife
And take a shower
Maybe bubble the bath
I'll wash yours, U wash mine
Yeah, we'll have a good laugh
I'll be the sponge, the sponge
The sponge that wets U down
Then I'll be the towel upon
Your naked body, wrapped around
And then as our game comes 2 an end
We'll start again
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

thought it was 'bite the toast'

It drives me crazy to see people eating with a fork or spoon using the caveman grip! They always lower their heads to the plate to facilitate shoveling the food into their mouths, too. I always expect them to scowl suspiciously at the people near them and bark territorially.

you live and learn

xpost

Is that a metaphor for blowjobs or bumsex? I can't work it out.

"I'll be the sponge, the sponge
The sponge that wets U down
Then I'll be the towel upon
Your naked body, wrapped around "

pretty confusing.

Who are these people?

It's always weird to see an otherwise normal, intelligent, well-functioning person who eats like this. It usually seems to go along with wild uninhibited lip smacking and open mouthed chewing, too.

What about alt.porn burlesque artists licking knives in a sexual manner? Is this bad table manners?

oh EVERY TIME

That's a combination of two indefensible things. All you need to do is factor in a North American tweepop combo and you'd have the hattrick.

...and you'd have the intro to a heart-warming indie movie.

why bother with knife and fork when you can use chopsticks?

Why both with chopsticks when you can just use your hand (the right one that is)?

i hold the knife in my right and the fork in my left, this is the wrong way round isn't it?

that's the right (traditional) way round, but the silly way round so i do it the opposite way and tell people i'm left handed when they question it (i'm not)

oh no, wait a minute, i meant i do it the other way round

im not left handed either

I have no strong feelings about this whatsoever except when my kids don't do it properly.

I have no manners, chew with my mouth open, reach across the table. Though I don't lick the knife, say, when I'm meeting a girl's parents, and I always put the napkin on my lap.

Not sure how I hold my utensils, not self conscious enough to notice, usually.

Why is it the silly way to do it? Surely you need more control over the knife than the fork so it's sensible to do it with your right hand? Or left hand if you're left handed.

I don't particularly have a problem with doing it the other way round, I'm just curious as to why you'd do it.

I don't lick the plate clean when I'm in public. Can't vouch for the knife.

I'm somewhat handy with chopsticks.

My friend claims that "any white American who can use chopsticks is a pretentious asshole". I told him that when I lived in a trailer park in Texas as a kid our neighbors were Vietnamese and taught me how. I couldn't tell if his look was confusion or contempt.

Surely you need more control over the knife than the fork so it's sensible to do it with your right hand?

i don't eat any food that requires much cutting. the knife just kinda stays there (i don't eat meat)

i don't lick the knife, but i'll scrape any leavings from the knife onto the fork- is this permissible?

and i hold a spoon in my fist, toddler style. just doesn't feel right any other way.

i don't eat meat

i never knew this

I'm sure you have succumed to the bad drunken street hot dog before, Filey. Not that they require any cutting.

i don't call myself a vegetarian for this reason. i don't eat meat in the same way that i don't watch tv, use lifts, or drink spirits

You're allergic to TV?

you hate fun?

Boy I had a wild old time in the lift up to my office this morning.

is anything else in life as unimportant as using a knife and fork properly that attracts so much attention and aggravation? if you get riled by someone licking the knife, or god forbid, holiding it at the wrong angle, you need a hobby or something.

it is merely to suggest i have no particular interest in those things one way or the other

But dude I don't have "an interest" in lifts but sometimes you need to go up more than 3 flights of stairs at once?

Haha, I love the get a hobby response.

No! No hobbies! Only manners!

Using lifts is not something I would ever imagine anyone having to make some sort of aesthetic/ethical/lifestyle decision about. Well, walking up stairs is good exercise I suppose.

Sometimes I walk up to the 7th at college but I don't think the spots before my eyes and inability to move my thighs is a good sign tbh.

that is what i mean. i just prefer to use the stairs, its not really a decision as such, i just don't like waiting much, and i like walking. don't get me wrong, i'll use a lift sometimes (definitely if its in an art deco building and it might be interesting) - but its really not something i consciously don't do - its not that dissimilar to tv and meat in that way - i suppose they are more conscious choices to an extent but its not really something i think about

so its like i don't watch tv but i have seen tv as recently as last year (i cant remember the programme), and i actually ate meat this year (in a colombian restaurant it can be heavily meat based)

sometimes you use a lift.

sometimes not.

I've been cool with TV since I read Boyd Rice claiming it's good for you.

I don't really drive a sled pulled by huskies through Greenland either.

i avoid lifts

Kinda the reason I was straight edge for a while (high school, beginning of college). No thought, really, other than I stole some of my parents' beer as a kid and got really sick and had developed a subconscious aversion. Secretly I wanted to hang out with the cool kids and drink and smoke. That and my friends in high school were unbelievably lame for the most part.

exactly, so you wouldn't need to have a certain hand for one thing and another for something else. i eat meat rarely enough that, over the course of an average year, the knifehand does less of the work than the forkhand

sometimes you use a lift.

sometimes not.

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Monday,

i don't think this is entirely fair. i haven't been in a lift in at least 3 years, whereas i use stairs every day

i could probably go a whole week without needing a knife quite happily. saturday morning fresh bread from the cornershop tho...

i think thats rare enough to say you 'don't use lifts'? even if i were to use a lift in the next few months

My boyfriend almost never uses a knife to eat any meal, ever. Steak is the one exception I can think of. Everything else is fork only.

His reasoning behind this is that it cuts back on dishes.

similarly, i think it can be justified for me to say 'i don't eat meat' as a generalist statement in the context of cutlery usage - as it has something of a bearing on why i might use left hand for knife, whereas using the word 'vegetarian' suggests something with more conviction

its not a bad argument! in many cases you could suggest that the usage of a knife is merely a social convention

You're thinking of the second fork for salads.

2nd fork?

You've never seen this?

There's still an implied value judgement there though, a need to wear indifference on sleeve. People don't generally say "I don't have sex" if they haven't done so for 18 months or three years or whatever, unless they make a point of abstinence for some reason.

MUST...RESIST...LOUJAG...PUNCHLINE...

in many cases you could suggest that the usage of a knife is merely a social convention

this whole thread is about social conventions! that's why opinions on the topic run deep and responding with 'get a hobby' is lol

I don't know why this bothers me so much. I don't care, for example, whether someone eats soup with the wrong spoon or uses the spoon in the wrong way. I don't care whether someone cuts a bread role with a knife. Incorrect usage of a knife and fork and I find myself looking around nervously to see if anyone else has noticed.

that's why opinions on the topic run deep
If the ran deep for me I wouldn't be such a slob. I just find it all peculiar.

Is anyone going to mention the Bullshit episode on etiquette?

i always notice table manners but somewhere in the last few years a bunch of stuff stopped irking me so much. but the shoveling food into mouth while hunched over makes me channel my mom re: sit up straight, chew yr food, and it is a hard force to resist

chopsticks i like them - and if you are a food shoveler, it seems more acceptable with chopsticks!

i fuking hate chopsticks. if the fucking ancient chinese were so fucking clever how the fuck did they look at food, that generally requires stabbing, cutting and/or scooping, and come up with two fucking sticks of bamboo, eh?

fuck

I approve of chopsticks. You appreciate your food more if it's difficult to eat. The ancient Chinese were merely anticipating today's hyperspeed convenience society.

i was going for a 70s British comedian working the then-popular racial humour angle.

jol out.

that's not a matter of etiquette, it's a matter of urgency. and i was right!

Why is it the silly way to do it? Surely you need more control over the knife than the fork so it's sensible to do it with your right hand? Or left hand if you're left handed.

see that's interesting cos I think it's the other way round - action of knife: up down up down up down; action of fork: pick up food and then place into mouth and putting food into mouth i always find the more precision task, and frequently the more costly should there be a mistake (i.e. steak juice all over face as opposed to a slighly unevenly cut chunk)

People don't generally say "I don't have sex" if they haven't done so for 18 months or three years or whatever

people would presumably be more embarrassed at having missed out on sex than having missed out on a cutlet. also getting sex is not something you have as much control over as getting meat (well unless you count prostitution but a) that is still more expensive than even free range meat and not something that ordinary working class people really have access to, and b) is still socially unacceptable and therefore unlikely to be admitted to)

i mean, i know where you are going with this, the idea that i said about not eating meat as a way of displaying a worldview or opinion, but i really don't think that is playing fair, i didn't proffer this from nowhere, i did think it relevant to the discussion as it goes at least some way to explaining exactly why using the knife with my left hand when i am right handed isn't as counterintuitive as you, and others on this thread as well by the looks of it, seem to think

Chopsticks are more effecient through economy of scale - whoever cooks will have the food already separated into good eating portions, and thus no cutting is required by individuals eating. having to cut your own food is kind of barbaric.

xpost definitely prefer free range prozzies

they taste better.

i almost never use a fork too, unless i need to cut tough stuff up. and i've never understood "Surely you need more control over the knife" do you eat mainly with your knife?

I'd be happy if i never really saw a knife again. I don't hate them or anything but i wouldn't miss them if they were gone.

I feel the same way about tea cosies.

oh, i meant "i almost never use a KNIFE too", oops

i can't hold chopsticks properly

i need a knife for buttering toast. knives and teaspoons are U & K in my catering regime.

What's weird is when wellbred, wine-appreciating, uppermiddleclass folks use the fist grip for their utensils. Anyway, to the original question, dud.

having to cut your own food is kind of barbaric

barbarians had cutlery?

i need a knife for buttering toast

Hell yes. How you gonna eat sandwiches in yr knifeless utopia, Filey?

http://www.senioremporium.com/ProductImages/culinary/One_hand_Cutlery.jpg

barbarians had cutlery?

DUDE THEY HAD SWORDS

i like it in medieval-set films where a king uses a knife to pick up an entire grouse

The fork is the later invention.

How you gonna eat sandwiches in yr knifeless utopia, Filey?

-- Noodle Vague, Monday, 11 February 2008 14:38 (14 minutes ago)

i dont eat sandwiches

I love eating soup w/ Japanese people, it's every good excuse to pick up bowl to yr mouth, and lean over your food in protective-rabid-dog stylee, and slurp broth loudly. I once worked weekend shift in a shop with three Japanese art-student types and we ordered noodles one day and I realized while eating that I was the only one NOT slurping and I was like "WO HEY! This I can get with."

You could technically butter toast using the underside of a spoon.

i just use a knife myself

if you use your spoon as a knife is it acceptable to lick it afterwards?

It is a spoon, you're supposed to put it in your mouth. Even if it's a knife.

my left hand is useless for all but the very simplest of tasks (such as not moving), so I'm always switching fork and knife between hands. I think this makes me a bad person.

You could technically butter toast using the underside of a spoon

You could technically not butter toast

do you think yoda licks the force after a meal?

i'm gonna eat my yoghurt with a knife so that the facists don't win. it might take a while, but it'll taste twice as sweet.

if one is truly unable to cut effectively with the left hand, then i can understand cutting with the right. but why would one then not eat with the left? is one a feeb? i don't completely eschew hand-switching, which was never taught to me as a child as proper and would have been as unlikely to occur to me naturally as licking a knife, but i generally think that manners can fuck off.

function is everything.

My parents would make us sit in the middle of the kitchen floor while everyone else ate dinner, if we misbehaved at the table. Examples of misbehavior included too many attempts to hold a spoon like a shovel, elbows on the table, touching yr hair, not asking to be excused, and so on. So I'm comfy at formal dinners when nec since it was beaten into me, but at home I eat on the sofa with a book in one hand.

When preparing food I tend to lick any knife no matter how sharp, the excitement factor incresing in proportion to its sharpness. When I eventually cut my tongue I'll bump this thread, but until that day it's good clean fun

Also let's be honest, if I make the mac'n'cheese in a saucepan, I'm going to be EATING it out of the saucepan. With a giant spoon, to catch all the cheese sauce.

My parents were like Laurel's in terms of table manners and expectations. My mom even had some ridiculous rhyme, "Erica, Erica willing and able get your elbows off the table". I also had some book about monsters called Goops who licked their knives.

Omg - I've just goodled that and found this: http://www.amazon.com/Goops-How-Them-Children-Inculcating/dp/0897168518

The Goops
by Gillette Burgess

The Goops they lick their fingers
And the Goops they lick their knives:
They spill their froth on the tablecloth
Oh, they lead disgusting lives!
The Goops they talk while eating,
And loud and fast they chew;
And that is why I'm glad that I
Am not a Goop, are you?

I haven't thought of that in ages. How weird.

In answer to the question, yes bad table manners can really irritate me sometimes - I just can't help it. That said, in the privacy of my own home I couldn't really care less.

F yeah, Laurel, out the pan.

I'm presently eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with a spoon.

I meant I couldn't care less about my own manners when at home and will eat out of pots etc. every once in a while. Sorry, I haven't had my coffee yet. xpost to self.

MY MOTHER USED THE GOOP RHYME ALL THE TIME. OMGAFDS had totally forgotten.

Also she used to get me to eat a few peas and then claim that the remaining ones were lonely all alone on the plate and needed their fellows, saying "Poor little pea...pick it up and eat it!"

I'm presently eating peanut butter straight out of the jar with a spoon.

Lah-di-dah. What's wrong with using yr finger?

Pwn3d

i'm not fussy about table manners, but if people are open-mouth noisy chewers it drives me spare.

or if they bite the spoon while eating cereal. ugh.

people who make that clapping sound with their mouths. diztroy!

For reasons purely psychological, I cannot stand to see an American using a knife and fork the European way. That said, I don't mind when Europeans eat in their fashion, except when they use the knife to scrape food onto their fork.

Hats off to Erica for bringing up The Goops!

It's rude to be too censorious about other people's table manners but by the same token, how hard is it to learn rudimentary table manners? Some people may be all thumbs, okay, but weilding a knife, fork, spoon and even chopsticks isn't all that hard and once you've got it down, it makes dining that much more pleasant.

SexyDancer, I fear we shall never dine together.

Put down that knife when you are not using it, you are among brothers of Democracy.

I learned my table manners in the French republic, citoyen.

As long as we don't breakfast together, when manners-sensitivity is most informed by early imprinitng, I'm sure the spirit of civilization shall carry us through.

The refinement of one's manners, like one's appetite for money, has no obvious or natural limit. Wrongly understood, it can easily become a form of vanity, or a rigid formalism that kills the enjoyment of life.

The highest form of manners has always been a desire to put the other person at ease and create a comfortable social interaction for everyone concerned. This requires one to toss out formalism, rules and rigidity in favor of grace and flexibility.

i get that logic - like if you're eating a meal that in a particular social/cultural situation is meant to be eaten with the hands, for instance

but if sitting down at a table to eat mashed potatoes, turkey and peas or whatever with a knife and fork, i'm still gonna use a knife to move food onto my fork even if everyone else doesn't. maybe a vanity or snobbery thing but really kind of the only way i feel comfortable eating that kind of food, in the way that it has been figuratively beaten into me so that if there is no knife i feel like the eating situation has gotten a little vulgar :/ i cannot help it - cutting with the side of fork? what are we camping? (in which case, awesome. tho also eating things off knives is fully correct when camping.) and so yeah it does bother me very slightly, in this 'what is the world coming to' way when i actually have to ask for a knife.

cutting with the side of fork? what are we camping?

Haha, I cut with the side of the fork unless it's absolutely necessary to use a knife. It's too awkward to cut with the knife, then set it down, pick up the fork, etc. Knives are useful for chopping and spreading, though.

So you generally hold your fork in your dominant hand?

My worst habit is that I'll cut up eight bites of my food at once like I'm five, so I can put the knife down and pick my book back up. Not if I'm eating with company, obv.

xp Yes. It'd be weird not to.

yea, i do the same as jaymc, if it doesnt require a knife i just hold the fork w/my right hand.

i don't think i'd actually notice anything mentioned on this thread except the blatantly obvious stuff like chewing loudly with mouth open etc. scraping teeth on silverware annoys me but i dont think of it as a manners thing. i dont think ive ever seen someone hold silverware with their fists that would be weird

And pirate-like.

arrrrr

Isn't there a Shel Silverstein poem about how you can't keep peas on the knife unless you eat them with honey?

“I eat my peas with honey/I’ve done it all my
life/It makes the peas taste funny/But it keeps
them on the knife.” -- Anon., collected by
Edward Lear

Apparently.

oh this is weird/interesting-in-boring-way - if eating out of a bowl i hold spoon or fork in right hand but if eating off a plate i use fork & knife with fork in left hand (which is non-dominant hand)

eating meals out of big bowls is fun somehow and not what i grew up with that's for sure. also prob why i use chopsticks a lot. in praise of bowls.

CEREAL: IT'S WHAT'S FOR DINNER

Yah rrobyn, wait, we haven't talked about the guy wot said any white people who could use chopsticks were...what was it? Pretentious assholes?

i sort've hardly see things that are that dumb
ghost posts

i didn't really know how to use a knife until i was about 13, having gotten along fine by cutting with the fork (again, helps to be a vegetarian). the person that taught me how to use a knife was english, so i now use fork on left and knife on right, when everyone else here seems to do the opposite.

i obviously have no problem with fork-cutting, unless it results in food that isn't actually cut and therefore hangs out of someone's mouth while they try to chew.

I think the clear reason not to lick a knife is one could cut their tongue up!

I have tried doing European-style cutlery use before and it feels as odd and cumbersome as trying to use scissors with my left (non-dominant) hand. This was because my friend's 12-year-old brother Evan had borrowed a video from the library called something like "Elegant Etiquette for Kids." She claimed European style was the only proper way. That night Evan made a spaghetti dinner and forced us to eat European style. The meal was cold before I was 1/3 of the way done eating it.

Later I read in a Miss Manners' book that saying Americans should eat European style is a cheap affectation stemming from the passing the passing trend of finding Europe "chic." Thanks Miss Manners! You are always so comforting and correct.

Chopsticks are great bcz they require the least washing of all.

chopsticks don't hurt as much going up there. and they require the least washing of all.

wait wait wait what is 'european' style?? and what is american style?? i need to look this up on the internet
i am from canada the land of euro-american style, so you can understand my confusion right

To eat in the European style, hold the fork in your left hand, tines facing down, the knife in the right, and then cut your entree. Still in your left hand, lift the fork, tines down, and bring to your mouth. The American method is to cut a bite, place the knife on the side of the plate, then switch the fork to your mouth.
For the left-handed minority, you should eat in a way that is most comfortable for you.

whoa
american style seems inefficient

The story is, according to the kids' etiquette video, is that the people who moved from England to populate America quickly started eating in a rushed, sloppy fashion. Those enforcing grace and dignity invented the "American style" so people would be forced to eat more slowly and cut their food well. This sounds wrong to me – how does one change an entire country's manners?

Miss Manners doesn't attempt to come up with a back story for these differences.

So Canadians eat European style? I don't care if we eat in a different way, I just wished Americans wised up to metric.

Another cursory explanation from a man named Harry Roolaart (!!!):

The predominant theory pointing to the origin of the zig-zag method of eating is that many Americans, in the absence of forks, and because knives had come to be designed with blunted ends, began to use their spoons to steady food. They would then switch the spoon to the right hand to scoop up the bite of food because they were accustomed to wielding eating utensils with their dominant hand and because the blunt tip of the knife made this cumbersome. Finding their non-dominant hand (usually the left hand) largely neglected when eating in this manner, American table manners came to adopt the habit of dropping the neglected hand into one’s lap.

metric-imperial issues caused me to have a really bad day at work last week - aagh

i almost never see anyone eating 'american' style here! so i guess we do eat euro style. that is how i was taught. reading these website on table manners, i really do have to hand it to my mom for getting all these rules to stick. i do sometimes put my elbows on the table though, when no one's around.

i see though that one of the gaps in table etiquette i have is that i have only a rough idea of what the right thing to do with lobster and crab is. learning upper class manners with lower class income pitfalls ohwell.

xpost
learning!

Another explanation:

The Continental, which most people consider old world is actually newer! It was introduced by the British around 1880, but Americans were trying to instill manners on their frontiersmen. The new dining methods were rejected as disruptive in the middle of this teaching process. American society felt it would diminish respect for the strict rules that were being established to remove the barbarian image.

I think the rudest thing one can do while dining is talk on the cell phone, especially at the table with your peers!

Like Filing Camp, I rarely eat food that requires a knife. Unlike him, though, I don't need a fork either. I grasp morsels of chow between my naked buttcheeks and toss them over my anus into my gaping maw. And you believe me, I enjoy my vittles better 'n a chopstick-tossin' fungus-muncher does his.

Hang on, so the only difference between Euro and American style is the Americans put the knife down before lifting food to the mouth? Is that it?

Thread Q:

Dud.

It makes me think "what, am I suddenly in prison or something?"

i got the impression they switch hands - knife in dominant hand, cut, knife down, switch fork to dominant hand, eat. which is freakish. xp.

also, in the american style the wrist tends to be turned up when lifting food to mouth, which means you tend to elbow your neighbour in the side. European style, wrist is down, which makes it easier to keep your elbows tucked in.

I remember having lunch at a marvellous old style saloon just outside Las Vegas with a wonderful friend of ours. She was holding her knife and fork with her fists. I didn't notice at the time - we just enthused about key lime pie, which was a total Americana moment for me - but my girlfriend did notice, and pointed it out later. For my girlfriend, it was a very moving moment, insofar as it brought home to her the fact that this woman, as a young girl, was basically left to her own devices while the rest of us were being taught table manners.

my best mate taught me how i 'should' hold a spoon while eating coco pops at his house the morning after a night out- i was 16!

i went to america once and i didn't see anybody switching their hands around the whole time

Spaghetti should be eaten with fork and spoon.

while eating coco pops at his house the morning

Have you not seen the advert? You're supposed to eat them after school now.

I cannot stand to see an American using a knife and fork the European way.

I think there is still some fuzziness around what "the European way" is and how it differs.

I have been told before that the correct posh way in England to bring food to one's mouth is to push one's meat (or whatever) onto the BACK of the fork, with the tines facing down, and eat it that way! Which I'm still not convinced wasn't somebody just winding me up.

I have been told before that the correct posh way in England to bring food to one's mouth is to push one's meat (or whatever) onto the BACK of the fork, with the tines facing down, and eat it that way!

i do this, but only cos i find it a less messy way to eat. not sure anyone's ever called me posh because of it.

fucks sake i didn't actually think there really would be an 'American way' and a 'European way'

Smushy stuff like mashed potatoes: pushed onto back of fork. Meat: speared with fork. Tines always face down. Elbows kept in to sides. Sit up straight. Mobiles must be silenced and never placed on the table. Don't grab at food. Put others first. Pass things around, hold dishes and help serve. Don’t take huge portions (you’ll be sorry if it tastes awful) or the last of anything. Top and tail requests with pleasantries. Contaminating communal dishes with your own cutlery is never on.

^ some of above stolen from debretts.com

You pile mashed potatoes onto the back of your fork. Why?? It's got a handy scoop shape which you are WILFULLY FLOUTING!

Yep, tines always face-down, you don't shovel food with a fork.

Tch, so uncouth.

You feel the same way about spoons I gather

You'll be advocating the spork next.

Look if you're all about practical applications for cutlery, why not just eat your mashed potatoes with a spoon? It's a handy spoon shape and better than a fork.

Use a straw for the gravy.

"Ho ho dear boy! You don't shovel soup with a spoon. Here, like this --" (brings spoon up from bowl of tomato soup, upside down, and licks the top of it) "You see? 'Don't frighten off the gentler sex! Use a spoon that is convex!'"

don't take the last of anything

this is hugely, completely, offensively bullsh1t

No the English way is to say "Do you want the last piece of bacon" and if the other person is English they will say "no you have it" and the first person says "Oh all right then". If the second person is not English they may say "Oh why thank you!" and then the first person is silently peeved for the next hour.

The reason one eats mashed potatoes with a fork is that it is a much better tool for sculpting the side ridges and box canyons of Devil's Tower

Polite applause for Tracer's rhyme.

But honestly is there any practical or historical justification WHATSOEVER for eating food with your fork upside down??

thank you ledge

I generally mould my mashed potatoes into the shape of a giant penis, is this considered uncouth too?

(That is from Confused of Tunbridge Wells)

Only if it's spurting bread sauce.

Look, a fork is not meant to be used as a scoop, it is meant for impaling things on. Tines facing down is not upside-down, it's the right way up.

Fork can be brought to mouth at steeper angle, allowing elbows to be kept tucked in to the sides. It's all about the elbows, I'm tellin' ya.

Matt also otm.

alright clever clogs, if that *really is* the case, how come forks are made bent, which is more costly and difficult that flat?

Have you ever tried eating with a flat fork (like cheapo canteen ones that get bent out of shape)? Doesn't work.

Because it sits better in your hand. You'd have to hold an uncurved fork at an awkward angle.

(xpost Ailsa OTM)

"Look, a fork is not meant to be used as a scoop, it is meant for impaling things on."

THEN WHY DO YOU EAT MASHED POTATOES WITH IT GAH

it's almost lunchtime, will investigate then report back, kthxbye

Look, a fork is not meant to be used as a scoop, it is meant for impaling things on. Tines facing down is not upside-down, it's the right way up.

You realize that these two sentences have nothing to do with each other, right?

You get a better trajectory for impaling with the tines pointing down the way with the curvy bit nearest you. Go on, point it scoop-side up and try to impale something on a plate. Tines all pointing in the wrong direction!

Where's Ed when you need him?

Fine, but you don't impale mashed potatoes -- so why pile them onto the back of your fork?

Also, as far as things one actually DOES impale -- like pieces of meat -- there's a little move you can do with your wrist which means that by the time the fork's at your mouth it's tine-up. I think I actually do this without realizing.

Why do you need to rotate the fork though?

To be honest, if I went to a particularly posh society dinner and mashed potatoes were served up I would demand to see the chef.

I would be scraping the mashed potato onto the back of a fork which already had a slice of meat impaled on the tines, I think.

(xpost, Matt, consider it to be a celeriac puree or somesuch instead)

Matt I have no idea!!

ailsa that sounds like the apogee of poshitude for sure...

From some site for business travellers going to the UK:

"The fork is held tines down so food is scooped on to the back of the fork. This is a skill that takes time to master."

Where's Ed when you need him?

-- Matt DC, Tuesday, 12 February 2008 12:36 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

His cutlery is made of the finest imported bone china, carved from the skeletons of the mysterious ubungu cattle of the Dutch East Indies.

(I am scooping salad onto a curved-side-up fork just now, btw, but I am in the comfort of my own home and don't really need to look correct or bother troubling with a knife. If out in company, I would eat the way I've said above, unless I'm eating spaghetti or curry or something. I think the European thing is assuming a basic diet of meat and veg, yes?)

anyway, it's easier to fit food into your mouth when it's on the back of the fork? you have to 'galumph' a mouthful when the fork is in scoop position?

Sometimes ya scoop, and sometimes ya jab.

sometimes it's necessary to scoop food with a fork - e.g. when you have a whole runny egg yoke left and you want to eat it WHOLE. omg omg omg it's the 3rd best thing in the world besides sex and dyson airblades.

Ewww.

There were no misshapen forks in the servery today. I rummaged clatteringly to no avail.

I did obsereve a girl impaling salad (chiefly lettuce) with concave tines. She did this repeatedly. God knows what she thought of me.

i would buy a metal spork

my mum has a spork! she uses it for getting pickles out of the jar.

I sometimes lapse into using the fork in a shovel-like manner. My excuse is that I am left-handed and was brought up to hold the cutlery in the conventional hands.

When I'm eating in public I find myself trying to make an effort to point the tines downwards, except for things like peas, where trying to spear them one by one just seems a bit silly to me

i don't eat peas

I am clearly a disgusting oaf with the manners of a goat based on this thread!

what, just this thread? :p

Well, this thread and the disapproving glares from passing dignitaries that I get on a daily basis.

i learnt the word "tines" today.

Me too actually.

the tines they are a-changing.

i never eat tines down and hardly ever use a knife. i use the side of my fork to cut things up like a good midwesterner.

utensils uschmentils. what i want to know is why people need a napkin at EVERY meal. unless its something insanely messy who is dropping food in their lap on the short journey from the plate to their mouth? who is getting their hands involved enough that they end up covered in food? even more worrisome, who is missing their mouth and hitting their cheeks,chin etc?

Tines down is belied by the very patterning of forks, my good sirs. Here (at least) the "tines up" side is the decorative one, with the front of the design on it. The "tines down" is the unseen, undecorated side, either flat or, if the flatware is stamped, the reverse of the pattern. Not meant to be seen!

why people need a napkin at EVERY meal.

a what?

Altho I suppose when these manners were thought up, People of Quality were eating with lovely heavy silver anyway, so fuck the rest of 'em and their low-quality stainless steel Oneida flatware from Target.

why people need a napkin at EVERY meal.

the irish, for a start.

i don't eat napkins

The decorated bit of the fork, tines up, is for when it's lying on the table innit?

decorated forks?

Yeah but knives are meant to always sit with the blade facing in, and yet both sides of the knife handle are patterned the same.

i see what you did there

btw if you didn't answer "no big deal," reexamine your manias

(people think I don't parse my words; I was tempted to say "kill yourself")

i almost always eat salad, food on plates, etc with tines down! it really is all abt the elbows!
i think i've only ever eaten like burritos and hot dogs and take-out dumplings with american ilxors. so i have yet to be called a poncey princess b/c of cutlery wielding

another thread about fork handles?

it's where ilx really comes together as one

i don't really kill myself

I'm pretty sure I was taught that the setting-knife-down, picking-fork-up inefficiency was meant to slow down meals, keep us from bolting our roast beef. Seem to recall that as a kid I got the impression that fork-in-left was less cultivated, a little less "nice". Being a kid is weird.

Yeah but knives are meant to always sit with the blade facing in, and yet both sides of the knife handle are patterned the same.

are they now?

if the knife blade faces out, it just won't cut right

i think the gabb-circuits are shorting out

my mum has a spork!

how long have these been around? not sure I used one before today.

I remember seeing them in school cafeteria in early seventies.

Yea, the spork hath always been, and ever shall be.

i prefer chopsticks