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.

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