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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 25, 2019 14:38:03 GMT
So, what do you use to eat? I was reading an interesting article about how people eat around the world.
The vast majority of people (3.5 billion) eat with their hands. This includes one's bare hands or the use of a piece of bread or tortilla or potato to push things around and pick them up, such as mezze style dishes. We have all seen scenes of how Africans roll their rice or other grain into a little ball to dip into their stew. The next step up is to use a spoon and depending on the dish, a lot of bare hand eaters also use spoons from time to time. The spoon reached England in the 12th century. And actually spoons are used around the world more for cooking and serving than eating. Of course the main deal in Europe is forks, which the Chinese starting using in the 2nd century. Apparently, in much of China these days forks are reserved for small children before they have learned to use chopsticks. Forks entered Europe through Italy, and then they caught on in the royal court of France in the 1500's. The Iberians were next and they converted all of the Americas.
2.1 billion people eat with chopsticks and only in the Chinese zone of influence (Japan, Korea, Indochina...). The China Daily says that Confucius promoted them because forks and knives were considered barbarian and even dangerous. It is quite true that in most of the world, knives never leave the kitchen. You would never put any on a dining table.
The article points out oddities like the very same dish of couscous is eaten with a fork in France, a spoon in Tunisia, spoon and fork in Algeria and with the fingers in Morocco. I was invited into a Moroccan colleague's home once and his wife put her foot down -- "He's going to eat like us!" (gotta love her) and so I did indeed eat my couscous with my fingers. Rather messy for non specialists.
In the last century and a half, it has been mostly the hotel industry that brought the full set of silverware to the world. Obviously, it caught on in a lot of places and is the height of chic in places like Qatar. Silverware is obviously quite generalised in the majority of urban areas of the world. I'm sure that watching television draws a lot of people to the concept now.
I myself use spoons much more than I used to, having learned how practical they are when I started going to Asia. I have noticed that I tend to eat leftovers with a spoon quite often when it is a dish that doesn't need to be cut up or anything. My friends from Singapore were in total awe, though, when they saw Europeans eating things like peas with a fork. It makes absolutely no sense.
It was interesting as I observed my mother's decline that when I would take her to a Chinese restaurant, she still absolutely wanted to use chopsticks as she always had done in such places. About halfway through the meal, though, she would get frustrated and use the other silverware because she was hungry. Finally, she stopped trying.
What have you encountered and/or adopted?
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Post by onlyMark on Jan 25, 2019 15:18:15 GMT
Plus, when eating with the hand(s), those that only eat with the right hand and those that will use both/either.
For me, it varies. I use a knife and fork together when eating with Mrs M. By myself I will cut stuff up with the knife and transfer my fork to my right hand and put the knife down (because invariably I will be reading at the same time). Often, again by myself I will just use a spoon if, as mentioned, nothing needs cutting. When eating 'hands on' I have great difficulty eating just with my left hand after spending a few years in Arabic countries and I've never mastered chopsticks when they are supplied. In India I rarely eat in restaurants so usually it is with the hand.
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Post by bjd on Jan 25, 2019 16:35:00 GMT
I'm a boring westerner and just use a knife and fork. Unless, like Mark, I eat alone and read at the same time.
Always feel like a complete klutz in Asian restaurants because I can't master chopsticks no matter how often I have been shown. Each mouthful feels like success but the food gets cold so I usually give up and ask for cutlery.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 25, 2019 17:17:40 GMT
This definitely scrapes the bottom of the barrel (or plate) in terms of boring threads.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 25, 2019 18:00:36 GMT
Perhaps we need a thread about people who prefer to eat in plates vs. bowls.
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Post by questa on Jan 26, 2019 0:00:25 GMT
I was raised to use knife and fork together but Asian chopsticks and Indian 'right hand' crept in as I started mixing with other cultures. I asked why these methods were used. Indian woman said,"We wash our hands and know they are clean, but do you know where your knife and fork have been?" The Asian woman said,"Who would be so rude as to serve a meal the people have to cut up at the table.It is not polite to have a knife at the table. The food is prepared so that each piece can be picked up with chopsticks." Soups were usually sipped from a bowl, but spoons are used more now.
At home I use spoon and fork as many Indonesians do when not using fingers. Knife and fork are hopeless with Parkinson's, As I get shakier, the manners go out the window and I will pick up a chop or piece of baked potato and eat it like a piece of fruit
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 26, 2019 5:57:24 GMT
I don't know if it was because of the peasant origins of my family, but it never bothered us at all to gnaw on bones, whether pork chops or chicken carcasses. Of course, living the region where we were, such behaviour was all the more encouraged since it was the only way to eat crabs and shrimp. In Paris, I have friends who are incapable to touching a prawn and who skillfully manage to peel off the shell and take bite-sized morsels with a knife and fork.
In so much of Europe it is considered abhorrent and unsanitary to ever touch food with one's fingers. Breakfast buffets at the hotels are a forest of tongs for picking up croissants, pieces of bread, brioche or whatever -- with of course different tongs for each and every item to prevent cross-contamination, I suppose.
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Post by lagatta on Jan 26, 2019 14:27:21 GMT
The other thing observed in urban areas of France, at least, is people managing to peel a pear or orange with cutlery. I do think a more casual approach is becoming more common, but it is striking. Then there is always holding the fork in the left hand, as I was taught, or the way people switch in the US. Canadians vary.
K2, I presume you are referring to the Gulf Coast, not to Lorraine, in terms of seafood.
And I do prefer dishes prepared in edible bites as is common in Southeast Asia.
Of course in Italy there are myriad food and dining rules, not all related to cutlery. Funny, as poor people in Naples ate not only pizza but also pasta with their hands. Many rules relate to class distinctions, but others to hygiene and religous taboos, such as the ban on the left hand - Muslim but also strong in some Asian cultures, of different creeds.
Both Judaism and Islam have very strict specifications for knives used in slaughter, but that was to minimise cruelty and to evacuate as much as possible of the blood. But both Jews and Muslims do eat liver, and it is impossible to truly bleed liver...
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 26, 2019 14:40:24 GMT
I cannot affirm this with confidence, but after working for a Muslim company for 35 years and therefore travelling rather regularly to places like Egypt or Saudi Arabia (but also Morocco, Tunisia and Dubai on business), there are far many more left-handed Arabs than there used to be, so I think the taboo might be disappearing slowly but surely. Of course in most situations, I was in places where people used cutlery, so I don't know exactly how the left-handers behaved in family or rural situations. The fact that people used toilet paper just about everywhere I went might also have weakened the idea that the left hand is impure since nobody was using buckets of water and bare hands to scrape shit off their arse.
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Post by lagatta on Jan 26, 2019 15:35:53 GMT
That is interesting indeed. I'm VERY left-handed, so travelling to a place where the left hand is still impure would be a challenge. Left-handedness was also considered a flaw or something evil in Western societies, but that has pretty much died down. Children were still "switched" even a few decades of course, and wrote horribly.
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Post by casimira on Jan 26, 2019 15:44:24 GMT
This definitely scrapes the bottom of the barrel (or plate) in terms of boring threads. I thoroughly disagree and many times have entertained creating such a thread. Kerouac did a much more thorough researching job than I would have presented to be sure. I find it fascinating. I lean more towards using a spoon unless it's a food item that requires being speared. (As an aside, I prefer using a bowl rather than a flat plate so it was amusing in a way to see Kerouac's gumbo being served up on a plate). ( I am severely left handed, a sinistral, and there were many occasions where eating next to a right handed person was extremely awkward. If I can, I always shoot for the far end seat so will have no one on my left to bang elbows with,)
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 26, 2019 15:50:09 GMT
Frankly, I have always used my left hand to eat although I do recall making a specific effort to eat with my right hand that time I was invited to eat couscous at that home in Morocco. It should be mentioned that Arab cultures are very polite and those in contact with other cultures (such as ours) take the use of the left hand in stride. They are not at all incapable of understanding that different cultures do things in different ways.
I fear that it is western culture that is making too much of a point of these differences in a mission to be politically correct. There is absolutely no reason to imagine that our way of doing things is in any way inferior to what other cultures do.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 26, 2019 15:52:45 GMT
Casimira, don't worry about what bixaorellana wrote. It was just a completely understandable peeve about something that I wrote on another thread. All of us do this from time to time.
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Post by casimira on Jan 26, 2019 16:05:10 GMT
I already figured that out but with the absence of an emoticon couldn't be sure.
I am also well acquainted for Bixa's affinity for bowls so figured that out too.
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Post by lagatta on Jan 26, 2019 16:21:21 GMT
I also prefer bowls (not too deep, though) or what is called soup plates. My large dinner plates are exiled to Siberia, on the top shelf of my cupboards, just for friends who prefer them - in particular an Argentine friend who likes large pieces of red meat!
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 26, 2019 16:53:44 GMT
I use my soup plates (" assiettes creuses") quite often (they are the blue ones that you might have noticed in my photographs from time to time), but I also use my " breakfast bowls" for certain items. These are mostly a French oddity that we peasant stock use for coffee or hot chocolate for breakfast in our primitive hovels. I continue to impose them even when I have overnight guests, because I am the host and I am the one who decides. But I also use them if I have breakfast cereal and sometimes for small leftovers or soup. www.maisonapart.com/images/auto/640-480-c/20130218_150458_thomsen-hd.jpg
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 26, 2019 16:56:34 GMT
We use bowls most for sloppy food like stew, curry or pasta dishes. Plates for other stuff...I've been experimenting with using a smaller plate in an effort to reduce my portion size...but I can pike up quite a lot on a salad plate me...
As for utensils..fingers came before forks as my granny used to say...but I tend to use knife and fork together...in fact I have an old knife and fork that I use all the time even tho we have a newer set. The ones I like to use are from the really cheap set we bought when we were first married....
I can stab things with chopsticks but that's about it. Don't eat much Chinese food anyway as I'm allergic to shellfish...which seem to be in all the sauces...
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jan 26, 2019 17:00:50 GMT
I had a nice set of breakfast bowls but my family have systematically smashed all but two...
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Post by lagatta on Jan 26, 2019 18:58:26 GMT
I do like breakfast bowls, but mine are very small. I only had 4, and managed to smash 2 of them. I drink only mocha (stovetop espresso) in terms of coffee, though I would use a slightly larger bowl, like K2's, for tea or herbals.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 26, 2019 19:03:13 GMT
I think I still have four at the moment, but at least 3 of them are chipped. I would like to replace them, but they are unfortunately becoming rarer. I know that I bought two of them at my local Monoprix, but I looked no later than yesterday, and they only had "miniature" breakfast bowls. I want the full sized ones! I will keep looking.
Unfortunately, France is slowly but surely moving toward mugs.
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Post by bjd on Jan 26, 2019 19:12:20 GMT
Unfortunately, France is slowly but surely moving toward mugs. Well, thank goodness for that. I never managed to get used to drinking tea or coffee in a bowl. If it's hot, then it's too hot to hold without a handle. And it's just too big for a reasonable dose of anything. The only thing I would drink out of one of those bowls is a smaller portion of soup. And I would use a spoon, not slurp out of the bowl.
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Post by mich64 on Jan 26, 2019 19:25:40 GMT
After we were married, my mother-in-law gave my husband the bowl he always used for coffee when they lived in Germany. I do not think he can remember when he stopped using it when they moved back to Canada but I would imagine she bought coffee mugs and that was the end of using the bowl. His bowl looks quite similar to the one in the picture Kerouac posted, his has his name on it as well.
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Post by lagatta on Jan 26, 2019 20:08:57 GMT
Are the mugs for café au lait? They'd be far too large for a strong black coffee.
There are smaller mugs like the ones they sell at HEMA, and I imagine, at Monoprix.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 26, 2019 20:15:46 GMT
In souvenir shops destined mostly for local citizens, there used to be breakfast bowls for sale with all of the most popular names on them. Some places still have them. Before that, there were napkin rings for sale with the names on them. That must be a really rare item now. Who on earth still uses napkin rings?
And yet when I was living with my grandparents, we had cloth napkins with napkin rings. The napkins were washed once a week (barring some horrible accident). That was such a civilised era.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 26, 2019 20:21:25 GMT
Are the mugs for café au lait? They'd be far too large for a strong black coffee. There are smaller mugs like the ones they sell at HEMA, and I imagine, at Monoprix. The capsule machines now have ads for variable cup formats, which means that it is accepted that people will always use cups of different sizes.
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Post by questa on Jan 26, 2019 22:26:55 GMT
The switch away from using disposibles has led to office workers taking thier own mugs to work after a fill up at the nearby cafe.I guess they have a price scale the work to, and a cover to keep it hot.
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Post by mich64 on Jan 26, 2019 22:45:49 GMT
Who on earth still uses napkin rings? I used to use napkin rings, but can not think of where they are, might have purged them during the kitchen remodel. I still do use cloth napkins though when I have friends over for dinner. In souvenir shops destined mostly for local citizens, there used to be breakfast bowls for sale with all of the most popular names on them This makes sense, I will have to ask her.
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Post by fumobici on Jan 27, 2019 5:39:43 GMT
Napkin rings are great for keeping track of whose napkins are whose.
I'm drifting towards bowls for edge cases between a plate and a bowl. I'll even serve spaghetti in a bowl now, something I never once would have done.
Chopsticks. For a couple of decades I always soldiered on in Oriental restaurants with chopsticks (non-Thai, the Thai are a practical people who embraced the fork) but the past couple of years I just ask for a fork when I am seated. Some things are easy-peasy with chopsticks but some things not so much -- at least for me. I was seated at a table with a Japanese gentleman last month at a okonomiyaki restaurant and those pancake/omelet things would have been a real struggle for me to eat with chopsticks but he made it look so easy, almost like sleight-of-hand.
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Post by fumobici on Jan 27, 2019 6:16:39 GMT
Oh, pizza. In Europe, I eat pizza with knife and fork; in the US/Canada, I use my hands. Both just feel more correct in situ, although in Italy pizza is served unsliced so you need the knife and fork. I assume they'd be happy to slice it for you, I've never asked.
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Post by bjd on Jan 27, 2019 7:20:29 GMT
I still use cloth napkins but never had napkin rings. Everybody just gets a different colour.
And indeed, pizza with a knife and fork, but I never attempted to eat fruit that way. To the amazement of my mother-in-law who was surprised to see me bite into a peach.
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