pinays of the world unite - a little canadian boy is being persecuted because he used a fork and spoon at the lunch table!
down with single utensil hegemony! down with it, i say!
you don't have to read: Luc Cagadoc: The DoubleSpeak (jp is all over this like a fork over a spoon)
why fork/spoon eating is good:
it is more efficient
you don't have to chase your food around your plate
you don't have to switch hands
it's perfect for scooping the meat with the rice
my mommy taught me to eat like this
AKBAYAN!
8 comments:
I'm with you! This is how we eat rice in Singapore too. I have no idea why anyone would even want to eat rice with only a fork.
On a side note, I'm constantly asked if I'm left handed when I eat with a knife and fork because I keep the fork in my left hand and don't switch over like most Americans do. It is v. irritating!
when i use a fork/knife, i don't switch. it's bad euro manners but i don't care - it's more efficient!
(it's very important that one loses nothing when eating.)
cuisines that are amenable to fork/spoon action:
indian (mmm, especially with curry)
thai
chinese
philipino
i found that japanese food isn't too fork/spoon happy. except with curry. generally, i've found chopsticks to be the most efficient way of eating japanese food.
The chopstickers (chinese people, koreans people, japanese people) eat their rice out of a bowl. And they don't sabotage the sticky out of thier rice by saucing it up.
And if our rice does get un-sticky, we reach for the spoon.
The only time I'm really eating rice off a plate with chopsticks is at Amerikanese restaurance.
Sometimes you can get rice on a plate in Japanese and Vietamese restaurants, but they'll give you a fork and spoon to eat with if that's the case.
No one is ever expected to eat non-sticky rice of a plate with chopsticks.
[of course, a lot of us CAN, but it's under duress]
Ding, my high-school German teacher told us that the European way is to keep the knife and fork in hand, cutting with the right hand and eating with the left—the whole "put down knife, move fork to other hand" inefficiency may be an American thing. The Europeans, I also heard, will eat with the fork turned upside-down.
I don't think I've seen my in-laws do the fork/spoon thing. They must have fallen prey to utensil assimilation...
i'm surprised my mom didn't fall under the wheels of utensil hegemony; she didn't teach us tagalog and i felt that was a conscious nod to assimilation.
but whenever we went out to dinner, it never failed, my mom would be eating with her fork/spoon. and my sister and i would be eating just like her.
and you're right, jp.
when i eat rice out of a bowl, it's chopsticks.
when i take the rice out and put it on a plate it's fork/spoon time.
Orange is right--switching knife / fork is American, not European. The Euros don't switch.
I think, though, that like some other things, the switching is actually the older European tradition, one that got switched (ha!) in Europe sometime in the 19th century, by which point America was of course independent and retained the manners it had from the colonial period.
So I guess not switching is post-colonial.
dear dr. b -
is there anything you don't know? (wink)
well, that's a relief - now i'll not-switch to my heart's content and damn the consequences!
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