Saturday, April 23, 2005

Must have been how you were raised

My wife finds the way I eat hilarious. When eating at home (or when my guard is down) I will usually pick apart all layered foods (sandwiches, lasagna, etc) and eat about half of it as individual ingredients and the other half as one unit (after putting it back together). This would drive my father crazy when I was a kid. Perhaps that's why I still feel compelled to do it.

Although I have not witnessed this, my mother in law swears that my father in law spins his plate as he eats. Bite of meat, spin to the corn, bite of the corn, spin to the bread, bite of bread, etc. So often does this happen that she is afraid he’ll wear a groove in their wooden dining table.

My wife has cheese issues. She will not eat eggs and cheese together, chicken and cheese together, fish and cheese together. She likes cheese, fish, chicken, and eggs individually. On a sandwich, mayonnaise can touch the cheese, the cheese can touch the meat, but the mustard has to be on the meat side – well away from cheese.

A coworker who shall remain nameless (Lilly Pasta) has a brother who refuses to eat the place on a sandwich where his fingers rest. He will leave these little fingertip sized portions of sandwich on his plate when he is finished. He refers to these as “sandwich handles.”

My late uncle Charlie would mix all of his food together on the plate before eating it, citing that it would all end up in the same place anyway.

My wife’s father will leave one bite of food on his plate after a meal as if he’s leaving a gift for the Food Faerie. Never two, never zero, always one.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

People and food can be odd.

Take my better half, sour cream is evil. Can't stand it, he hates it, it is disgusting. When I put sour cream on my tacos or on top of a bowl of chili, he cringes.

Magically, when I add but only one packet of Lipton Onion soup mix to a bowl of sour cream, it magically becomes delicious chip dip that is devoured with wanton abandon.

J

Anonymous said...

i love pickles. however, i only like the crunchy part of the pickle, not the pulpy, seedy part in the middle. therefore, i use a knife to surgically remove these "pickle guts" before consuming the crisp rind of the pickle. i have done this forever. and i don't know why.

Eric said...

I love pickle hearts. I have been known to whittle the crunchy part off of a big old dill pickle and just eat the pulpy seedy part.

Perhaps it's Freudian: Am I most attracted to the seedy parts of life?

Na'ah, that would be over-analysing and I'd NEVER do that.

Anonymous said...

HA HA! eric, apparently you and i are the "jack sprat and wife" of pickle consumption.

i refuse to explore why i like only the crunchy part.

that in-depth self-analysis is just not gonna happen...

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