Lay Off My Food

[liuzhou]

This story made me think of one of my pet hates. While the man's reaction, if true (it is Fox News after all) is kind of over the top, it is understandable.

 

It's odd. I have lived for over 20 years in a culture that routinely shares its food and I have absolutely no problems with that. Family style meals are fun, and I don't even think about it.

But it does drive me nuts when I am eating western meals and someone, not unlike my first wife, says something like "I don't want chips* with my dinner", but then goes on to "just try" some of mine.
 

"Hey, I ordered a full portion because I wanted to eat a full portion! Get your paws out of my plate!"

That marriage didn't last long!

Fortunately, I have lived most of my life in countries which don't have the USA's gun culture, so I haven't shot anyone -  yet.

So, I wondered what others think.

 

*"chips" in the British sense. Although it could be anything.

Edited January 10, 2017 by liuzhou (log)

[chromedome]

LOL Yeah, that's my late wife with Costco soft-serve cones. 

 

"Oh, they're too big. Let's just share one," she'd say. Then I'd get two, maybe three licks before it was gone. Eventually I put my foot down and ordered my own, and she grumbled all day about feeling bloated because she hadn't wanted to eat "all that ice cream."

 

Do you remember the comic strip Cathy? There was one with Cathy and her mom sitting in front of a plate of doughnuts. They decided to split one with sprinkles, because "I couldn't eat a whole one." Then they spit a chocolate-dip, for the same reason. When sometime boyfriend Irving returned and had a meltdown because the doughnuts were all gone, Cathy guilelessly replied "It couldn't have been us...neither of us could eat a whole doughnut."

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, chromedome said:

Do you remember the comic strip Cathy?

 

Never heard of it! Some US thing?

[IowaDee]

Oh God, my Mom did that with beer.  A whole one was just too much but somehow two or more often four halves were just right.

I guess using fractions doesn't make you as tipsy?

[liuzhou]

14 minutes ago, IowaDee said:

Oh God, my Mom did that with beer.  A whole one was just too much but somehow two or more often four halves were just right.

I guess using fractions doesn't make you as tipsy?

 

I work on the "I've only had one glass" principle, refusing to answer how many times it has been refilled. But I sure wouldn't try drinking your beer!

[chromedome]

58 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

Never heard of it! Some US thing?

Yeah. 

[IowaDee]

Now that's exactly how I drink wine.  I have  my very own, magical glass that never empties.  Nice to see someone else has a glass from the same set.  Cheers!

[lindag]

My glass, too!

Back to the food sharing:

I've never had a food friend or a SO who would steal off my plate, nor would I ever do that.

Bad manners, imo.

Edited January 10, 2017 by lindag
typo (log)

[quiet1]

I sometimes share food to offer a taste or what have you, but I hate it when people don't ask first. Rude.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I always ask first.

 

[IowaDee]

That's why forks have pointy tines.  You stab anyone who attempts to steal food off your plate.  A couple of sets of  punctures should cure them!

[JoNorvelleWalker]

2 hours ago, IowaDee said:

That's why forks have pointy tines.  You stab anyone who attempts to steal food off your plate.  A couple of sets of  punctures should cure them!

 

When I am dining with my family as often as not we are using chopsticks.

 

[chromedome]

17 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

When I am dining with my family as often as not we are using chopsticks.

 

Sharpen them. 

[gfweb]

Julia Child so hated food sharing that, on occasion,  she would insist on ordering for the table and get everybody the same dish.

 

So there!

[liuzhou]

1 hour ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

When I am dining with my family as often as not we are using chopsticks.

 

 

1 hour ago, chromedome said:

Sharpen them. 

 

Japanese chopsticks are usually more pointy.  I have one set that would hurt.

[Duvel]

10 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

 

Japanese chopsticks are usually more pointy.  I have one set that would hurt.

Better even with the flat steel ones from Korea. Then you can pin the offender down on the table

[liuzhou]

4 minutes ago, Duvel said:

Better even with the flat steel ones from Korea. Then you can pin the offender down on the table

 

Of course, the problem is that, in most chopstick-using cultures, food sharing is the norm.

 

But I suspect there is still some deeply hidden resentment. There is a reason Chinese tradition does not allow knives at the dinner table!

Edited January 11, 2017 by liuzhou (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

26 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

 

Japanese chopsticks are usually more pointy.  I have one set that would hurt.

 

My own chopsticks are Japanese but in restaurants, no matter what the persuasion, the chopstick points are sadly rather dull.

 

No scientific basis for it but I don't mind sharing with my family.*  I figure my genes are already in two more generations.

 

 

*Except when my grandson takes the last of the steamed dumplings.

 

[liuzhou]

4 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

in restaurants, no matter what the persuasion, the chopstick points are sadly rather dull.

 

Not in Japan.

 

Take your own to the restaurant. Lots of people do that here.

Edited January 11, 2017 by liuzhou (log)

[JoNorvelleWalker]

1 minute ago, liuzhou said:

 

Not in Japan.

 

I don't live in Japan.

 

[Duvel]

43 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

 

Of course, the problem is that, in most chopstick-using cultures, food sharing is the norm.

 

But I suspect there is still some deeply hidden resentment. There is a reason Chinese tradition does not allow knives at the dinner table!

 

You are right. But if you have ever been to Korea and enjoyed third place with very drunk colleagues you know that there are severe fights for the last morsels of fried chicken, that might sustain you for another round of Soju ...

[liuzhou]

20 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

I don't live in Japan.

 

 

Most people don't.

[Thanks for the Crepes]

21 hours ago, liuzhou said:

This story made me think of one of my pet hates. While the man's reaction, if true (it is Fox News after all) is kind of over the top, it is understandable.

 

It's odd. I have lived for over 20 years in a culture that routinely shares its food and I have absolutely no problems with that. Family style meals are fun, and I don't even think about it.

But it does drive me nuts when I am eating western meals

 

We had a version of the same story on our local news yesterday and the copyright credit is given to the Associated Press, not Fox News. Which is correct, I do not know.

 

I have no problem with family style meals either, as long as the serving utensils are sanitary and no one serves themselves from the communal dish with a used eating utensil or their hands, except maybe bread rolls or something where they can get one without pawing the rest.

 

If by "western meals", you mean individually plated meals, then I am with you. I cannot stand someone, anyone, grabbing something off my plate without asking! It's another thing if we diners decide between ourselves to transfer and share food between our plates with clean utensils at the beginning of the meal. That is fine, as long as anyone has the right without causing a ruckus to decline.

 

By the way, we serve meals family-style frequently here in the U.S. at home, but not so much in restaurants. There are a few restaurants that do that though, and they are definitely the exception. At home, the host always makes sure there is plenty for everyone, and that usually means leftovers. I suspect so very few restaurants here do it because they are focused on their profit margins and don't want to be taken advantage of by big eaters. The Chinese restaurants here that do it limit their losses by serving it family-style, but when the dish is empty, it's empty. Order another. Western restaurants that serve family style will refill the bowl until everyone gets satisfied.

 

Even though I have not been truly hungry in many decades, and even though my brain knows that there is plenty of food available. Although I know if I am shorted at a restaurant or something, I know I can go home to an obscene embarrassment of various foods, something in my lizard brain/survival instinct/animal override of logic kicks in, and I am fully able to understand the man in the story's reaction. It would be especially triggering to me in the scenario in the story, since the sandwich I was looking forward to would be ruined for me to where I could not eat it, because someone had taken a bite out of it and smeared it with their saliva and whatever germs they carried. Don't laugh! We have people dropping dead of influenza here right now.

 

I'm sure it's not worth killing someone over in our current civilized society and land of plenty, and in fact, I understand the man in question didn't even shoot toward anyone. If you don't want to accidentally trigger someone's long-ingrained survival instinct, though, please remain civilized, and don't grab any of their food and especially don't get your saliva on it. Rude doesn't even start to cover it. Stealing food from someone else who had done the work and expended the calories to acquire/prepare it meant the difference between life and death for many eons. We can reason with ourselves all we like, but in a flash, that instinct can rise to the surface under the right circumstances.

 

The man in the story is pictured in liuzhou's story link, and it appears he has been been beaten by the police. I'm not a fan of punishing people without due process of law. I also wonder if we in our ultra-civilized society are not punishing and selecting against the very genes and instincts that have allowed our species to survive so long. 

 

 

[Shalmanese]

5 hours ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

The Chinese restaurants here that do it limit their losses by serving it family-style, but when the dish is empty, it's empty. Order another. Western restaurants that serve family style will refill the bowl until everyone gets satisfied.

 

What? No Western restaurant I've ever been to has operated like that. Western restaurants deliver a fixed amount of food to your table for a fixed price and then generally don't care what personal arrangements you make after that. Some will impose a nominal surcharge for shared plates but that's about it. We tend to get creative when we go out, ordering 5 appetizers and a main to come out at the same time, for example, or ordering dessert alongside the main, and by and large, every restaurant we've been to accommodates us uncomplainingly. 

 

Most western dishes aren't explicitly designed to be shared but they can be shared with very little effort. I'm generally very sad when a member of our party isn't ok with eating family style and most of the people I hang out with are sharers. I've been known to rope more people into a group just so we can order more of the menu in a single trip. It's never been an issue at any restaurant I've been to.

Edited January 11, 2017 by Shalmanese (log)

[liuzhou]

9 hours ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

The man in the story is pictured in liuzhou's story link, and it appears he has been been beaten by the police

Woah!

I don't know what you are looking at but my link only contains a stock photo of a grilled Chinese sandwich. It also has a link to New York Post coverage of the same story, which again has no such image, but a link to a YouTube video, which also has no image of the man alleged to have been involved.

I'd love to know on what you base your theory that he has been beaten by police. Isn't it equally likely that he was given a beating in his local bar and that is what put him in a bad mood before he went home? People who are beaten by the police look different from people who are beaten by other people? Please don't speculate without evidence. I don't know who beat him and neither do you.

 

As to family style sharing, you wouldn't last ten minutes in China. Among family members and close friends there is no taboo against sharing food using the chopsticks you are eating with. In fact, objecting would be quite insulting.

In more formal settings, separate sharing chopsticks are sometimes used. That started after the SARS pandemic in 2003. I don't recall seeing it before then. It still isn't even nearly universal, yet China has managed to survive.

We don't all have the (mainly American) over-protective "germ phobia" and there are a lot fewer allergy problems as a result.  I don't mean there are never problems, but they are not at all common. People get more chance to build up natural resistance and immunity to all but the more serious bugs and they will get you no matter what. In a restaurant, I'd be more worried about the cook's health than my companions', no matter where.

I certainly had no problem sharing saliva with my late wife - we shared a lot more. But never my chips!

 

Edited January 11, 2017 by liuzhou (log)