American table manners

Interesting topic. In polite company in the US, you're supposed to use the European method, tines down. But nobody really cares these days. Hand in the lap for soup courses, and you collect soup on the spoon by moving it away from you, not toward. You can of course put the silverware down, you don't have to hold them all the time. After all, you are supposed to chit chat with your neighbors and dab your mouth with the napkin periodically, and you can't do that while actually eating.

The Germans seem fond of scraping utensils against each other to scrape off extra food: a big no-no. The way I was taught, that's never supposed to happen because you never actually deeply immerse them in the food, just the lower 30% or so. I don't remember what we had to do with peas, but I remember we were encouraged to leave a polite amount of food on our plates, to avoid scraping up the remainders and generally making a mess of things. I remember being told that the plate is not a canvas for modern art, so don't chase your food around the plate. Or something along those lines.

Oh also, a lot of people bend over their plates, in "ME HUNGRY" position. If you do that and you have a fancy business dinner coming up, practice not doing that.

It's all a mater of what you're comfortable with.

Roughly 35 years ago there was a taboo in Germany about cutting potatoes with a knife (staple food - do we use a violent instrument to cut them at the dining table? No we don't). Similar, I think, to a Jewish tradition of breaking bread with hands, not knives, for similar reasons - or Far Eastern cultures using sticks rather than sharp instruments.

Times change, critical audiences change. Elbows on the table? Who gives a toss when you're having fun? Never seemed to bother the French or the Italians. Why should it? Where's it written in Tablets of Stone (and who gives a damn anyway?)

Americans - eat how you want to eat!

Brits - It's your choice to shovel food on the BACK of a fork instead of on the curved bit where it's meant to be (that's why it's shaped the way it is)...but don't object if I snigger.

Indians - shovel your spicy goodies onto a nice chappati and eat it with your fingers - luvvly!

Just enjoy the food and the company - and if ritual is more important than communication and conviviality - change the company!

I agree with you 100%... unless you're talking about having a client dinner, in which case a little planning and practice can help you not to make a bad impression, accidentally. But usually if you just videotape yourself eating, you'll know what to fix, whatever the accepted rules are.

Fortunately in the circles within which I move a "Client Dinner" is something with which I am relatively unfamilair.

In any case, if I need to fart, I'll make an excuse about "needing to cool down in the fresh air" or something similar....

....and I won't serve them Jerusalem artichokes (which should have been outlawed by the Geneva Convention decades ago...)

Thanks. As of this evening I have been effectively hounded off on another thread.

Mlovett, you have always been kind. You can communicate via off-TT network links, as can a handful of others.

I've tried my best to be helpful here, but have clearly overshadowed by those with the self-proclaimed moral authority to know better. I took on board comments that I was too "anti-German" etc. etc., and changed my behavior (including starting the OFDC), but it made absolutely no difference to people's responses. TT is clearly a monolog as opposed to a dialog. Additionally, I've never been part of the still-dominant Munich TT mafia, and that will likely be the eventual downfall of this site if it has designs to become a truly trans-national site.

I have a life to live, and this site is clearly no longer a part of it. So, as you say, I'm officially "flouncing". It's a bit like cigarettes and/or booze. Okay for a while, but clearly damaging to one's health over the long run.

I must say, Editor Bob is 10x cooler than 90% of the people who post here. He has a great business model ... but I must warn that this could conceivably beome AOL-like if it eventually pushes people such as me off. The ratio of positive to negative post responses has run at c. 1:99. That clearly wears on down over time. The "lightheartedness factor" on this site is just aboout zero.

Side note for the fellow frustrated: At work, have your IT people block the domain. At home, go into the "banned IPs" section of your firewall/virus softtware and type in "212.227.102.45", and then block the "www.toytowngermany.com" address in your browser, and then invite some random into your home to type in the administrative passwords. And then one can regain control of one's life ufettered by the whims of those who still, despite one's 14 months and 1,483-ish well-considered posts, consider you an undesirable interloper.

Darn it, seems like I always miss out on the really interesting going-ons around TT. My only excuse is that I was trying to teach my two littl 'uns, Bonnie and Joey, to eat properly with utensils rather than just slurping up everything from their plates like animals.

_{(for those who don't know, you'll find a photo of Bonnie and Joey on my profile page)}

"Eating with just a fork"
Lot better than some places mate ,check out China , Japan they eat with bits of wood.
or some of these places where they all sit on the ground and shovel it down by hand, (Ireland for instance)

1. It seems to me that the worst transgression of all is to publicly ridicule someone else's table manners. Eleanor Roosevelt once observed an guest pick up his finger bowl and drink its contents. She thoughtfully drank hers, so as not to embarass him. To me, that's manners.

That's class, which is something altogether different from manners.

Not too long ago I went to the Wild West Buffalo Bill Dinner and Show at the Paris Disneyland Park Complex. For dinner, in the dark, you are served what seemed to be half of a roasted chicken. I will admit that because I am American I dug in with, that's right, my hands (I know, typical Barbaric Neanderthal American) but, that's the way we eat roasted or fried chicken. The funny thing is the French guy and his girlfriend next to me were watching in astonishment for the first five minutes while they were struggling with their knives and forks, stabbing and sawing at pieces of tiny chicken bone in the dark. Finally the guy picks up a leg with his hand and takes a bite, before I knew it they were both on a backslide of evolution. Mmm-mmm Finger-licking Good!

Yeah, chicken is rough territory... I'll use utensils in public, but at home I will eat the drumstick with my hands. It's just the way it is, and I bet a lot of Europeans do the same. Now what about ribs? Do Europeans use utensils? I'll never forget watching my then German boyfriend (now husband) try to eat BBQ'd ribs with utensils in CA. He was a man liberated from etiquette prison once I convinced him that it's ok to use the hands... and he has ever since, even here in Germany!

According to CuisineNet fingers may be used to eat the following foods:

artichokes
asparagus
(crisp) bacon
bread
cookies
corn on the cob
chips
french fries
fried chicken
hamburgers
hors d'oeuvres, canapes, crudités
sandwiches
small fruits and berries on the stem

I think ribs would definitely be OK as well

Man. I never even thought about offending Europeans by eating hamburger, chicken or ribs with my hands! I use a knife to cut a hamburger patty and bun in two, so maybe they'd give me partial human status for doing that.

You can't have the one without the other.

EDIT: How would you eat a 20 lb. burger? This guy managed it in 4+ hours.

Eating ribs with a fork? That would be torture for sure. I think it is ok to eat any piece of meat with a bone in it as long as it's less than a pound, with your fingers.To hell with formality. Food should not be only be a nourishment, it should be also a pleasure. Why else would you feed people when you invite them over to your place?
At formal diners, when food to be eaten with fingers, is served, little bowls (sometimes with a slice of lemon in) are at the table next to your plate to clean your fingers and than wipe them with your napkin.

If it was dark, how can they have watched??

But I do agree, some things are best eaten by hand. But also depending where you are.

I'm an American, and I never even noticed that Americans do the zigzag thing (I don't) until I lived in Munich and this thread started. Am I the only person on the planet who eats with the knife in the left hand and fork in the right?

My (non-American) husband does the same.