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Eating with a fork & spoon
Food & Wine  |   Link

Sometimes when I eat at an Asian restaurant and I see that spoon placed on the right side of my plate, I feel at home. I don't care anymore if I'm in public. Growing up I used to think eating with my spoon was so backwards and that it was only acceptable at home. Now if I see it there, I get excited and I use it like I was at home. In most cases it is not big enough to be a serving spoon so I use it.

I remember when I was Catholic school, I think in the 3rd grade, one of my filipino friends brought left overs from dinner for lunch. Of course she came to school with that nice adobo chicken or some crispy pata(pork shoulder) with a nice helping of rice, nothing like that could compare to a ham & cheese sandwich. During Lent she actually gave up eating with a spoon at school, thinking it was a sacrifice. Thinking back, I think that was wrong. She would equate eating with a spoon as a sacrifice. Gosh what kind of hardship is that. I guess it's like asking someone who has always eaten with chopsticks to give them up for some reason to eat with only a fork.

So now I wonder, why does it give me so much comfort to eat with a fork and spoon. Heck it's just easier to shovel the food on a spoon especially if the dish is some kind of stew with rice, then to have to balance grains of rice with hardly any of the nice stewlike sauce over it. Or maybe because I don't eat filipino food anymore(because it's basically non-vegetarian) that when I eat somewhere asian with a spoon readily available, I feel like I'm at home again.

Cultural issue? Not really when you live in the Bay Area. I even have my husband prefering a fork & spoon combination during a meal rather than chopsticks. I actually don't care, if people stare at me with my spoon. I don't chow down like a pig or anything, I just think I'm more graceful with a spoon.

Posted on March 31, 2003 07:51 PM