Thursday, March 20, 2008

Sticking to Chopsticks


I eat everything with chopsticks. Everything. Okay, well, if you want to nitpick, soups and sandwiches do not count. I’d say a bowl of cereal would count as a soup and a slice of pizza would count as a sandwich. And yes, I do pick up tiny snack foods like peanuts, chips or M&Ms by hand. But for some of the larger snack foods I do use chopsticks. In fact, that’s how I started using them for everything.

I didn’t want my fingers to get orange powder all over them when I munched on cheese curls/puffs. So I had an idea. I would use a toothpick. It sounds more practical than it is. Turns out it requires concentration to pierce them, distracting from another activity. They tend to slide around a bit too much. [I had them in a bowl for it's not easy to poke for them in the bag.] Unless you suffer from a violent streak, the necessary force needed to stab them is just not worth the effort. Try it if you don’t believe me. I then realized I didn’t need a cheese puff harpoon, I just needed faux fingers. So I grabbed some chopsticks.

I’ve been using them ever since, for about 15 years. The foods people tend to marvel at are a baked potato and ice cream. Yes, eventually the ice cream will be a puddle and therefore, then, counts as soup. But I find that I create more or less the same size puddle via spoon. Like I said, everything.

I prefer not to have the clinking of silverware at my fingertips. I prefer the faint trace of wood in my mouth rather than cold metal. For me, chopsticks are a superior eating utensil.

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