Posted on 02/06/2022 8:09:04 AM PST by NOBO2012
I was taught (and retaught) table manners as a child. I suspect you had them driven into your noggin as well.
Chew with your mouth closed,
Lest your food fall out all over the place
don’t talk with your mouth full,
Deploy your entrenching tools correctly (aka hold your silverware correctly)
Okay
Okay
No
And a myriad of others such as no elbows on the table (although I later learned that even Emily Post said it was appropriate to place your elbows on the table for conversations between courses when there were no plates on the table), no reaching across the table, take small bites, keep your food on your plate…etc..
They all seem so logical now. I still follow these rules but as I’ve aged I’ve noticed something a bit alarming: the food has begun to migrate from my plate against my will. This is most embarrassing in fancy restaurants, where the waiter comes by to sweep up any debris between courses with what used to look liker a miniature broom and dustpan but has evolved into a sleek pencil shaped instrument called a ‘table crumber’ which is far more discreet.
But at home I now notice that I need to wipe up the table or counter surfaces after every meal, not for sanitary purposes but rather for the esthetics as there seem always to be crumbs and/or other remains of the day that need to be dispatched. And that’s not all, often some detritus from the meal takes a suicidal leap to the floor which then requires either an unscheduled brooming or vacuuming.
I don’t know what to blame: have my table manners lapsed so terribly over the years as to create this debris field? Is it because both our table and counter seating is at “bar height” and the adrenalin rush created by a leap to freedom is too great to resist? In restaurants I can blame increased serving sizes crowding the plate but at home that’s definitely not an issue as our serving sizes have greatly diminished with time.
So I don’t know: are my newfound slovenly habits due to reduced dexterity due to age and arthritis? Is it distracted dining? I confess to using my tablet at table to peruse the Wall Street Journal these days, in lieu of a real newspaper. Or has the whole world just gotten a lot crummier? I’ll go with the later.
I blame the Artisan Bread movement: I never had all these crusty, crummy problems when we used Wonder Bread. Plus, since I’ve started using artisan bread we no longer have a never ending supply of snow socks.
If you’re old enough to understand this, and remember when Wonder Bread sold 2/45 cents, you might have an issue with this much crummier world too.
Posted from: MOTUS A.D.
Elbows on the table. That might mean no fruit cup.
This is hilarious, and timely. I was eating at a restaurant last night and they had the free bread at the tables. And I noticed that no matter how careful I was I was getting crumbs all over the place. I was literally thinking, holy cow, I never used to get this many crumbs all over the place when I ate .
Wow, somebody still goes to restaurants. O.o
Baking Artesian bread is super easy but I don’t do it too often, I do have a countertop bread machine which I use quite often and I like a homebrew ciabatta but about 7 years back the yeast or naturally occuring yeasts suddenly weren’t producing the desired rise after the dough or poolish was ready.
Maybe the yeast in the atmosphere changed?
Oven checks out etc... it just changed...
(insert ambient saturated guitar chords and UFO abduction dialog with moog theremin during scary parts)
A visit with young grand-kids can be a reminder of why they have long been labeled Crumb Crunchers.
I recall the 1964 Christmas in Long Beach California we went visiting one of my mother’s many sisters and her family and she had four boys in a 10-year spred so, it was lively, and the young guys were my age and we are at dinner and one of them started making a sandwich... at the dinner table... auntie SNAPPED! BAM!
I don’t recall making sandwiches as a matter of course but I mean come on... four guys in the house five including the husband? Some days she must have been in hell. That poor woman.
My mom would do the bread bag, "sock" thing when we were little. I horribly was mocked by, "my peeps" back when bullying was how kids enforced neighborhood (societal) norms. I should be glad my head didn't fit into one of those bags!
Climate change.
We had crocheted kitchen rugs made from bread bags. I hadn’t thought of that in years.
Speaking of which, where was Greta Thunberg when Tonga went BOOM, Ten times what humans polluted in last ten years. Shouldn’t she have jumped in it or something?
What?
What’s today’s equivalent of “Shut up and eat”?
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