Do you have any eating rituals associated with a particular food?

I don’t have any eating rituals, but I do have an eating disorder. I am genetically wired to be incapable of completing a meal without leaving a remnant of it on my clothing.

Does this count? When my brother was a pre-teen but allowed to eat at the grown-up table w. me and parents, my mother insisted he eat one pea. So he cut it into four pieces and swallowed a piece of white bread w. each morsel.

The family will know whether he became a big veggie eater, eventually.

I can’t eat mixed foods if it isn’t part of the dish. If my mashed potatoes touch my steak I will cut off the contaminated part of the steak and feed it to the dog or cat. Syrup from pancakes on my hash browns makes me ill.

I like salad after the entrée. Before makes no sense. There’s always room for salad at the end.

@johnpowell: i completely agree! it makes me nauseous to watch people mix their foods (corn into mashed potatoes, etc) or my SO must eat his eggs and sausage on top of pancakes with syrup – ICK!!!

also, tuna casserole must always be served with peas.

@johnpowell Exactly what I was going for. In the 50s they had melamine dinnerware with dividers!! (Kind of like TV Dinner trays). I loved those because juices could not migrate from one food to the other!

@kevbo So European! I also now prefer my salad at the end of the meal. It seems to taste better that way.

Although the european way seems fun, I almost always have salad first, because, to be honest, I don’t like it as much as the entree. So, if I don’t eat salad while I’m hungry, I very well might skip it altogether, which isn’t exactly healthy…

@surlygirl I had an uncle who mixed all his food together into a big glob before eating. He said “it all went the same place.” I suspect he had no sense of taste. We kids would watch in horrified fascination. Of course, some wanted to try it, but the mothers said absolutely not.

@Marina
My grandpa did the same. He would mix everything up and apply a shit load of Tabasco to it. He said the same thing about it going to the same place.

But it passes the same taste buds at the same time. Gross.

@shilolo Me too. Everything goes on the continental shelf. People in thoffice would ask me for stain removal tips, because I always had a wet spot after lunch on my chest!

Oreos – The double stuff are my favorite. I take two of them remove one of the sides of each, then squish the filling sides together then eat the extra cookie from the edges and then dunk it in milk. Mmmm

Waffles – My specialty waffle sandwich goes like this. Toast two waffles, not too dark, but dark enough. Spread butter on both sides add to one side a good layer of strawberry jam. Next, take one bite out the sandwich and place in the microwave for 11 seconds. Enjoy.

@hollywoodduck Ever try a bacon waffle? Pieces of cooked bacon in the batter? Salt with sweet. Yum.

That reminds me. If I have a stack of pancakes, I butter the top, flip the to one over, butter the new top, then grab and flip flip 1 & 2 (of 3) over and butter the new top. That puts butter on (above, really) every top surface.

@marina, bacon waffles are very good indeed!

I eat pizza with a fork.

[psychoanalyze this.]

@Marina – no I haven’t but perhaps I will this weekend. :)

If I eat an ice cream bar that has a chocolate coating on it, I first have to peel the chocolate off of the sides, then the larger outer parts, then finally the ice cream.

Like kevbo (fl) I do the same thing with my pancakes, and I am sure to use butter because margarine ruins a perfectly good stack of pancakes.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches must have butter on the bread on the side of the jelly, between the bread and the jelly, otherwise the jelly soaks into the bread. If I wanted jelly flavored bread I would probably have invented it by now.

When making a sandwich, everything on it must reach the crust, overlapping slightly is allowed and there should be no mountain in the middle.

Having salad at the end of the meal is certainly not something that’s regularly practiced in the Netherlands, maybe they do it in parts of Europe, but it’s not standard fare here as a post-entree thought.

I’m not sure about other people, but symmetry often plays an important role in my eating and food practices.

The most important food ritual that I have is insects. I don’t eat them. Ever. At least not knowingly.

when i was a kid i used to eat all of the cheese off the pizza first. i don’t do that anymore though….

@ Marina ~ W*l-mart has those plates available in festive summer colors for 99 cents each or so.

When I eat m&ms I have to lay them all out on the table first. I separate each color into rows. Then I line up the color rows from most m&ms to least. I eat the color with the most m&ms first and so on to the least, but only in twos.

And of course the blue ones go last, because naturally they taste better.

@row4food Yeah, my sister Viv tried that trick on me once. She said the red ones tasted better. (They didn’t have blue ones then.) Ms. Logic said, “Don’t be ridiculous; they all taste the same.” She then said she would “prove” to me in an eyes-closed taste test that she could identify the red ones. The little sneak ate half my big bag of M&Ms before I (queen of gullibility) caught on.

Umm, can anyone say, OCD? ;-)

hmm i have a bunch of weird habits but one that come to mind off hand is assorted color candy.

like row4food i separate them into their respective colors. Then ill eat some of each making them all have an even amount. I will then eat one of each going through the colors until i have 1 left of each color. Then ill put them all in my hand and randomly pick one without looking and eat it.I’ll then check to see which color got “eliminated” and then do it again. Its like playing a little game to see which color survives until the end.

If its gummies though you always have to save all the opaque ones until the end. They always taste SOOOOOOOOOOO much better than the rest, which begs the question why dont they make gummies with all opaque ones in there? Its always just like 2 or 3 that you have to fight over if your sharing with someone.

I can’t remeber how this started, but it it something my daughter and I both do. When we get a fortune cookie at the Chinese restaraunt, we eat half of it before we can read the fortune.

@ Hollywoodduck ~ that waffle idea sounds good!

I like eating blueberry Kashi waffles spread with cream cheese.

Ok, so normally I eat Oreos the regular, intact way. But if I am going to “open-er-up” I have to first breathe hot breath through one flat side of the cookie, thus releasing the bond to the icing filling and allowing one cookie side to be removed sans filling. Just twisting and ending up with some or (g-d forbid!) an unequal amount of icing on each cookie might just kill me!

@hollywoodduck: The bacon’s good in pancake batter, too! I posted just such a thing a year ago here and received my very first lurve!

@scamp: i’ve heard that eating the cookie before reading the fortune means that it won’t come to pass. but no idea if that holds true if you’re only eating half the cookie :)

i almost always eat each thing completely separate, like all of my potato salad, before moving on to my mini corndogs. when i am finished eating, then i will have a beverage. and 90% of the time i start with the sides, starchy things first, then i’ll eat the entree. some people seem to have a hard time coping with this. dunno why! is it really all that strange?

@scamp and surlygirl, I hope you’re both wrong! :) My ritual has always been to eat the entire cookie before reading the fortune.

Also, I seldom chew Cheez-Its – I let them sort of “melt” in my mouth and go all mushy. As for an unfortunate Kit-Kat that should cross my path – it’s taken apart, one crispy, wafer layer at a time (after nibbling all the chocolate off each side, front and back).

Oh also if im eating a sandwich i have to make sure my last bite has a little bit of everything in it. Because like the last bite has to be the best, you have to savor that.

If I have sushi, I have to have my sake (salmon) last, because it’s the most clean tasting piece and makes me feel lurve inside.

i do always try to save the best bite for last… does everyone do that????

@emilyrose Exactly. You got to be able to savor your meal for a bit after your done eating it.

@emilyrose I know that I do in many cases.

I push out my lower lip and look for light reflecting of it before I take a bite. Weird I know. But its something I’ve done since childhood.

@nagilum I’m having a hard time visualizing this, what do you mean by a light reflecting off of it? What if there is no light (that I can’t understand)? Do you then not eat it? Do you do this before every single bite?

@nagilum, are you looking for glistening saliva? That’s what I see when I try it…and I also see myself looking mentally challenged. Wow, you should really stop that.

surlygirl & spendywatson I wonder if I have been bringing myself bad luck all these years??

I was wondering the same…maybe we should just stay away from fortune cookies.

Either that or don’t read the fortune! ha ha!!

i haven’t had a real fortune in a while, so i’m not terribly concerned about the order. although, i have been skipping the cookies to save a few calories…

I eat by course I am weird about food touching.