Is there some food that you eat in a special way that can only be described as a ritual? (a revived question)

Mmmm. Paydays. Must eat all the nuts off the outside first.

Swiss Rolls: Must eat all the chocolate off the out side, then eat as you unroll it.

+1 with @Dutchess_III on the payday ritual.
I also like to dissect string cheese in strings to consume. I can make a piece last half an hour easy and make my wife go bananas.

I like to peel all the chocolate off of HoHo’s before uncurling the cakey part and eating it open-faced (I don’t always do part 2. Mostly if the wife is watching)

I re-assemble all my sandwiches from Rax or Arbys so that the meat is all even over the entire sandwich. Cannot abide a meatball in the middle.

Ditto on the string cheese thing! I think doing these kinds of things helps one to eat less. Like, my peanut M&Ms…I suck the hard coating and the chocolate off of the peanut, then eat the peanut. The candy lasts a long time that way.

@Dutchess_III were we twins separated at birth? I do all that stuff!

I’m having a hard time equating the way I eat certain foods with ritual, and I think the difficulty arises from what I know of ritual. I am a recovered Episcopalian and a fallen Freemason, both organizations value high ritual. To be more specific, I was a High-Church Episcopalian, and the Freemasons live and breathe ritual.

So when I hear “ritual,” I think of processing, marching, presenting, sanctifying, and reciting. None of that goes into anything I eat.

In one sense, everything I eat is ritualized, because I eat at the table almost exclusively. I can’t eat in my easy chair. I am not comfortable there. I eat occasionally at the counter in the kitchen, but for the most part, I prepare my food and eat seated at the table.

When I was a child, I loved little chocolate-covered donuts. I used to eat them in a circle. I ate around the outside and then popped the hole in all at once. But I stopped eating waxy chocolate many decades ago.

I learned to eat camembert in Normandy. I start with good, ripe camembert that I let come to room temperature. I tear off a good hunk of baguette and smother it with rich butter and then shovel on a large helping of camembert. I eat this mound with great relish and many oos and ahs. come to think of it, I eat most food with many oos and ahs. I like to eat. It’s probably my favorite hobby actually.

Vietnamese Pho.

First, I must put enough sriracha, sate, chili sauce etc. to turn the broth a deep dark red.

Second, need a small plate or bowl to make a dipping sauce which is equal parts hoisin/ oyster sauce, sriracha, and soy sauce.

Find every slice of meat possible to dip into said dipping sauce. If a vegetarian Pho, then tofu and most of the veggies.

After all the meat has been consumed (or veggies and tofu), pour the remaining dipping sauce into the soup.

Eat the soup.

Thanks, @Winter_Pariah. I think I know what I want for dinner now.

Hostess cupcakes. You eat halfway in on each side and then the white squiggle last.

Mashed potatoes with gravy. Eat the barricades first while preserving the gravy pond in the center. Then devour that.

I see how I cook, serve and eat the meals I prepare as potentially steeped in ritual. I love to cook really good tasting food and the best part is sitting down and relishing the great tastes and flavors and try not to get too upset when my teenager wolfs down the dinner in 45 seconds and asks to be excused. The way I treat my favorite candy bar in a similar fashion where I will put a Charleston Chew candy bar in the freezer and later take it out and slam the candy bar on the counter and sit down to enjoy the shattered frozen chewy splinters of candy as they melt in your mouth.

I eat one thing at a time on my plate, finish that and then go on to the next item. And they can’t touch.

Somebody I know (I won’t tell on him, though, so don’t even ask me) cuts a fried egg into nine little squares, like a tic-tac-toe grid, and eats them in a certain order. The center one is last because it’s the best, having the yolk in it. It’s all done with care and deliberation, and it resembles a ritual to me.

I laughed the first time I watched this, but later on I practiced not looking.

Me? I don’t do anything weird. Nope.

Nothing weird. Of course. *guffaw

I’m all over that string cheese thing. People who eat string cheese in stick form cannot be trusted.

My major ritual is coffee, which is made with a French press and involves heating the water to exactly 172 degrees Fahrenheit.

I also make hot tea in exactly the method described by Douglas Adams.

I take my hot stimulants seriously.

I knew I liked you @Seek

I eat Heath toffee candy bars by biting gently so the chocolate comes off without breaking the toffee. I eat the chocolate first then the toffee.
I have not had one in years.

Oh boy, haha, I had a lot of food rituals…

All things I used to do as a little kid and slowly grew out of:

-Eat cinammon roll from outside around until reaching the center. Basically unwrapping it from being rolled around if that makes more sense (having trouble with the wording).

-Eat around the crust of a piece of bread and then eat the middle.

-Same as @chyna with the eating one thing on plate at a time

-Cut up all the individual squares of a waffle and eat one at a time

-Put Cheezit crackers into a little bowl and crush them up into a powder with a fork. Pour that into my mouth.

-Cut up into little pieces and eat leftover pizza. ONLY leftover and reheated in microwave. If it’s fresh from the oven forget about it, it won’t taste the same lol.

I still do that thing like @LuckyGuy with the Heath bars though.

The only thing I can think of right now – and I have no idea when or why I started doing it – is that instead of eating my sandwiches horizontally, I’ll flip it and eat it vertically. I guess that only makes sense to people who buy bread that isn’t even on all sides. I get rectangular bread, not square bread.

I eat sandwiches on buns upside down so that I don’t get left with a tiny piece of soggy bread on the bottom.
I try and eat my meals in this order: protein, starchy carbs, veggies, fruit.
I also eat most things with my hands.
I guess those aren’t really rituals but more just out of the ordinary.
@LuckyGuy whoa I haven’t had one in years either but I used to do that, too.

@LuckyGuy, I do the same with Heath bars. Just had some mini ones the other day, from after Halloween candy sales. So good (but Skor is better)!

I’m also very much a ‘best for last’ person. I try to make sure the last bite of each separate food is the best bite of that food, and save the best bite of the best food for the very last bite of the meal.

I used to kind of lightly bite the heathbars so that only a chunk of the chocolate came off and the crunchy middle part was not affected. It got to the goal quicker.

I love this thread! Sadly, I just wolf everything down indiscriminately. The closest I come to a ritual- only because it happens every day- is my morning coffee routine. For the longest time I didn’t own a coffee thermos, and would rush off to work with an open coffee mug. I drank that in the car with whatever handheld thing was breakfast that day, while driving. The bottom of my cup holder is now a layer of ancient coffee.

One time a friend got in the car and she said “Mmm, it smells like coffee in here!” I said guiltily, “Yeah, I spilled coffee once… every day… since I bought this car.” My life is a shambles.

Chocolate covered cherries….lick the top of the candy until the chocolate melts, then get the cherry out (not going to describe how because you people are perverted!) then suck out the creamy syrup then eat the rest of the chocolate.

Well, naturally, any cream-filled cookies need to be nibbled and twisted, until the cream can be eaten separately.

I eat Toffifee by biting off the chocolate, then extracting the hazelnut. Lastly, I enjoy the mushy goodness of nougat and caramel. I’m including this image to illustrate.

We have something called Spaghettieis (spaghetti ice cream, but not what you think). I eat that by preserving the top and carving out a bear’s cave on one side, until it collapses. I amused myself with that as a kid, and it stuck. At least I am no longer building a guinea-pig’s theme park out of my oatmeal.

Well, picking things apart seems to be a universal thing! Anybody care to throw out a guess as to why that is?

For me, it’s the challenge. Need to pry the cookies apart without breaking them. It never works.

Yes! A challenge! And to make it last.

Also we are primates.

Also yeah.