Food Order Mastication Choice: Self-Reward or Self Denial?

[sick as a pike]

I was wondering if this was even too 'lite' to be included in this forum.  But then I remembered that in Gulliver's Travels, Lilliput and Blefuscu go to war over a dispute about which end of a boiled egg should be eaten first, and that gave me literary backup.  My Swift is bigger than your Swift etc.

So- I was just eating two pieces of toast which I'd sliced in half in what I imagine to be the normal way i.e. West-East, rather than North-South.
I prize the halves with the rounded ends over those with square ends and therefore eat them last.  Similarly, when eating a pizza, I make sure that enough crust is left so a piece of that can be eaten as a final mouthful.
At school, dinner ladies would often come and tell me off for not eating some element of dinner, and seemed surprised to find that I was saving it to last because it was my favourite part.
Do you have similar preferences?  Do you go for your favourites first, (which is WRONG)?

And if you think this is banal, thank Buddha I didn't go for "How many foreign countries have you visited?"


edit: spelliong

[wheatgod]

Save the best till last - its just how the universe works, theres no use fighting it.

[the midnight watch baboon]

I fold my pizzas in half, and eat them like a giant pitta bread thingy. Deeee-lishuss!

Doesn't work very well on thin'n'crispy ones, but they're horrid anyway.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I prefer thin and crispy pizza. Deep pan is just so much empty bread.

[the midnight watch baboon]

Bread can be delicious if well made though; the soft, chewy dough, warmed to the perfect saliva-inducing temperature Mmmmm.... All topped with sweet'n'sour chicken. Or pepperoni and pineapple. Or anything except fish, olives and mushrooms for me.

[fanny splendid]

I was just eating two pieces of toast which I'd sliced in half in what I imagine to be the normal way i.e. West-East, rather than North-South.

I think you'll find corner-to-corner the normal way.
When eaten correctly, every bite is from an acute angle, thus keeping the moustache free from preserve.

[sick as a pike]

Look, you cunts, is this thread called "What sort of pizzas I do like?"  No.  It's about which order you eat your food in, if any, and what that might say about your character.
Mind you, anyone who prefers thick doughy pizza is clearly genetically inferior.

edit: to fanny- for some reason my parents considered the 'North West to South East' bread cut a mark of the social inferior.  Baffling, since posh sandwiches are cut that way.

[extradave]

I can't start eating roast potatoes, cos if I do I can't stop and then I've not got any left.

So I end up eating all 6 or 7 roasties after everything else. It's not ideal, but probably the least worst option.

[niat]

Sandwiches cut NW to SE taste 65% better than those cut any other way. It's a FACT.

[zozman]

I always keep a bit of meat (or whatever the best food is) for last.  I don't even drink anything for a good ten minutes afterwards, lest I wash away a taste that's probably long gone anyway.

[samadriel]

Save the best till last - its just how the universe works, theres no use fighting it.

But what if entropy -- the very same entropy that blesses us with the delights of combustion even as it menaces us with the threat of universal heat death -- does away with the best bit before one has had a chance to eat it?

Then you're fucked, aren't you!

[Borboski]

I always think that if it's a decent meal then a little bit of everything should go together, or at least combinations.

E.g. there's no point in have a bit of sausage on its own, instead you can do:
sausage + egg
sausage + mushroom
sausage + beans and egg
sausage + beans and mushroom
sausage + beans and mushroom and + egg

And thus one traverses the plate in all manner of different directions.  Even a meal with 3 constituents allows 4 different combinations (A+B, A+C, B+C, A+B+C).

If there's a real centerpiece, like you've ordered a cracking steak - then of course it makes sense to leave that last mouthful off the plate to be a bit of meat, meaning that you can mop up all the remaining sauce, plus residue seasoning of the other parts.

Can you imagine if you had steak, plus chips, plus some carrots and courgette?  Only a complete aspergers would leave 5 pieces of courgette last.

[swarfmonkey]

Who would have courgettes with steak?

Everyone knows steak, chips, peas and, on special occasions, cauliflower!

[Borboski]

At LOL NO restaurants kow it seems pretty common that your side veg has carrots, long green beans, and courgette.  It goes quite well with the sauce.

[zozman]

Mushrooms with steak if you please.  You can put a few chilli flakes in and a bit of garlic in while you're about it.

[Neville Chamberlain]

Let me explaing to you I consume my food. Let's assume, for the purposes of this thread, that today's dinner is chicken (C), broccoli (B), carrots (CR) and potato (P) with a delicious lemon sauce (LS). This is how I would proceed:

Forkful 1 = C + B + CR + P + LS (i.e. a little bit of everything)
Forkful 2 = C
Forkful 3 = Forkful 1
Forkful 4 = B
Forkful 5 = Forkful 1
Forkful 6 = CR
Forkful 7 = Forkful 1
Forkful 8 = P
Forkful 9 = Forkful 1
Forkful 10 = C + LS
Forkful 11 = B + LS
Forkful 12 = CR + LS
Forkful 13 = P + LS
Forkful 14 = Forkful 1

The above sequence essentially constitutes one "cycle", which is simply repeated until I have either finished or I no longer require any more. This system can also be applied to any other dishes constituting any number of ingredients. Simple, really.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

It's food. Eat. While you're fannying over what angle and order to shove it in your gob plenty of people don't have any at all.

[sick as a pike]

You have no soul.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

I did send off for one but when it arrived I wasn't sure what angle I was supposed to install it.

[Neville Chamberlain]

Living in the affluent Western world, I have the luxury of fannying about with my food and it is a luxury I fully intend to exploit. So there.

[zozman]

Those smiling animals wouldn't be so happy if they had to live in a refugee camp in the Sudan would they?

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

When eating Pringles I always turn them upside down so that the side with all the flavour is on my tongue.

[the midnight watch baboon]

I always try to time my dinner to coincide with the start of a TV show, and can't eat till the programme's started, I'll just sit with the meal on my lap until it does. I HATE ADVERTS. As for order in which I eat it, if possible I'll just mush everything up into one unidentifiable lump so that every mouthful is equal. If this can't be done I'll alternate forkfuls so that each meal component is treated equally, and none are left all alone till last.

[Neville Chamberlain]

If this can't be done I'll alternate forkfuls so that each meal component is treated equally, and none are left all alone till last.

And that is to your credit, Sir. The words of a true gentleman.

[Borboski]

I think Jim is right to identify LS (e.g. SAUCE) as a special item.  And so his approach is systematic while incorporating a crescendo of each ITEM + SAUCE in turn in the final round (or course, while ending on "little bit of everything").  I would, as suggested above, be happy to end on FAVOURED ITEM (steak) + SAUCE, rather than the little bit of everything, but otherwise I'm happy with his model.

What is problematic is something like pasta and garlic bread - it's very difficult to maintain garlic bread till the last spoonfull.  Especially because the garlic bread will become cold quicker than the rest of the meal.  And so possibly heat reduction allows deviation from the Jim model, even if it's nice to mop the sauce or soup up with the garlic bread.

[mothman]

I did send off for one but when it arrived I wasn't sure what angle I was supposed to install it.

". . . and I'm a Mac. I come with iSoul already installed." Fucking Mitchell'n'Webb and their poxy adverts.

I have a strange phobia about eggs - don't like 'em. Have a horror of cold hard-boiled eggs. Can eat fresh-boiled eggs provided there's plenty of toast handy. Can eat fried eggs provided there's plenty of bacon or sausage to go with it - but baked beans must be well separated and never interact with the egg. Likewise scrambled eggs, although they are allowed to be on their own on toast. Anything with cold egg (or pieces of) in - "full breakfast" pre-packed sandwiches, salad Nicoise, scotch eggs, etc. - is a no-no.

[sick as a pike]

This is an identifiable medical condition in the sense that it isn't, but one you share with an ex-colleague of mine.  He too had to maintain a firebreak between beans and egg.
We knew it had all gone too far when he told us that even the thought of a boiled egg made his nose hurt.  That is your future.

[Neville Chamberlain]

Borboski, I am delighted to see the insightfulness you so commonly display on the religion threads is not lost in this most trivial of threads either. You are right to identify the singular problems that foodstuffs such as pasta and garlic bread present, though I consider them to be quite different entities. For example, with a little training, pasta can be quite easily incorporated in the system I proposed on the previous page. The operative phrase, however, is "with a little training". Garlic bread is quite different, however. I am a firm believer that any quantity of garlic bread that you choose to consume during a meal should be consumed in its entirety at least before you begin the final cycle of forkfuls (see my post on page 1 of this thread in order to find out what I mean by the term "cycle"), but certainly not before you are less than half way through your meal.

[swarfmonkey]

I'm surprised no-one has brought this conundrum up yet.

Mixing food with different textures. Eg Steak and mashed potato. Eat them separately or together? The steak is going to outlast the mash even if the steak is rare. I need some help with this one.

[Neville Chamberlain]

You're clearly an anal retentive if you need help with that one, Mr. Swarfmonkey.