Ship of Fools: How Do You Eat Spaghetti?

Thread: How Do You Eat Spaghetti? Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

This is provoked by finding out that Eldest Son, age 30, eats spaghetti with a knife and fork. Most of the family uses a fork and spoon but I use a fork. None of us are remotely Italian, ethnically or culturally, although Elder Daughter could pass as Neapolitan through her colouring.

What do you do?

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

When I was a child, I was taught to eat it with a knife and a fork (I think my parents still eat it this way). I only learned the fork and spoon method later (which is what I use now).

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

Everyone in my family (Italian) uses fork alone. Many people do twirl the fork in the bowl of a spoon, but that is strictly an informal way of eating -- OK for family gatherings but never done in public.

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

We spent the day with some friends recently, and they provided a separate children's dinner for their children and the Cnihtlets first, then sent the kids off to play while the adults ate.

Kiddie dinner was spaghetti bolognese; our host served a portion for each child, then immediately took a knife and fork and made several criss-cross cuts on each plate, cutting the spaghetti into short bits.

I was thoroughly confused - that just makes the spaghetti maximally hard to eat. If you don't want to serve long strands of spaghetti, fine - serve penne or something.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Leorning Cniht: I was thoroughly confused - that just makes the spaghetti maximally hard to eat.

I don't understand what you find so difficult about it? I guess the spaghetti has to be thoroughly mixed with the sauce to make it rather sticky. Then you just cut it into small bits with knife and fork, you balance one of these bits on a fork and put it into your mouth.

Granted, it isn't a very sophisticated way to eat spaghetti, but I ate it like this when I was a child and I didn't find it that hard.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

And are shipmates serving spaghetti with a pool of sauce in the middle [Eek!]

or properly, with the pasta added to the sauce, mixed thoroughly and then served?

Not only does it make it much easier to serve but also to eat, plus looking better on the plate.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

I can't answer this poll. Sometimes I use a knife and fork, sometimes I use a fork and spoon.

Sometimes I break the spaghetti into short pieces into the saucepan of boiling water to cook it, because I'm too impatient to ease it in gently, also that way, the first end cooks before the last end. Sometimes I don't.

Sometimes I mix the spaghetti sauce all the way through the pasta. Sometimes I plonk it on the top. Sometimes I add grated cheese but not always.

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

I use a fork and spoon usually, sometimes just a fork. My kids are supposed to use fork and spoon but more usually they just use a fork in the shovel and slurp method [Smile]

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

I put the sauce on top.

Posted by MrsBeaky (# 17663) on :

Always with a fork and always with the sauce stirred through.And always with a napkin handy....

Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on :

I use just a fork. Always thought the spoon was unnecessary.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

I use just a fork, biting off the dangly bits when necessary.

[Smile]

Posted by Imaginary Friend (# 186) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
... Elder Daughter could pass as Neapolitan through her colouring.

She has white, pink, and brown stripes?

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

Just a fork, although sometimes in a restaurant, if they provide a big spoon, I'll roll it on my fork using the spoon. Especially if it's slippery angel hair, sometimes your fork needs a little help.

Now, the next question: Do you eat it off a plate or in a bowl?

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Imaginary Friend:

quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
... Elder Daughter could pass as Neapolitan through her colouring.
She has white, pink, and brown stripes?

After uneven sunbathing, possibly.

Posted by St. Gwladys (# 14504) on :

I was shown that the "correct" way to eat spaghetti was to twirl it around a fork. When preparing pasta at home, we usually use penne or suchlike, as it was easier for Lord P to manage, especially when he was younger.

Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :

I really thought this was a question of slurping or not, or wearing the sauce on one's clothing, or not.

I usually tuck a bib onto my blouse, because I use the fork to twirl the spaghetti, and splatter sauce all over myself. (Saved for dessert later.)

Posted by comet (# 10353) on :

A fork alone in public. At home, the boys and I tease an end to the edge of the plate and slurp worms. [Big Grin]

I may not be a classy mama but I'm always fun.

Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Imaginary Friend:

quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
... Elder Daughter could pass as Neapolitan through her colouring.
She has white, pink, and brown stripes?

Quotes File! [Big Grin]

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

I chose a fork, because that's what I use in public on the rare occasions that I eat spaghetti in public.

At home, I use a spoon and a bowl. The sauce is always mixed into the spaghetti. Or vice-versa. Depends how I feel... or which is the bigger pot.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
PeteC: At home, I use a spoon and a bowl.

Do you twirl the spaghetti around your spoon?

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
Leorning Cniht: I was thoroughly confused - that just makes the spaghetti maximally hard to eat.
I don't understand what you find so difficult about it?

If you're going to cut the spaghetti into small bits and scoop with a fork, my local grocery store sells a very large number of different shapes of pasta, at the same price per pound, which are more convenient for scooping and don't tend to slip between the tines of a fork.

The only advantage of spaghetti is its wrap-around-a-forkability.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Leorning Cniht: If you're going to cut the spaghetti into small bits and scoop with a fork, my local grocery store sells a very large number of different shapes of pasta, at the same price per pound, which are more convenient for scooping and don't tend to slip between the tines of a fork.

But perhaps some people like chopped-up spaghetti?

Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
But perhaps some people like chopped-up spaghetti?

Perhaps so - it just seems rather unnecessary to me.

Posted by Ariston (# 10894) on :

Now, here's the thing that really and truly annoys me about some of you rubes—what do you mean, you mix the sauce in with the pasta? If you do that, all you get is an undifferentiated morass of schtuff, rather than the properly separated but intermixible combination of pasta, then sauce, then, if you want it, grated cheese/garnish/chile pepper/olive oil. It makes the presentation much nicer, it allows you to have a few bites of pasta without the topping just to get the flavor, and it allows you to control the sauce/pasta ratio you want for each individual bite. If I wanted a mixture of pasta and liquid, I would have made noodle soup, not spaghetti.

Oh, and I twirl the fork against the plate, even if both my parents insist quite firmly that the only polite way to do it is against the spoon.

Posted by piglet (# 11803) on :

I'm in the spoon-and-fork camp; if a restaurant doesn't provide a spoon, I'll use the fork/edge-of-plate gambit (I had no idea that was regarded as infra dig). I add the pasta to the sauce on the stove-top, mix it a bit and serve it in a warmed dish.

Someone mentioned plates or bowls; I have a couple of plates that have slightly raised edges giving a very shallow bowl effect - not deep enough to serve soup, but perfect for pasta.

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
PeteC: At home, I use a spoon and a bowl.
Do you twirl the spaghetti around your spoon?

Yes. I have been also known to break the pasta into pieces. But I'm spastic, and there are some days when I am really spastic and those are the days I break it to make it easier to eat with a spoon.

In India, if the pasta is cooked by residents, it is always broken. Lots and lots of sauce. Spoons are the only way to go.

Posted by Bob Two-Owls (# 9680) on :

I lived with a Chinese-Italian family for a while so my first taste of non-tinned pasta was spaghetti bolognese served with pickled vegetables, parmesan and eaten with chopsticks.

These days I use a fork and when I am in Italy I seem to be doing pretty much the same as everyone else.

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

Has anyone tried to vote twice? Love the message!

Thanks to everyone who has participated, couple of days to go yet.

Sioni

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ariston:
Now, here's the thing that really and truly annoys me about some of you rubes—what do you mean, you mix the sauce in with the pasta?

Apparently this is what they do in Italy, or so I was told.

quote:
Originally posted by Bob Two-Owls:
I lived with a Chinese-Italian family for a while so my first taste of non-tinned pasta was spaghetti bolognese served with pickled vegetables, parmesan and eaten with chopsticks.

Chinese noodles are quite similar to spaghetti anyway. Were you expected to slurp your Chinese spaghetti? I'm told they're very keen on slurping noodles in the Far East, to show appreciation.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

I have trouble imagining how a spoon helps. Is that some kind of Welsh thing? If one fork was not enough (whyever not?) two forks would be easier than fork and spoon surely?

Posted by lily pad (# 11456) on :

You pick up a few noodles with the very end of the fork, then you place the tips against the inside of the bowl of the spoon - spoon and fork are at right angles to oneanother - and you twirl the fork while keeping the tines touching the spoon. The result is a tightly wound mass of spaghetti and sauce that, hopefully, just fills your mouth and is not too much of a mouthful otherwise you must dump that out and begin again. (Unless you are a boy and like being gross when you eat.)

I grew up having my spaghetti cut up on the plate by mom or dad. I never had any troubles eating it with a fork. Once we younger ones were old enough to twirl the spaghetti successfully, it was broken in half before cooking so that we had a shorter amount to twirl and then, once that was mastered, we could have the full length of spaghetti. Needless to say, my mother was motivated by keeping the tablecloth and us clean.

I too always mix the sauce with the pasta in the kitchen. To me, I prefer when it coats the pasta and I find it tastes better.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
I use just a fork, biting off the dangly bits when necessary.

I hate it when somebody bites off my dangly bits.

(seriously this is what I do also)

Posted by Bob Two-Owls (# 9680) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ariel:
Were you expected to slurp your Chinese spaghetti? I'm told they're very keen on slurping noodles in the Far East, to show appreciation.

But of course! Unfortunately slurping bolognese sauce causes wallpaper staining...

Posted by Aelred of Riveaux (# 12833) on :

I don't have the co-ordination for spaghetti, so its the myriad of other pasta shapes for me.

I've heard that certain pastas are supposed to be eaten with certain sauces. I don't and can't imagine it would make much of a difference since the pasta is made of the same thing (unless you're using chickpea/buckwheat/corn pasta instead of wheat). Do shipmates stick to particular shapes with certain sauces and if they do does it make a difference?

[ 20. May 2013, 19:57: Message edited by: Aelred of Riveaux ]

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

I realize that while reading this thread I was eating Chinese noodles (and not slurping them) with a spoon and knife.

(That should be enough to get me thrown out of any pasta house in the Far East.)

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

I like using a fork, twirling long or medium length spaghetti. Short bits of spaghetti annoy the heck out of me.

LeRoc:

quote:
I guess the spaghetti has to be thoroughly mixed with the sauce to make it rather sticky. Then you just cut it into small bits with knife and fork, you balance one of these bits on a fork and put it into your mouth.

I haven't found a sauce sufficiently sticky enough, I guess. To me this sounds like a culinary torment. [brick wall]

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
Perhaps so - it just seems rather unnecessary to me.

Well, this subject came up in connection with children. Although there is no taste difference between spaghetti and penne and the latter would indeed be handier, my three year old nephew loves spaghetti but wouldn't touch penne. You're welcome to try to convince him that this isn't logical [Biased]

quote:
Lyda*Rose: I haven't found a sauce sufficiently sticky enough, I guess. To me this sounds like a culinary torment.

Again, I ate it like this when I was a child, I wouldn't like it now. I just don't see why it would be difficult to eat in this way.

quote:
ken: I have trouble imagining how a spoon helps.

You use the spoon as some kind of mini-bowl that for twisting the spaghetti with your fork.

Posted by piglet (# 11803) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Aelred of Riveaux:
... Do shipmates stick to particular shapes with certain sauces and if they do does it make a difference?

Yes - IMHO the consistency of the sauce sort of dictates the kind of pasta that'll go with it.

I make a sauce with chopped pancetta, garlic, Philly cheese and tomatoes which is quite thick and fairly sticky, and works well with spaghetti; macaroni is better for cheese sauce because the sauce flows into the pasta tubes; and I do a chicken, tomato and mushroom sauce that's slightly runnier and works with fusilli twists.

Posted by Gill H (# 68) on :

quote:
Originally posted by jedijudy:

quote:
Originally posted by Imaginary Friend:

quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
... Elder Daughter could pass as Neapolitan through her colouring.
She has white, pink, and brown stripes?
Quotes File!

Do you have 'Neapolitan' ice cream in the US? I thought it was a UK thing. It's a 3-stripe block comprising chocolate, vanilla and strawberry flavours. I'm sure no actual person from Naples would recognise it!

Anyway, back to spaghetti - I usually find it too messy and have other forms of pasta instead. But when I eat it, definitely fork and spoon.

Mind you, it's only 30 years since spaghetti in the UK only came in a tin covered in gloopy tomato sauce, and was eaten on top of toast. Baby steps...

Posted by comet (# 10353) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gill H:
Do you have 'Neapolitan' ice cream in the US? I thought it was a UK thing. It's a 3-stripe block comprising chocolate, vanilla and strawberry flavours. I'm sure no actual person from Naples would recognise it!

it's a classic. I had some last night!

Posted by PeteC (# 10422) on :

I was eating in the early fifties. World wide flavour...at least in the West.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

I find spaghetti ridiculously difficult to eat, but my wife loves it. Therefore whenever she insists on us having some I spend a few minutes chopping mine up into small pieces so that I can actually get the stuff into my mouth without making an ungodly mess.

Yes, I may as well just have penne. And in fact I would greatly prefer to just have penne. But then either my wife wouldn't have spaghetti or we'd have to boil two different kinds of pasta, neither of which is a desirable option.

I do the same thing when we have tagliatelle as well. Though oddly, noodles don't bother me. I have never before considered how strange that is.

Posted by Zappa (# 8433) on :

I am deeply saddened, deeply saddened I tell you, by the number of plebs in the world [Disappointed]

Posted by basso (# 4228) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gill H:
Do you have 'Neapolitan' ice cream in the US? I thought it was a UK thing.

I'm surprised to learn that it's not exclusively US. As people have said, it's certainly known here.

I once heard a rather odd Trinity Sunday sermon comparing the Trinity to Neapolitan ice cream: three flavors, one container (hey, it's a change from shamrocks!) After the service, we learned we were having Trinity ice cream on the courtyard - but the chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla were being served from separate tubs.

I told the rector (who had not preached that sermon) that the ice cream was clearly heretical, in light of the sermon we'd heard.

She didn't bat an eye. She said, "Yes, that's called a la modalism".

Posted by A.Pilgrim (# 15044) on :

I hate pasta of all forms, so I've never eaten spaghetti in public in a restaurant, where I have a choice of meal. On the very rare occasions that I've been served it - at a friend's for an evening meal ("Oh everyone likes spag bol, don't they?" I was too polite to disavow her of the misapprehension...) - or at a communal meal at a conference centre - I cut the spaghetti up into the smallest pieces with knife and fork and shovel it all in with the fork. That is just the simplest, most effective, and least messy way of getting the stuff off the plate and into my mouth. I'll leave twirling the stuff round a fork and getting trails of sauce down the chin, and dribbles of sauce down the shirtfront, to the purists. [Two face]

Angus

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by basso:
She didn't bat an eye. She said, "Yes, that's called a la modalism".

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

quote:
posted by Gill H
Mind you, it's only 30 years since spaghetti in the UK only came in a tin covered in gloopy tomato sauce, and was eaten on top of toast. Baby steps...

err, No.

There were Italian restaurants serving proper spaghetti in most cities by the 1960s.

And there were specialist grocery shops wherever there was an Italian community.

To put it another way, my family (Welsh) was cooking and eating proper pasta in the 1950s even when in rural Cheshire...

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

In the rural area of the Netherlands I grew up in, Italian food was still something of a novelty when I was a child in the Seventies. I think I ate my first pizza in my late teens.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

When I was a child, we used our fingers, and then went into the bath. This can still be rather fun as a adult, especially if you're drunk or amorous or both, and eating with a friend. The choice is your's, whether to take your shirt off after eating the spags or before, though before can be slightly distracting if you're eating with a special someone....

Thy two breasts are like two meatballs that are twins, upon which I feed among the noodles. Let me come into her garden, and eat her pleasant tomato sauce. This is my beloved, and this is my friend, O daughters of Spaghetti.

Thus, I say the poll is flawed. There is no option for naked spaghetti eating with the fingers.

Posted by Kelly Alves (# 2522) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ariston:
Now, here's the thing that really and truly annoys me about some of you rubes—what do you mean, you mix the sauce in with the pasta? If you do that, all you get is an undifferentiated morass of schtuff, rather than the properly separated but intermixible combination of pasta, then sauce, then, if you want it, grated cheese/garnish/chile pepper/olive oil. It makes the presentation much nicer, it allows you to have a few bites of pasta without the topping just to get the flavor, and it allows you to control the sauce/pasta ratio you want for each individual bite. If I wanted a mixture of pasta and liquid, I would have made noodle soup, not spaghetti.

Oh, and I twirl the fork against the plate, even if both my parents insist quite firmly that the only polite way to do it is against the spoon.

This is how I like it, too, but for some reason it hasn't rendered me all precious about it. [Big Grin]

Posted by Gill H (# 68) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:

quote:
posted by Gill H
Mind you, it's only 30 years since spaghetti in the UK only came in a tin covered in gloopy tomato sauce, and was eaten on top of toast. Baby steps...
err, No.

There were Italian restaurants serving proper spaghetti in most cities by the 1960s.

And there were specialist grocery shops wherever there was an Italian community.

To put it another way, my family (Welsh) was cooking and eating proper pasta in the 1950s even when in rural Cheshire...

In my area of South Wales the local Bracchi's and Rabaiotti's stuck to serving fish and chips. Our local food shops were a Spar and a Co-op, and you only bought dried pasta for making necklaces and pictures.

We didn't have pizza till we got a Sainsbury's in the 1980s. My mum tried to grill them ...

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

Italian food was part of the everyday menu in our house when I was growing up in the Sixties. My mother enjoyed cooking and we often got homemade pizza, and of course, spaghetti. I remember exclaiming in disappointment when we went on holiday to Rome and trying the pizza there, "It tastes like the sort Mum makes." For some reason my mother was delighted by this.

Pizza and pasta (various different kinds) were a normal part of the menu. My mother would make the bread dough as well as the pasta sauce, and to this day my favourite pizza is still the Margherita.

I used to make a spaghetti bolognaise sauce that includes red wine, a little bit of bacon (pancetta wasn't widely available in those days) and some chicken livers as well as the meat. Ideally, it needs at least an hour to cook, but it does taste all the better for it. I haven't always put bacon or chicken liver in, or waited an hour, but I do regard wine as an essential ingredient and I never put mushrooms in.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
no prophet: Thus, I say the poll is flawed. There is no option for naked spaghetti eating with the fingers.

Just as long as you're sure it's your fingers you're using.

Posted by Alaric the Goth (# 511) on :

Before I went to University (aged over 18), the only spaghetti I had ever eaten came out of a tin, courtesy of 'Mr 57 Varieties'! Spaghetti hoops were good: you could try to get as many as possible around each prong of the fork! 'Spaghetti bolognese' tasted better. These were both 'tea time' foods, served after 5pm (i.e. not the main meal of the day, which was always at 'dinnertime', that is between 12.15 and 2.15 pm), on (buttered) toast. [Eek!]

Possibly besacuse of this (NE of England)upbringing, I have always chopped up spaghetti into 'manageable lengths' and, though I cook pasta often, I don't cook spaghetti, though will eat it if someone else has made it. It is still my least-favourite pasta because of the difficulty eating it!

[ 22. May 2013, 12:11: Message edited by: Alaric the Goth ]

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lily pad:
You pick up a few noodles with the very end of the fork, then you place the tips against the inside of the bowl of the spoon - spoon and fork are at right angles to oneanother - and you twirl the fork while keeping the tines touching the spoon. The result is a tightly wound mass of spaghetti and sauce that, hopefully, just fills your mouth and is not too much of a mouthful otherwise you must dump that out and begin again.

But that works just as well without a spoon!

quote:
Originally posted by Alaric the Goth:
Before I went to University (aged over 18), the only spaghetti I had ever eaten came out of a tin, courtesy of 'Mr 57 Varieties'! Spaghetti hoops were good: you could try to get as many as possible around each prong of the fork! 'Spaghetti bolognese' tasted better. These were both 'tea time' foods, served after 5pm (i.e. not the main meal of the day, which was always at 'dinnertime', that is between 12.15 and 2.15 pm), on (buttered) toast.

Yep. Same here in the south east! Spaghetti came in tins, you ate it on toast, and it was a mild luxury. In childhood at least. I think I got used to Real Spaghetti in the very late 60s or early 70s - before I went to university, but when I was more than a little kid.

At the age of 10, in the 1960s, I quite genuinely did not know what a pizza was. I'd never seen one in the flesh, only in American comics or TV shows.

It wasn't for lack of local Italians. We even knew some Italians. Some of then even ran a restaurant. But as far as we were aware it sold ice cream. In those days you didn't eat meals in restaurants. Or people like us didn't anyway. A little cafe now and again. Eating out was about sweets and snacks, not cooked meals. If anywhere we went had sold pizza (I suppose its possible they did) then it probably wouldn't have occured to our Mum or Dad to buy it for us, because we'd be having our tea when we got home. Takeaway food was either fish-and-chips or various knds of pies and sausages. Indian and Chinese takeaways were about to take off (to be joined by Italian, Turkish and Thai not long later, in about that order) but they hadn't done so yet.

All that changed in the 1970s, hugely, but that's how it was for most of the 60s.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alaric the Goth:
I have always chopped up spaghetti into 'manageable lengths'!

Rest assured he has been admonished for this blasphemy on a number of occasions. We can but hope for his final deliverance.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

I suppose it depends where you were. We travelled a lot, anyway, so eating out and restaurants were no novelty. I also liked going out for fish and chips when in England. However, it wasn’t until I got to university that I had Indian food for the first time (other than horrible 70s curries), and Chinese. Vegetarianism was a real novelty then – I remember the dinner ladies at school gathering round to look at this person who didn’t want to eat meat.

I remember spaghetti hoops on toast – quite liked those.

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

Thanks everyone - 82 responses and a thread that goes onto a second page is good going.

I'm sorry, no prophet, that I didn't include the 'finger food' option. I have read about this, but it was asserted that spaghetti was not a suitable finger food. Maybe we'll have try it at the next church bring'n'share buffet.

The poll closed during the night so you've had your chance. Happy eating!

Posted by Gracious rebel (# 3523) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:

quote:
Originally posted by lily pad:
You pick up a few noodles with the very end of the fork, then you place the tips against the inside of the bowl of the spoon - spoon and fork are at right angles to oneanother - and you twirl the fork while keeping the tines touching the spoon. The result is a tightly wound mass of spaghetti and sauce that, hopefully, just fills your mouth and is not too much of a mouthful otherwise you must dump that out and begin again.
But that works just as well without a spoon!

No it doesn't. Without a spoon you would have to use the plate as the hard surface to twirl the fork against. The plate is a horizontal surface, so your fork will be in a fairly vertical position at the end of the twirling process. Spaghetti is slippery, and likely to slip off the fork when it is brought from the vertical position to a more horizontal position when brought to the mouth. The beauty of the spoon is that it allows you to twirl with the fork at an angle more approaching horizontal (ie with the spoon held sideways - if for example you had the spoon in your left hand and the fork in your right, the bowl of the spoon would be pointing slightly upwards, but towards your right). The spoon can also be used to push the twirled ball of spaghetti more securely onto the fork, by changing the angle at which it is held just as you release the fork.

(I'm sure there must be a YouTube clip somewhere, that explain in a couple of seconds what I've just attempted to convey with far too many words!)

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Gracious rebel: Without a spoon you would have to use the plate as the hard surface to twirl the fork against.

I can also imagine that if you do this often, you might damage the ceramics of the plate.

Posted by Ariel (# 58) on :

YMMV but chopsticks are actually easier and quicker than a fork (and spoon), although I really don't recommend watching anyone trying to eat spaghetti/noodles with them.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

Er, no, you hold the fork more or less horizontally when you put the spaghetti on it. Just as with any other food. And give it a twirl or two if you need to to wind up stray strands. . What's so hard about that?

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
ken: Er, no, you hold the fork more or less horizontally when you put the spaghetti on it. Just as with any other food. And give it a twirl or two if you need to to wind up stray strands.

Now I'm confused. Do you put the spaghetti on the fork, or do you twirl it around it?

quote:
Sioni Sais: Thanks everyone - 82 responses and a thread that goes onto a second page is good going.

We haven't even properly started! [Biased]

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

How about this? [Biased]

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Er, no, you hold the fork more or less horizontally.

No, it is held at a 45 degree angle with the tines embedded in the spaghetti as you twirl. And you wouldn't apply so much pressure that it would damage the plate.

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