Miss Manners: Yes, you can eat asparagus with your fingers

[cereta]

DEAR MISS MANNERS: My roommates think it is OK to eat asparagus with their hands. However, I believe this looks childish and that asparagus should be eaten with a knife and fork. Is it really a finger food?

GENTLE READER: Yes, it really is. Every once in a while, etiquette likes to shock people, and this will do it.

However, as it offends you, you can invest in asparagus tongs. Miss Manners assures you that seeing what look like small silver forceps on the dinner table will produce an equal amount of shock.

Comments

[cereta]

I post this little amuse-bouche mostly because I learned this particular lesson from Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, and heavens, has it made my culinary life easier.

Of course, I would eat most of my meal with my hands if I could ;). And yet, I married a person who eats chicken wings with a knife and fork.

[xenacryst]

How do you eat chicken wings with a knife and fork?

[cereta]

With great determination.

[xenacryst]

I would think so. I'd have to be very determined to both eat the darned thing and not get any on my fingers. But, yanno, that's what they make individually wrapped lemon scented moist towlettes for. But, to each their own!

[torachan]

Is, is it really her business how her roommate eats anything? Even if the "etiquette" is incorrect?

[cereta]

Nope.

[minoanmiss]

Jesus flipping haploid Christ, life is too short for this kind of malarkey. I care about whether my roommates do the dishes, not what utensils they use for what.

[cereta]

Your first sentence sums up how I feel about roughly 40% of "etiquette" rules. Unless it is functioning to make life easier and more pleasant for everyone, let it go.

[minoanmiss]

Yeah, there's the stuff that makes life easier and more graceful, and then there's the ridiculousness.