One that amazed me, at an Italian restaurant I frequent, was balsamic vinegar on vanilla ice cream. (Yes, I know, either everyone is going to go “WTF?” or they’re all going to go, “Dude, LOL! Gelato vaniglia all’aceto balsamico has been around forever!”)
Back when Hot Pockets were new, I would perform autopsies on them. I’d use a knife to make two perpendicular cuts to open the shell up, then eat the tasty inner BBQ beef with a fork. It was a comforting ritual, oddly enough.
On preview: That combination had never, ever occurred to me, matt_mcl. I must try it soon.
It was really good. Really surprisingly good. It had an odd caramel taste to it, while retaining the bite of the vinegar.
Oh, here’s another one I’ve gotten flack for: putting salt on my salad. “That’s the etymology of the freaking word!” I tell them, but do they listen?
I do that, although I didn’t know I was being, like, historical and stuff. I just don’t much like dressing, and a little salt does the trick nicely. But thanks for telling me about that. Now I can give people a reason, as if “That’s how I like it” weren’t one.
I don’t think it’s too strange, but I like to dump my pot pie out of its aluminium pan… the pasty and flacid side up then I cut the whole pasty up into tiny pieces and homogenize it (stir it all up into one soggy pastry, beef, veg, and sauce stew the particualarly crispy edges well soaked/ (I hate pot pie edges and their acridity.))
This is how I eat bananas. If you try to peel a banana from the stem end, the tip gets squooshed, which is revolting.
Of course, this method doesn’t work with those little bitty bananas, since the skin is too tough.
Sattua’s friend: Yer yella’!
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=8645624&postcount=37
Try it my way next time, with the strawberries.
While drink rather than food, after I swallow a bit of soda I will always make a quiet “aaah” noise. My sophomore year room-mate picked up on this.
It mostly seems to be a New York type of thing, but folding a slice of pizza in half just seems wrong to me. I eat mine flat, sauce upwards. I know you take a chance of a large slice dripping sauce and toppings into your lap, but I couldn’t get accustomed to folding it like a calzone.
I am one of the most non-violent people you will ever meet, and yet this thread makes me want to punch someone.
Uh…why? 
You get really angry at the idea of someone eating a banana from the non-stem end? You absolutely cannot abide the idea of balsamic vinegar on ice cream or strawberries? Disassembling pizza strikes you as a crime against humanity?
I was not aware that there was any other way to eat pancakes. How do the people who laugh at you eat their pancakes? Do they pick up the whole pile on their fork and stuff it into their mouths?
Seriously–I want to know if there is a way of eating pancakes that is significantly different from the only way I know of.
Sort of. Imagining all these bizarre eating practices just makes me feel strangely unsettled. Like something is really not right with the world - which I already knew logically but the visions of disassembled pizza just make it that much more real and visceral.
I’ve tried that once or twice with oranges - it’s a really weird sensation because the zest oils in the rind make pretty much the whole bottom half of your head tingle so much it feels like it’s buzzing. I guess if you eat them like this all the time, you’d get used to it, but I found it incredibly strange and a bit uncomfortable.
I do usually eat the lemon slice (including rind) that I get in drinks.
I prefer to eat popcorn with chopsticks. I’ll eat it with my fingers too, but if I have chopticks around, I’ll eat it with those. Like the guy who eats donuts with chopsticks, it keeps my fingers from getting greasy, which is good if I’m snacking on microwave popcorn at work and don’t want the keyboard from getting gross. I used to keep a set of chopsticks in the office just for that purpose. My coworkers all thought it was hilarious, but my fingers stayed clean, dammit.
I have known several people who eat skittles and M&Ms by seperating them by color and them eating one color, then the next, and so on. Skittles actually taste different depending on the color, but why do this with M&Ms? I don’t get it.
At a rather frou frou restaurant/wine bar in Chicago (on N. Clark in Lincoln Square…I’m blanking on the name), I had a delicious appetizer of fruits drizzled with vinegar. I’ve never had vinegar like this before or after…it was so rich that at first I thought it was chocolate.
My brother used to be able to get greased up (or down, depending on how you look at it) to his elbows when eating chicken. The one time the rest of the table applauded was when he managed to get grease to his shoulder. As Dad said, “I’m not sure if it’s shameful or amazing, I didn’t know a chicken drum had that much grease in it.”
I cut my pancakes into sort of squares, nothing wrong with using wedges instead.
Teased-apart or sliced banana with lemon juice (real, not that concentrated BEEP) is yummy.
I used to have a vile cow-orker who would eat like a crab. That is, she would hold her head over her plate and move her knife and fork like the little mandibles around a crab’s mouth that it uses to pull food up into its mouth :dubious:
If there’s lemon slices to go with tea, or with cognac, I’ll eat the whole slice, including peel. It’s fairly common over here, I assume because citrus fruits were so unavailable to the vast majority of the population, you needed to make the most of them once you got your hands on one.
I remember when I was a teenager for a while I used to make a snack by getting a slice of white bread, cutting of the crusts, putting on a slice of cheese and then folding, rolling and squeezing the whole mess into a little ball. The only idea I have of an origin for the idea was my love of dumplings and going fishing with an old guy who showed me how to make dough baits for trout fishing.