After I complied with SWMBO’s request, she said ‘Maybe you should have put it into a bowl.’ It would have been easier and just as tasty to eat it by the forkful instead of cutting it with the side of our forks. (I did get out knives, but she thought she didn’t need one.)
Very much falls into the category of something I appreciate when it’s there, but don’t particularly care about. I don’t think it would be possible to actually upset me with poor presentation.
OTOH. If my ham and cheese ain’t exactly equal on my sammich, in amount, size and with even edges…well…then, my servant must be whipped. I tell you what.
Tsk tsk, you just can’t get good help nowadays.
I normally plate our meals, and the plates look tidy, but normally no garnishes. Sometimes I do better with meal planning and the colors look quite nice.
My coworker brings in cakes, and they are gorgeously decorated. She originally wanted to be a baker and then figured out there’s not much money. If I bring in something, it’ll be banana bread, or cookies. No frosting (except carrot cake) or icing. Just basic baked goods.
Grilled cheese sandwiches have to be sliced diagonally. It is written.
Meals are eaten at a table, which has place mats, napkins, etc.
I’d say that presentation is more important when food is being presented to you. However when you make the food you know the ingredients and are involved in the cooking is it less applicable.
Yes, if I’m serving/hosting people for a meal, it definitely is. For me, good presentation is a table cloth, good silverware and napkins, and fresh dishes and silverware for each course or the transition from salad to dinner to desert.
That’s pretty much my thinking as well. I don’t spend a lot of time on presentation at home- typically it’s more along the lines of “dinner’s ready- come serve yourself”, than whoever cooked the meal carefully plating it.
And generally unless I’m going somewhere that’s higher-end, I’m not expecting much in the way of presentation. I mean, I’d like my burger to be right-side up and fully assembled, but I’m not concerned if I have a pile of fries, or whether they’re neatly arranged in a little paper cone or anything like that.
When guests come over, my wife’s the one who really gets concerned about presentation; it’s a holdover from her parents. Her mom puts garnishes and neatly fans out and arranges everyhthing on just about every meal that isn’t an everyday meal, even though everyone at the meal save the kids have been part of the family for nearly 20 years. To me, this is extra effort and stress, but apparently it scratches some itch that she has.
Of course, sometimes those garnishes are sub-optimal; once she put basil as a garnish on the green jello salad. Eating the part that had been in contact with the basil was not delicious.
Not at all for me. I remember in Kitchen Confidential AB said you could always garnish with parsley. We have a pot of herbs right outside the kitchen door, so when I’m being fancy, I’ll snip off a couple of sprigs.
When we have company, I’ll make a bit of an effort to arrange food nicely on the serving platters. But my wife and I often call each other “Peasant” for the way we are satisfied with simple foods. Tasty fuel is all we are looking for. And neither of us enjoys the preparation/clean up enough to expand it.
That’s the garnish I grew up with in the 70s and 80s. Sambo’s, Denny’s, every restaurant, it came with some parsley. I didn’t actually knew we could eat it then.
You don’t.
I like parsley and will cook with it from time to time as a mild herb. But I also will happily crunch on the stems of raw parsley garnishes as well - it’s a decent palate cleanser 
.
Dad said the parsley was there so you’d ‘get your chlorophyl’. It was eaten after the meal with a dash of salt.
I recall my parents saying it had some vitamin - maybe A.