I spent a week on a cruise vacation with my sweet husband. White tablecloth meals with people I didn’t previously know have once again impressed upon me that I have pretty bad table manners. And I don’t think I care. People still seem to go out to dinner with me even though everyone else seems capable of not doing the following:
Forearms on the table
Breadcrumbs everywhere from the buttering of the bread - rolls I sliced in half right there at the table
Liberal interpretation of foods that can be eaten by hand
Loud silverware
As mentioned, I don’t think I care. But tell me, if you would, what impression am I making to you?
The only thing you mentioned that made me cringe is “rolls I sliced in half right there at the table”. I took to heart my grandmother’s admonishons to tear - never cut with a knife! - a bite-sized piece of bread, butter only that bit, and eat that. Repeat. Watching someone hack at a loaf with a knife and smear butter on the whole thing, taking big bites out of a slab o’ bread and butter is just like nails on chalkboard to me. If I see that in a formal setting (of course I eat it that way at home, but we’re talking “formal” here, right?), I assume the person is ignorant of proper manners at best and a boor at worst. It’s a childish way to eat, like grabbing your fork in your fist or using a sippy cup.
I am guilty of the forearms on the table at all but the most formal of dinners - not while dining, but between courses or at the end of the meal. I manage to not stick my elbows up there, but I do tend to lean on my forearms.
You’d be surprised at some of the things eaten by hand at a formal meal - asparagus, for example, should not be sliced, but taken between two fingers at the bottom and eaten beginning at the flower end, butter dripping gaily down your elbow.
Hmm, I suppose making asparagus popsicles with a fork and chowing down is not appropriate, then? Butter still runs down my elbow.
I am familar with the little bite way to eat a roll, but them crusty bread rolls dissolve into a mess of crumbs when I do that. Is there another secret?
Not really, but breaking the bread into small pieces over the bread plate keeps most of the crumbs on the bread plate instead of all over your place setting, the tablecloth and your shirt.
Or so they tell me. I’m one of those well-endowed women with perma-stains on all my shirts right in the middle of my cleavage, because my rack acts like a catch-all, so perhaps your cleanliness advice should come from somewhere else. :smack:
My Grandma Bodoni used to call her cleavage “the breadbasket” for just this reason. I, personally, will always tuck my napkin into the front of my shirt or dress, because it does no darn good on my lap!
Grandma Bodoni used to wear corsets, with stays in them. However, during long car rides with family, she’d take the stays out.
Well, that pretty much sounds like me, expecially the slicing bread rolls and eating things with my hands. So, you’d get no condemnation from me at the fancy dinner. And you’d be welcome at the White Trash Table (which is what we dubbed ourselves at the last wedding).
The term is “Admiral WhyNot”. We tell Mom she oughta be a Supreme Commander, or at the very least an Admiral, because she gives herself medals all the time.
Asparagus shouldn’t be buttered. You people are strange.
Well, someone’s gotta represent the :dubious: :dubious: :dubious: army, so it might as well be me. I’d be either appalled or – if, as someone suggests above, you chew with your mouth open – actively grossed out.
Dining isn’t a spectator sport. The point of table manners isn’t to follow some arbitrary set of rules, but to eat more or less inconspicuously, so your fellow diners don’t have to stare in horrified fascination to see what edible item ends up where other than in your mouth.
Oh dear. Forearms on the table edge is bad? I thought it was just elbows that was bad manners.
I could eat without my forearms on the edge of the table, I suppose, but I’d need to sit a couple inches higher to do it. Is it bad form for an adult to gain a little altitude by sitting on a couple of stacked phonebooks??
Your manners sound passable to me, Apricot, unless by ‘loud silverware’ you mean you’re squeaking the knife on the plate so loudly that it sounds like some sort of small primate’s alarm cry. Clattering the tines of the fork against your teeth when you take bites, that’s pretty horrid too. Or chewing with your mouth open. Hmmm. Idea for a new thread in this.
:dubious:
Well, I don’t put my elbows on the table, I don’t clink my silverware (flatware, dear), I don’t slurp my soup, I know a wine glass from a water goblet, I don’t make asparagus popsicles and I don’t stuff peas up my nose - but what is so dreadfully wrong with slicing a roll and buttering it?
Have I been offensive all these years and not known it? :eek:
I guess I’m in the minority here- most of the OP’s dining habits I would find slightly offensive if I witnessed them at a nice restaurant or cruise dining room, but not to the extent that I’d actually be “offended!”. Although, I cry foul on the no-forearms-on-the-table rule- I’ve been going to nice restaurants since I was but a wee lad, all over the world, and I’d guess that the majority of diners, even the ones perceived as polite to the point of being stuffy, occasionally rest a forearm or two on the edge of the table. The bread thing is day 1 etiquette, though.
I’ve no problem with anything except the breakcrumbs. I’m slightly fastidious when I eat; I hate getting stuff on my face and fingers except where it’s expected (wings, ribs) and even then I tend to clean it off after every few bites, and breadcrumbs and whathave you sort of bother me. But cutting rolls at the table? Check. (I hate tearing; it squishes the nice fluffy bread) Forearms – hell, entire elbows – on the table? Check. Loud silverware? Well … probably not disconcertingly so as I’m a careful slicer and fork-across-a-plate is akin to fingernails-on-a-blackboard for me, so I avoid that at all costs. Gripping spoons and forks in my fist instead of daintily between my first two fingers and thumb? Check. Salad fork = dinner fork? Check.
Impressing table manners upon me had been attempted in my formative years, but they never took, and that’s just fine by me.
I think it’s because your options for consuming it subsequently consist of getting butter all over your top lip, or showing too much of your teeth when you bite it. But I don’t think this one is even going to raise eyebrows; all that will happen is that your fellow diners will quietly experience a sense of smug superiority.
This is news to me. I’ve always eaten asparagus with a knife and fork. What’s more, that’s the only way I’ve ever seen it eaten in a formal setting. Generally, formal affairs try to minimize actions that get butter all over your hands, so I’m suspicious.
I butter the whole roll, then tear. It’s just so inefficient to butter, tear, butter, tear. But I can’t stand to have food touching my face, so I prefer tearing to biting into the whole roll (not that I won’t eat burgers or wings the usual way).