To spread jams or butter, to cut desserts such as cheesecake or flan. We also use them with omelets and pancakes and other softer foods.
~Max
Fascinating. I think the local sociology department might be interested in doing a study in your home.
My silverware is all thrown together in the drawer, and I don’t have one of those divider thingies.
::Backs away slowly, darting eyes toward the exits::
How about your sock drawer? What’s the plan there?
Whoops, I meant table knives.
The butter knives are on the right side, along with the cocktail fork, serving spoons (normal and slotted), ice tea spoons, serving fork, grapefruit spoons and a sugar spoon.
And the non-matching steak knives (2 sets of six) are on the right side as well.
Almost everything was given to us as wedding gifts.
I forgot to mention that this bizarre behavior carries over to the dishwasher. While the plates are in logical order, the silver container is complete chaos; knives cavorting with forks, spoons mixing with non-spoons. It ain’t natural, I tells ya.
My dishwasher’s instructions state that one should mix it up in order that forks and spoons not get stuck to themselves like dogs mating in the machine. I don’t make the rules; I merely report.
::sputters incoherently::
A proper dishwasher (e.g. mine) has a third shallow rack at the very top. Which lets each flatware item lay horizontally in between an array of short prongs sized appropriately. In our normal layout there’s an area for teaspoons all aligned with each other but spaced apart by the rack prongs. And another area for tablespoons, two sizes of forks, and two sizes of knives. Plus room for some odds & ends like serving utensils.
Emptying that flatware rack is very efficient; just slide your hand under the group of matching utensils, lift, and they’re all pre-stacked and nested neatly in your hand to go into their appointed compartment in the drawer organizer.
Socks are folded/rolled and all in one drawer.
Ditto. One’s spoons will not be cleaned if they’re, well, y’know, spooning.
Left to right, table knives, large spoons (soup spoons are an abomination, no-one’s mouth is round), small spoons, forks, end of divider, then chopsticks and other little stuff. In front of the divider is where the spring clips for chip bags go. All the cooking/serving utensils live in crocks to the right side of the stove top.
Except the lone runcible spoon, which lives in a glass on the shelf by the window, along with the metal straws.
I initially thought you meant in what order to say them, as with you example of jelly and peanut-butter sandwiches. In that case it is spoon, fork, knife.
And mine. I don’t think I‘ll ever back, if I have a choice.
“Uncultured and proud of it!”
also
“I get my culture from yogurt!”
Sometimes Euro-appliances are a weird example of Doing It Wrong. Other times they’re magic-better. This feature is magic-better.
Sadly, our apartment came with a dishwasher that I had no say in. Not only does it not have a proper utensil place like you’re describing (other than the plastic holder for upright stowage only), it doesn’t even have a top sprayer nor any way to just do a rinse cycle or to shut off the heated dry. They went on the cheap with these.
That, also. Except it’s knife, fork and spoon like a civilized person.
I find that flatware gets cleaner that way, since it’s not as prone to nesting together.
I was amazed to see that, cutlery-organization-wise, almost everybody is doing it wrong.
The correct way to organize silverware and related stuff is to have two separate trays in two separate drawers, organized according to “everyday use” and “specialty items”. My main, or everyday use, tray has four parallel compartments, and a bunch of transverse compartments. One of the four, and all but one of the transverse ones, have been relegated to miscellaneous stuff, reflecting the natural inclination of every civilized person to be disorganized (the scientific term is “high entropy”, meaning high disorganization and low energy, which describes me perfectly).
That leaves three long compartments for actual silverware, and the natural order of things, reading from left to right, is knives (of all kinds, mixed together – see “high entropy” above), then large spoons, then forks, and one of the transverse compartments holds teaspoons. The remainder of the drawer is used for miscellaneous large items, like potato peelers, ice cream scoops, etc.
The other tray in the other drawer is for infrequently used or oddball items.
There is also a wooden case containing actual silverware made of actual silver, but that’s mostly ceremonial and has only been used on the most formal occasions.
I agree that eggs “over easy” is wrong. It should be “sunny side up”. Eggs over medium is an abomination.
Quite so. It’s an unnatural abomination on a par with eggs over medium. The advantage of separating knives and forks is that emptying the dishwasher is much more efficient. It’s true that spoons may interfere with each other, but I don’t typically have many spoons and usually manage to put each one in its own compartment. If there are too many for that, I put the big ones in by themselves and mix the teaspoons in at random with the knives or forks.