Don’t get colicky. Nobody’s going to stop you from finger-painting with your squash before you move on to your strained peas.
One-at-a-time: When the food is good, I happily combine meat, sauce, vegs and the starch. If there is a part I don’t like that much, I finish it off first so that the good stuff remains. I everything is meh, I usually mix again.
If there is something Ithat will make me sick, constipated etc I simply do not eat it, e.g. raw onions or raw bell peppers.
Meat surgery can be the very normal and necessary thing to do. A lot of cuts are prepared with the bones, cartilage, lots of fat or rind still attached and you remove them before eating. I do not even understand what else one should or could do - put a big slab in your mouth, chew and suck and than spit out the gristle or bones? A lot of fine fish must have some kind of surgery during eating.
that often results from having and liking tv dinners.
I’ll wade in on the question of why a lot of people like moving from food to food rather than eating all of one thing first then moving on to the next food.
Most of us tend to taste the most nuance in the food at the first bite; you stop, think about what you’re eating, remark to yourself “Wow, that’s really good.” I’m pretty sure there’s a physical aspect to it, where once you taste something, your taste buds and nose get quickly attuned - think about how when you walk into a stinky room, you notice right away, but stay there for a few minutes and it goes away. I’m pretty sure I’ve read about this phenomena, but hell if I can find a cite right now (I looked, I’m coming up blank. I’m guessing it’s in one of my books, not on the web.)
So moving from food to food, you “reset” your nose and taste buds, at least a little, so when you return to a bite of steak after munching on the potatoes for a while, your taste buds and nose register a level of change, and (if it’s a good change) it’s a treat. “Wow, that steak is REALLY good!”
Taken to an extreme, it’s also why high-end chefs are tending to go more with tasting menus and courses that consist of just a couple bites each; the real WOW is the first bite or two, not the 10th.
Eat a big bowl of the same thing, the pleasure of eating really diminishes by the time you get to the end. Move around a bit, you get little sparks of that first bite over and over.
Eh, I think it does. It’s all opinion, and my opinion that it appears to be childish is just as valid as yours that it isn’t.
Athena, I think you are on to something! Do the one-at-a-timers just never realize or discover the effect you are talking about?
*Just to be clear, cause a few people seem confused–what I am referring to is eating all of one item, then another, then the third, NOT avoiding mixing them on the fork.
Some surgery may be necessary, but dissecting too finely can be a bit much. When I say his nose was an inch off the plate for several minutes, I am not kidding. Everyone at the table sort of exchanged glances–the kind of look that says, “yeah, I know, but I am not saying anything either.”