There are valid reasons to choose each one of them. Let's start with the fork:I would consider the fork to be the most used piece of silverware in the drawer. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the stigma associated with someone who isn't able to handle eating with a fork (think Dirty Rotten Scoundrels).
Forks are generally associated with "Man Food", and I'm not talking Manwich (which would be hard to eat with a fork). With a fork, you can cut the food, mash the food, stab the food, or manipulate the food in any way you'd like. A fork lets you take charge of what you eat, to kill it if it's not already dead. That's what a fork does.
With a fork, there's very little you can't eat. You can eat beef, pork, chicken, lamb, snake, or pretty much any other meat. You can eat potatoes, tomatoes, radishes, celery, lettuce, corn, beans, and peas. Pretty versatile, eh?
The only real limitation that a fork has is soup. You can still eat the chunks out of soup (and isn't that why you eat soup anyway?) but you can't get the broth, which is pretty good, too. You can always just drink the soup, though, if it's too runny to be eaten with a fork.
The Spoon.
Spoons are a little more tricky. They can help you eat pretty much all the same things, but don't allow you to stab anything. That means that all your food has to be cut up into small pieces that will fit on a spoon. You know, like how you cut up your kids' food because they can't be trusted not to poke their eye out with a fork. (For purposes of this post I'm assuming that your food could be prepared with whatever utensil necessary, but you'd be limited to one utensil at the table. That seems like a reasonable assumption.)
Of course, spoons make eating soup a lot easier, unless you're eating chicken noodle soup. But, really, how are you supposed to eat chicken noodle soup anyway? You almost have to use a fork or the noodles fall right off your spoon. Maybe someone should develop an entirely unique utensil for eating chicken noodle soup. How about it, science?
Spoons are great for eating melons, too. They allow you to eat the juicy goodness of the melon without getting melon juice on your cheeks and forehead (you eat it how you want, I'll eat it how I want). But, then again, a fork works pretty well for watermelon, but I'd have to give the "melon edge" to the spoon.
The Knife
In my world, it's an option. You'd be surprised how much you can eat with a knife. Peas, for instance (this was supposed to include a link to Homer Simpson eating peas with a knife, but I couldn't find one. Use your imagination). Butter would be another food item that you could eat easily with a knife. Hummus, jelly (in all its varieties), peanut butter, uhh... Lots of things. Plus, if that's all you had, you'd probably find a way to eat everything you like to eat with a knife.
So which utensil wins? It depends on who you are. If you're a soup lover, you'll probably want to stick with the spoon (and stay away from Chicken Noodle Soup). If you like meat, a fork is probably going to be your utensil of choice (as long as it comes pre-cut. Or, as an alternative, you could pair up with someone who chose the knife!) If you really enjoy peas and spreads of every kind, go with the knife.
Which utensil is my favorite? Chopsticks.
With chopsticks you can pick up individual pieces of food and put them right in your mouth! It's like using your fingers, but your fingers don't get dirty or burned! They're great! Oh, didn't I give you that option? My bad.
An additional benefit of chopsticks is that you don't have to smelt metal ore create them. If you were trapped on an island somewhere you could make chopsticks pretty easily, as long as you could find a tree. I once whittled chopsticks out of a boat I was trying to whittle. It would be much harder to make your own spoon, and harder still to make a fork.
The only thing that would make chopsticks better is what I call "Super Chopsticks". They're just like ordinary chopsticks, except there's a spoon on the top end of one of them, and a fork on the top end of the other. Oh, and the outside edge of one of spoon-ended chopstick is a knife. That's what I pick. I want the "Super Chopsticks"
3 comments:
If you never eat soup or drink it out of a cup, you don't have to worry about a spoon, and if we're talking a butter knife, they don't cut anything anyway, so if you could just dip your bread into your butter, you don't kneed a knife either. So I'd go with the fork. Or the super chopsticks.
what about the spork? you forgot the spork! i'd choose a spork.
I considered including the spork, but I couldn't think of anything good to say about it. It combines all the worst traits of forks and spoons (and they usually have a sharp edge on them that cuts your lips as you eat). They're not spoony enough to eat soup, and not forky enough to eat anything else.
Post a Comment