To be surprised at friend eating so oddly?

[Notfootball]

Went out for dinner with some friends tonight and one of them was loading up her knife and eating from it as though it were a fork. Do other people do this? Is this normal but no one told me?

'i eat my peas with honey' isn't spike milligan i don't think. its much earlier. could be wrong. googling didn't help. i think it came from an alice book but i could be wrong. someone give me the reference, please?

no-one should eat off the knife. it is not allowed. abandon this friend immediately - she has bad manners. she would probably ask questions of a person of a higher social status to herself. as a child, she would have made comments about the appearance of adults. and no doubt she wears pearls after 6pm.
shocking.

Lidl- is it James Martin you're thinking of?

This would seriously concern me. I am a bit funny about peculiar table manners - phobic almost. I'm inclined to stare if people hold their cutlery in an odd way or do strange things (disabilities excepted, obviously) and noisy, open mouthed chewers put me off my food altogether and make me feel ill. Likewise if someone gets food on their face/fingers and doesn't immediately wipe it off.

I'm glad I didn't have to watch that. My face might have given me away.

And that habit of cutting up the food and then shovelling it with the fork on the WRONG hand really annoys me.

Also people who just use a fork, and manically saw away at big lumps of food using their blunt fork while ignoring their knife.

Horrible.

Yanbu!

I can't quite picture how that would even work,practically speaking. Have never heard of such a thing. I thought the most cringeworthy knife usage was licking it

Re holding the fork in the wrong hand in you're left handed...there are a lot of left handed people in my family,myself included,all of us hold our forks in our left hands. My uncle,who is right handed eats with his fork in his right hand,it's just plain weird!

One of my sons has always eaten like a left handed person, in psite of being right handed. I would not mind so much, but because he is not left handed he cannot control the cutlery properly, so he ends up holding the food down with his knife and dragging it apart with his fork.

It really makes my blood boil, but he's being doing it for 17 years, so I don't think he's stopping any time soon. Weirdo.

I do that too FellatioNelson! I also drag food apart with my fork! I know it is wrong but I have better things to care about.

Well that's fine so long as one of the things you don't care about is precious people like me string at you and looking a bit horrified.

staring

Can I just ask all of the "fork in the right hand is wrong" people if they still think that writing with the left hand is wrong?

Or have you all managed to grasp that we've moved on from such archaic thinking.

But if fork in the right hand is only wrong if you are eating a meal that requires a knife and a fork, and you are right handed. It is not a blanket rule. I would not use my left hand if I were eating (for example) spaghetti bolognese, or a cake.

And it is nothing like the rule about being left or right handed for writing. Whichever hand is dominant it makes sense to use your knife in that hand, because it requires dexterity, whereas using a fork does not. In the absence of a knife, the fork goes into your dominant hand. It's not archaic, it's just common sense and good manners.

I wouldn't care or notice if someone used their knife and fork in the opposite hands to me, that just seems sensible if you're left-handed and find it easier.

I do care and notice people who use a fork like a shovel or lick their knives! I really, really hate it and I know it is pernickety. It does honestly spoil me enjoying my food. DH is the worst offender because he actually leans over his plate and leans down to the fork as he shovels. He claims this is because he can't sit up straight and get a forkful to his mouth without spilling it. This is because he has never learned to do so.

It gives me the rage.

Btw, I also don't get why people object to US table manners. It's perfectly possible to eat nicely like that. My mates do. They are very polite about us not being very good at it, too (but clearly thought we were raised by wolves the first time they saw us try).

That's the point LRD - no-one cares what way around you hold them, so long as you can operate them properly! It's very odd to hack/tear/shovel at your food, and put your face in the plate, because you cannot manipulate your cutlery properly when YOU ARE HOLDING IT IN THE WRONG FRICKING HAND!

ie, not the dominant hand.

I have just realised, what with this and Pedants' Corner, I must be really uptight and spend way to much mental energy on things i should just let go.

too much. Bloody autocorrect.

You do seem to be wound quite tight, fellatio, but you are also right.

I KNOW Goddammit!

I remember getting told off when I was little for eating from my knife. It was absolutely not done!

That's OK FN - if I may call you that - stare away! I am shortsighted so probably wouldn't notice

I am naturally a bit of a pedant so it's a surprising break with convention for me - I think I was so old whenI found it was wrong it didn't seem worth changing

Randall I AM left handed and think holding your fork in your right hand is wrong. It feels completely unnatural.

Good table manners have bollock all to do with which hand you hold your cutlery with.

There is no right or wrong hand to do anything.

It feels unnatural to you so you use the hand that does feel natural.

But there is a right and wrong way to you handle cutlery, and if holding the knife in your non-dominant hand impedes that then it is wrong.