to think mixing up your food on a plate is bad manners?

[Moonatic]

This is dh I'm talking about. Made a pastry-topped chicken and leek pie at the weekend. Served with sweetcorn and carrots. Before eating it, he cut his whole serving into small pieces (size of a penny), then mixed it up. I got really annoyed, as dis the kids and asked him not to eat that way, because it was really bad manners. He said it wasn't. Who is right?

To add: this was just one example. If it's mixable, it gets mixed up. Cottage pie, fish pie, lasagne, pasta, curry and rice - it all turns into a big plate of mush.

There is also a sub-question: is it rude to cut your food into small pieces before eating it? By which I mean, cutting everything into small bite size pieces before starting to eat. Again, I say it is, dh says it isn't. (This is what he does with food that is less easily mushed up - e.g. something like chops, new potatoes and vegetables.

Lucy, I'd probably be entertained by someone eating with his feet - for a while, anyway.

"it's bad manners to eat like a pig but how it prepares it once it's on the plate is up to him."

Thing is, reducing his food to a plateful of babyfood-like mush is eating like a pig as far as I'm concerned.

Yes it probably would be entertaining Garrick A man of many talents

Garrick. You're not alone . There's no food mashing goes on at our table. I must be a snob (according to other posters) though. I expect table manners which include not mashing their food together.

We call it a pobby mess and it's only sometimes acceptable at home mostly with desserts. Also done with mash and gravy.

If DH is out I will do it with shepards pie and brown sauce but he gets really worked up at me putting sauce on shepards pie so although I do it when he is there I keep it neat.

I don't see the issue, if that's what he wants to do that's fine. I cut all my food up but that's because I can't eat food which is really hot for some reason.

As for the people saying they would be annoyed because he doesn't get the textures or the different flavours - please give me a break. That's pretentious bullshit for tasters on TV shows - a carrot is a carrot is a carrot - doesn't matter if it's crunchy or soft or done in butter or whatever.

I have never seen an adult eat like that and didnt even knkw it was a thing.

I wouldnt like it.

It is "something to do with me" because we are eating together as a family, at the dinner table and I find it off putting, to say the least.

I'm confused. He's your husband and you have children together?

So I'm guessing you've known each other and have eaten together for a good few years.

So why is this suddenly an issue? I'm assuming he's always eaten this way. Time to let it go perhaps?

chopping food into small pieces would be distracting but ok. mooshing food up though would make me feel a bit ill that is supposed to happen in the stomach not the plate. yanbu

I love mashing up my food before I eat it. I am confident that my 'manners' at the table and elsewhere in life are reasonable so if some people consider the food mashing to be rude I can live with that, may no one ever say anything worse about me than 'she mashes up her food before she eats it'!

I've never seen anyone do it but I think I would hate it. But at home I suppose he could eat how he wanted as long as I didn't have to see it. But I wouldn't go out to eat with him if he was going to mash his food up like a toddler.

I wouldn't be able to sit at a table with him

I think it's worse manners to refuse to share a table with someone than it is to mash up food.
I have a relative who eats really noisily, it's disgusting, turns my stomach. But I do not criticise, judge or refuse to share a table with him, because that would make me ruder than him.
Fact is that we will never live in a world where everyone conducts themselves to our own ideal standards, but why not judge each other on what really matters and let the other stuff go?

YANBU OP. I pull my kids up for doing this, never mind DH. that and squirting silly amounts of ketchup/brown sauce/Mayo whatever they can get their hands on all over their dinner.

I don't think that the chopping of food into bite sized pieces would bother me at all.

Mashing it up and mixing to mush sounds a bit yucky, but I doubt I would make a big thing of it to be honest.

I must say though that until I read the link to the list of manners upthread I didn't realise just how uncouth I am. I think it is perfectly possible to be inoffensive and polite without adhering rigidly to all of that.

I like mealtimes to be relaxed, whether at home or in a restaurant.

I wouldn't be judging anybody who did it in the way you think.

I physically would not be able to eat my own food if someone had a plate full of something that looked like vomit, and I would not be able to get the image out of my head whilst attempting to eat.

I'm not uptight about table manners. But it is rude to not engage and interact with other people during a meal and takes the joy out of a shared meal, so it would be odd to just attempt to focus solely on my own plate or ignore someone else at the table, but having something so visually unappealing or unpleasant looking would make me unable to eat.

I would be very polite about it

I couldn't eat at the same table as someone who did this so YANBU.

When you know you are eating with him only give your DH food that looks ok mushed up like stews or soups. Don't bother to ever cook meals that he can ruin the look of in future.

Perhaps you could give his meal a quick whizz in the processor, Moon? And serve it in a bowl.

Btw, one of the things I really hate about being poor is the number of meals I have to make myself that don't have 'edges'. I'll eat whatever worthy mess I've cooked, as long as it tastes OK, but it invariably does look like vomit or poo to me. I've been subjecting myself to this for years; it's evidently not something I can just get over.

I'd be upset if I'd made someone a lovely pie - pies being composed in such a way as to sit within their pastry 'edges', affording a planned combination of taste & texture - only for them to bash it all to smithereens!

The chances of my making a lovely pie, however, are zero. Pastry isn't my forte.

YANBU.
My dad does this and even though I love him I find it so disgusting I try not to look at him at the table.
I'd say it is worse than starting before everyone has sat down and as bad as talking with food in your mouth.
Makes me queezy.

YABU. I can't stand noisy or messy eaters but really don't care how someone gets their food from plate to mouth or if they mix it up. as a teenager I used to mash up my dinners with gravy and eat them with a teaspoon

The thing with food though is that it is such a fundamental part of us and is so important that it is also vital that it doesn't become an issue - iyswim.

We live in a society where eating disorders are on the increase, and much of that is attributable to the fact that there is so much expectation around food.

you can't have x food with y sauce or cut your food into bites or put ketchup on your mashed potato and and and, before too long our enjoyment of food is overshadowed by the need to conform to someone else's standards. I'm not talking about eating with your mouth open or talking with your mouth full etc, but things which are based on preference, and really, what works for one bothers someone else and so on.

I love food. I am an excellent cook, and people enjoy my cooking immensely. I am also VI, and there are some foods which I don't eat when out because when I'm out I like to just be able to eat what's on my plate, so I can't be arsed to wrestle with whole fish or spaghetti etc, for instance. But sometimes I will encounter something which might be difficult e.g. a bit of fat on some meat for instance and then I have to deal with it.

I've told this story on here before. About two years after I got together with my now xh we went on holiday. We went to a steak restaurant, and both ordered steak - I think it was new york strip or something - this is relevant, because it was a cut which had a streak of fat in the middle. And I struggled with it, because it was almost impossible to tell just while cutting which was fat and which was meat, until you sank the knife into it - iyswim. And because i couldn't see it I was reliant on being able to tell. So I ate some chips then struggled with this steak a bit more, while xh became quieter and quieter. I asked him what was wrong and he got annoyed and said "your table manners are appalling!" it was just a steak. And it wasn't even a habit or a manner - I had just struggled with the fat on it. I stopped trying after that and left nearly all the meal. When the waitress came to collect the plates she remarked that I hadn't eaten the steak, and I just apologised while trying not to cry. Ex did apologise later but the upset had already been caused. And I suppose that the way I ate that steak was off-putting to him so much so that he had to say something. I have never eaten any cut of steak with fat on it when out since, so only fillet will do now. But in truth while this isn't on the same level as mushing up food for instance, it was still something which was apparently bad manners even though it was unforeseen.

If I was genuinely put off by a habit of someone's I would ask them about it rather than get annoyed. Open-mouthed chewing, talking with mouth full etc are basic manners and cannot IMO be compared with the order/way in which someone eats their food.

So funny op because I was just having this conversation with a friend 2 days ago. My dh does this. We've been together 8yrs and lived together 5, and it's only this last few months I'm noticing it. Possibly because of the food I am making now with little ones is more family meals, I don't know.

But yes, I find it horrible manners and a bit upsetting to watch. Especially when I have carefully plated up something, with just the right amount of crispy topping etc. I'm just not sure my upset over it is worth upsetting him over it and making him feel like he can't enjoy his food so I haven't said anything. If our kids start it though, I will tell them off.

Whatever about at home, I would have to say something if we were out.

He did it in front of one of his friends who want visiting recently and the friend both commented on it and looked pretty unimpressed. So I guess it's not just you and me OP.

Not sure whether it's bad manners or not, but mil does it and it drives me mad. Makes a nicely presented meal resemble a pile of slop

My dh does this at home as well. It ends up looking like something you'd feed a farmyard animal. It does gross me out, but so long as he doesn't do it in public, we're fine.

People who cut their entire plate of food up before swapping the fork to the right hand and shovelling.... do you not find your food goes cold very quickly if it's all in sat in little pieces for a while?

Well, here in the US, we cut a strip at a time and cut that strip into pieces, switch our fork over, then eat the pieces. Then pick up our knife and cut a new strip with new pieces. So no cold food.

But back to the OP, the mixing sounds disgusting. I wouldn't be able to watch.

Then again, if it were socially acceptable for adults to eat on plates with dividers I'd be doing it. I hate my food mixing.