Or ... "Just Call Me Sheldon Cooper"
I haven’t written many blogs from scratch since the “As Seen on TV” series and some horrendously bad poetry … so, let’s go ahead and try one now, shall we?
This blog was inspired by the fact I spent 30 seconds spinning my doughnut this morning trying to find the hole before I took the first bite. I realized at that point that I have numerous OCD-anal-retentive eating habits. Some of you will think I’m insane, and that’s fine. (I am, I admit it. Love me or leave me, I don’t care.) I will mention a couple other ones some friends have along the way, because, why not? If you didn’t know you were fair game, you would have left me long ago!
Place settingsLet’s start easy. My mom made me set the table every night growing up. She informed me the fork goes on the left of the plate, the knife on the right of the plate – blade facing the plate, and then the spoon. I absolutely cannot function unless this is my place setting. If I sit down and it is reversed, I will pick up the utensils and move them to the correct sides before doing anything else. If I’m at a place where my utensils come rolled up in a napkin, I will take them out and put them in the correct place … unless…
There is one exception to this rule – I absolutely, positively cannot handle my silverware touching a table at a restaurant. Therefore, if I’m at a place without a tablecloth that gets changed after every meal (which, believe me, we don’t go to places like that often!), I will prop my utensils up such that only the handles are touching the table. Which means my fork and knife will be propped on an appetizer plate, the napkin under my drink, or on a spare straw … whatever I have to do to make sure the part that goes in my mouth did not touch the table. (And yes, before you ask, after I use the knife, it rests on the edge of my plate.)
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| Did she remember to place her napkin "gently in her lap" before wrestling with those "slippery little suckers"? |
Similar to place settings, let’s move to napkins. Mom also taught me napkins go in your lap. Pretty Woman taught me napkins are “placed gently in the lap.” There is no tossing or throwing of napkins. Most of the time (unless I’m eating at home – this rule does not apply at home for whatever reason), I will have a napkin in my lap. I really wish Munchkin would learn this as opposed to holding up sauce-covered hands saying, “I need a towel,” and reaching down to wipe it on her jeans. Of course, it’s not beyond me that she wipes her hands on her jeans because she sees me wipe my hands in my lap, but that’s because I have a napkin (or in Munchkin-speak, a “towel”) in my lap.
Now, I didn’t really bring this up to discuss a wishy-washy habit I have. It’s actually to point out that I could be worse. My faux-bro, Jason, God love him, has to have three napkins in his lap before he can start eating, wherever he is. Not two, not four, it must be three. This little quirk of his is just one of many reasons I love him.
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| The correct way to serve an iced beverage. |
If my drink is supposed to be cold, it must have ice in it. And I don’t mean two cubes that are half melted already. Yes, I realize this means I get less drink, but come on, that’s what refills are for. I will, literally, pull my straw all the way up to drink from the top where the ice is to make sure I get the coldest drink possible.
If a drink is placed in front of me and there’s not much ice in it, you will watch the look of disappointment cross my face. Then comes the concentration, as I stare at how much ice is there, trying to figure out if I will need a glass of ice brought to me.
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Let’s move onto food, shall we? Starting with breakfast …
Specifically, filled doughnuts. I absolutely cannot take a bite of a filled doughnut without first locating the hole used to fill the doughnut and taking my first bite at that particular location. This actually has a purpose – I don’t want to bite on the other end, and end up squirting all my filling out. Duh. It’s messy and it ruins the entire purpose of choosing this doughnut. I wanted the filling and the doughnut in the same bite, not a bite of doughnut followed by licking the filling off my hands. (It’s especially hard to eat a doughnut in multiple steps like that while driving.)
Side note: I hate the fact you only get the filling in like three bites. You end up with half the doughnut with no filling. I want to make a doughnut where they stick the piping bag in like five or six different places to make sure every bite is filled with goodness. Of course, it does mean that I would never be able to eat another filled doughnut. I’d be caught in an infinite loop, spinning my doughnut, trying to figure out where to take a bite … of course, the might do wonders for my weight loss efforts. Hmmm…
For whatever strange reason, I am averse to holding a sandwich in its entirety and eating it bite-for-bite. I don’t have a reason for this (although, I’m sure the picture here might have something to do with it). I have to rip my sandwich into pieces before I eat it. This drives Scott absolutely nuts. I vary my sandwich deconstruction habits as well – sometimes I rip it into bite-sized pieces and eat it piece by piece. Sometimes I just rip it into two or three larger pieces and then eat those bite-for-bite like any normal person eats a sandwich. Just depends on my mood. However, no sandwich is safe from my sandwich decimation before consumption.
I treat dinner rolls, crescent rolls, etc. in the same fashion. Apparently I just like ripping carbs into pieces.
Sandwiches, part two …
I absolutely cannot stand to have lettuce, tomato, onion, etc. on my sandwiches. Pickles are the only “vegetable” allowed on my sandwiches, burgers, etc. Some people think it’s just because I hate vegetables – well, I do hate tomatoes and onions. But I eat lettuce. I just don’t want it on my sandwich. If I want a salad, I will eat a salad. If I want to eat a sandwich, I will eat a sandwich. I don’t need you to try to combine the two and give me a “salwich.” (Besides, if you shove all kinds of lettuce on a sandwich, it makes it so much harder to rip into pieces. Duh.)
Onions
There’s one I completely forgot about, onions. I absolutely, positively, cannot stand onions. The smell, the taste, the texture. There is nothing about onions I like. If they exist in something, I will eat around them, if they are too prevalent, I will abstain from eating the item. I love French Onion Soup – but only for the bread and cheese on top. I will leave the onions down at the bottom.
Furthermore, if you eat onions, get the hell away from me. Do not get up in my face at least 48 hours after eating onions (this includes cooked and raw). I can smell them on your breath. I don’t care how many times you have brushed your teeth, I can still smell them. When I was pregnant, this was even worse. “Scott, get the hell away from me, my spidey-onion-sense is tingling.”
CondimentsThere are so many condiments quirks, I don’t know where to start …
KetchupAhh, the be-all-end-all of condiments, ketchup. (And, it’s ketchup, not catsup. Catsup is that generic crap you pay $.79 for at Save-A-Lot that expired last week. Okay, there’s your answer Mr. Burns.)
My biggest thing with ketchup is making sure you have an actual place to put it – be it on a plate, or on the wrapper of your burger, or something like that. The paper that covers your tray at McDonald’s is not acceptable because I’m too afraid of the dyes running and contaminating my ketchup. Do not even think about putting ketchup on a napkin either. You know what happens to wet napkins? Yeah, eww, don’t want that in my ketchup.
My brother, God rest his soul, put ketchup on everything. Including macaroni and cheese. He asked me one year at Thanksgiving if I would be offended if he put ketchup on my turkey. Uhh, yeah. I did not spend six hours of my life basting this stupid thing every 20 minutes just for you to douse it in ketchup. His next question, “How about barbeque sauce?” The answer was no, but it does bring me to another one …
Barbeque sauce (and not BBQ, I hate calling it BBQ) is acceptable on just about anything (save for my sage-butter turkey on Thanksgiving).
One of my favorite stories from when my brother lived with me involved a trip through the McDonald’s drive-thru. (Don’t get me started on the fact it’s not “through.” ) We got home, unloaded and sat down to eat. I got nuggets and Michael asked if he could have one of them. I handed him one, he opened it, and at the exact same moment, he and I each grabbed a fry, dipped the fries into the barbeque sauce, and ate them. Scott’s mouth was hanging open. He was like, “That was eerie.” It was straight up that scene from What A Girl Wants where Amanda Bynes and Colin Firth jelly and eat their toast the same exact way. (I tried to find a clip, but wasn’t able to find it. It’s out there, I’m sure, but am at work and extensive internet searches are not in the cards at present.)
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| Seeing as how I hate mayo, I figured a pic of Johnny Depp was so much better! :) |
I absolutely hate anything having to do with mayo. Including the word mayo. It’s disgusting. Period. I will not eat anything with it on it, in it, or anything that might have even been remotely close to it. It is pure evil. It ranks right up there with onions as far as I’m concerned.
The only, and I mean the only, thing I like about mayonnaise is the line from Pirates.
“Down to the depths whatever mind thought of parlez.”
“That’d be the French. Inventors of mayonnaise.” (FYI, yeah, that’s one of those deleted scenes.)
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Let's move onto dessert, shall we?
I am very particular in the fashion in how cake must be eaten. If you want to send me into fits, eat your dessert wrong around me. Really, you’ll watch me tense up. Ask Scott. Seriously.
There are two things at play here … fork control and order of operations.
Fork control
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You must, and I mean you must, take your fork straight down to retrieve a piece of cake. A fork cannot go sideways. We have a mantra: “You go down and then up and then you have cake.” Scott can repeat that in his sleep because I’ve yelled at him about it so many times. I have no idea where this came from, nor do I care. I just care that you go down and then up.
Order of operations
This one can get a little tricky, depending on the shape of the item. The general rule of thumb is that if it’s a triangle-ish shape, you must start at the skinny end and work your way to the thick end. Period. End of story. There are no exceptions. If you are sharing a piece of cake, there is no meeting in the middle. You just take turns working from the skinny end to the thick end. And by all means, you will always take a piece of the dessert by maintaining a straight line across the item. This is especially important if you are eating a dessert that is a round or square shape. There’s no real definitive place to start, so you pick a spot on the edge, and always maintain a straight edge. While going down and then up.
Anyone who knows me knows I am a chocolate fiend. But believe it or not, that’s not without its quirks. I do not like fudge, it’s too rich. I know, right? I also hate dark chocolate. And white chocolate, but it’s simply blasphemy they call it chocolate since it doesn’t have cocoa in it and therefore it’s not really chocolate (thank you Alton Brown). I don’t really like chocolate ice cream, Wendy’s chocolate Frostys, or chocolate cake. Just not my thing. Don’t know why, but it’s not. (In fact, for years, I hated cake period. Didn’t care what kind.) Here’s the one that shocks most people – I do not like chocolate syrup or hot fudge on my ice cream. Nope. To me it turns your vanilla into chocolate ice cream and if I wanted chocolate ice cream (or chocolate soup), I would have gotten it. I don’t need it to perform an unnecessary and unwanted mutation on my ice cream.
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