I find it just fun to eat with them. In the end, it doesn’t matter as much how you are delivering food to your feeding hole.
I’m passable with chopsticks, but I can’t think of any situation where I’d prefer them over other utensils.
Almost any pasta. Roasted or boiled veggies. Cheezits or similar, keeps the dust off. Pierogies, most snall dumplings really.
I like them better for ramen, but a fork does about as well.
They are also useful for stirring nonstick pots.
Do it for the challenge! IV peaked at sub par but it’s still funner than a fork
I avoid the chopstick places because I could never master them and I was tired of feeling like an ignorant buffoon. The surprise was, after more than 5 years of avoiding the chopstick places, I still felt like an ignorant buffoon.
Because they are fun and feel appropriate when they are used?
I use them everywhere because it annoys my wife, but now I just like them
Some fun chopstick facts: most chopsticks in the world (including China) are made in Georgia (the US state, not the country) because of the ready availability of cheap pine. One of the major reasons pine is so prevalent in Georgia (and in the US South in general) is slavery: cotton plantations in the pre-artificial fertilizer era tended to exhaust the soil after a few years, leaving pine trees as the only profitable crop that can be grown on much of the land.
Cotton is a destructive demanding crop. The post industrial era cotton farming has left swaths of land poisoned with arsenic and all sorts of nasties (chicken concentration camps are bad for arsenic too.)
(chicken concentration camps are bad for arsenic too.)
This is caused by roxarsone in chicken feed. I think they stopped using it several years ago, but I’d expect that this has caused lasting damage in some places.
Most of the chopsticks I’ve seen have been hardwood, plastic or metal … I guess there’s more disposable ones by quantity in the world because most people don’t have or carry their own?
Anywhere you have trees there are chopsticks. The only time I use them is when I don’t have silverware in the wilds, either the wilds of the woods or the wilds of the endless wastelands of the automobile lands. Break off a couple twigs.
Why I use “chopsticks” is because I am on the go with no silverware and breaking off two sticks and using them to move food into my mouth is the best option.
Honestly for a lot of foods they’re really not a bad choice. They’re excellent for eating flavored chips when you dont want powder on your fingers, also grabbing things from jars
Teaching my Cheetos loving children how to use chopsticks has saved all my gaming controllers.
Chop sticks and Cheetos are a classic combo!
They are the best choice for salads. Eating salads with a fork sucks
I use them for eating popcorn
But then you can’t shovel handfuls of popcorn in your mouth where a quarter misses your mouth and is found in the couch cushions 2 days later.
found in the couch cushions 2 days later.
Just saving some for later.
Gotta feed the roach homies
Aren’t those the people who come over and empty your ashtrays when they’re out of weed?
I’ve gotta find someone with a 3D printer locally who can make me those fingy chopsticks for cheetos. I’m tired of cleaning my keyboard everytime I wanna snacc.
Please do not eat food served via a 3d printed tool/plate/bowl/cup. A number of the materials that are used for 3d printing are toxic (cross contamination is likely even if the material has been changed), and the plastic can contain small abrasion which are impossible to sanitize.
and the plastic can contain small abrasion which are impossible to sanitize
This is a big reason why I don’t like plastic dishware, cups, etc even when they are made with food-safe materials.
the plastic can contain small abrasion which are impossible to sanitize
That’s putting it mildly - every 3D print has tons of small crevices and imperfections even just from the layer lines alone, it’s just completely impossible to keep a 3D print clean between repeated food contact. Unless it’s sealed with resin or similar, but that’s also not easy to get right.
Check your public library, nowadays many often have a couple for the public to use
When I was in Toronto, yeppers. Alas I’m on an island out in the middle of nowhere. I’m gonna have to find a 3D print shop or make a friend lol
Alas I’m on an island out in the middle of nowhere.
It’s nice to hear from you again, and to be reminded of your living situation somewhere near Trailer Park Boys and Man in a Motel
my god grabbing things from jars how has that never occurred to me
I’ve been trying to teach my wife to use them when we go out, but the staff always takes pity on her and brings her The Fork of Shame.
I live in Hawaiʻi. We use chopsticks all the time. Itʻs just… what you do.
Whenever we get takeout and they give us forks instead of chopsticks, my wife and I refer to it as “getting haloeʻd” (for those who donʻt know, “haole” is a Hawaiian term for foreigner that tends be used exclusively for Caucasian people). Thereʻs a general assumption that most whites donʻt know how to use chopsticks. Related, I was once at a Japanese funeral, eating poke and sashimi with chopsticks, and this sweet lady comes up to me and says “you use those so well!” It felt like the white-person version of “youʻre so well-spoken!”
I feel insulted when I go for pho and get offered a fork.
I stopped for dinner once at a Chinese restaurant in Mississippi run by people actually from China. I (white guy) used chopsticks and our server just stared at me wide-eyed for most of the meal. She said I was the first white person she had ever seen using them, and she’d been working there for years. That is Mississippi for you.
I didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d learned to use them eating at Japanese restaurants.
Soup - drink from bowl and use chopsticks if it has bits
Big soupy thing (ramen, pho, that sort) - spoon and chopsticks
Rice with grains that don’t stick together much - spoon
Things like ice cream (dish), applesauce, that sort of consistency: spoon
Food from countries/places that don’t cut things down to bite size: knife + fork (sometimes replaced by chopsticks when cutting is done)
Most other non-liquids: chopsticks or no utensil depending upon the case.
~ Person in Japan for over a decade
I don’t understand chinese restaurants that will cut broccoli and the like into unmanageable pieces, too big for a bite. Idk if it’s cultural or a scheme of the all you can eat buffets to lessen the ability to shovel food into your mouth so quickly. Didn’t work on me, all you can eat buffets are a mission for me to make them lose money.
I can’t speak to Chinese Chinese, but a lot of east Asia cuts things into pieces one can pick up with chopsticks and eat in one bite. I haven’t been to a US Chinese buffet in years, but I don’t recall overly-large pieces the last time I went. Where I grew up (rural Ohio) not many people used chopsticks I til fairly recently, so maybe I’m forgetting my younger days or perhaps something else is going on.
For me, the green part is: Because I used them while cooking and don’t want to get anything else dirty.
I’m still adjusting to them for eating (should probably cut/choose my veggies, noodles etc. to rather be long+thin). But for cooking, I do find them quite good.
I can use wooden chopsticks in my non-stick pan. And they’re really useful for stirring food, as you can just hold them close together (or use a single stick), when the food is prone to spilling.
I don’t yet have the dexterity to always successfully flip foods in my frying pan with chopsticks, but it’s not like I have that with other utensils. Whether chopsticks, spatula or fork, it’s always a fiddly bugger.
I don’t yet have the dexterity to always successfully flip foods in my frying pan with chopsticks
I’ve had the most success using tongs with flat ends. Dexterity aside, the small grip surface of a chopstick could damage the item being flipped.
Because I can lift my bowl and just push the rest of the food in my mouth. Instead of moving it around with a fork.
