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Eating Cheetos with Chopsticks
Chopsticks are, in a general manner, inferior to the fork. Forks are more effective over a wider range of food, and they’re easier to master as well. Really in this day and age, the major reason to learn chopsticks is to look sophisticated. You don’t want to look like a dolt in front of your friends. So I’m using chopsticks to eat Cheetos.*
Cheetos are pretty much on the opposite end of the sophistication spectrum from sushi.** If you learn chopsticks to look suave in one of those swanky Japanese restaurants that’s one thing. You simply can’t look debonair eating bright orange cheese puffs. So why bother with the chopsticks? Aren’t they a finger food? They are if you don’t mind leaving blaze orange fingerprints everywhere.
Once you’ve determined you need to avoid orange gunk on your digits you’ve got to settle on an implement. Forks are inferior to chopsticks in this circumstance; neither the scooping action or the stabbing motion do you much good. Chopsticks, on the other hand, can pick up puffs one by one, with great accuracy. You’re rate-limited by the speed you chew in either case.
When you notice the pattern you see examples of it everywhere. @GaryMcVey gave us a description of an earlier version of color TV that never took off. And yet that finicky and expensive technology got sent to the moon. Because, however expensive it is, that cost pales against the great mass of rocket fuel you’d have to burn to launch it into orbit. Ever hear of gorilla glass? It was mostly an oddity until Steve Jobs was looking for something to use as an iPhone screen.
What can we learn from this? Couple lessons. First, the criteria used to judge which technology is superior is necessarily dependent on the background assumptions under which it’s evaluated. Secondly, and as a consequence of that, one ought to be constantly reevaluating the conditions under which those assumptions apply. Thirdly, to find one of these situations where the rejected line might actually be superior you have to reevaluate both the status quo and the alternatives. Which implies (fourthly) that the kind of guy who’s going to discover these opportunities to innovate is going to necessarily be familiar not just with the stuff that works, but the other things people have tried which don’t work.
And finally, I can learn how to use chopsticks by practicing on Cheetos. I mean, I don’t want to look like a yokel any more than I already do.
* I picked up this idea from someone in the PIT. Don’t rightly remember who, but I suspect @qoumidan . With the revolver.
** I bet if I made sushi out of cheetos, twinkies and Big Mac sauce… yeah, that’d be terrible. Further research is required.
Published in Science & Technology
Once it’s sliced, it’s relatively bite-sized.
Gotta watch out for that word “relatively”.
I have a big mouth. Oranges are bite-sized.
Yummmm… Cheeeeetos /in Homer Simpson’s voice.
I should say here that it was a guy I worked with who was half-Japanese who clued me in to how easy and how much better it was to eat salad with chopsticks.
and try to cut it with the edge of a chop stick….
And the pancake. You might argue that you never eat pancakes, but then again I didn’t bring up salads.
It should be cut before it reaches the table. It’s not like they serve the whole log. They slice it up.
I know how to use chopsticks. You use one of them as a spear for the food, and use the other to fend off people trying to steal your food, amirite?
Considered arguing this point in the bulk of the post, decided against it. The problem with pouring cheetos is the relatively stick-like nature of the beast. That impedes cheeto flow, such that you tend to get nothing at all until you increase the bag angle to such a point until you get everything at once.
I’ve done the research on this one.
No, I do eat forms of pancake, and so do Asians. There is egg foo young, which is a sort of thick, eggy pancake. There is also moo shu, where you wrap the pancake around the filler. But you can eat both using chopsticks. This isn’t that hard. As I said, chopsticks are just finger extenders that don’t feel pain when handling hot food. Why you folks are so prejudiced against them, I don’t know. 😁
If that works for you.
I also considered addressing speed eaters as a general case, decided against it. If we’ve encountered whatever rate-limits Sam I haven’t observed it.
Small bag or large? I’ve been happily reaching into the large bag with chopsticks. Then again that means no one else is going to want to share that bag with me. I can live with that.
I’m using a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks that I nicked last time I hit The Asia Palace. The other thing this lets me do, it lets me reseal the large bag much more effectively. Roll the chopsticks up in the top of the bag. You get a tighter roll, and the bag clamp holds better with something substantial in there.
I’m surprised. I legitimately didn’t think anything could beat the Judge’s admission to asking for forks as ‘least surprising thing in the thread’.
How’s your mashed potatoes game?
Not bad, actually. They stick together well, generally, so it’s easy to get a clump.
Of course, fries are much easier.
Also, it’s hard to eat a pancake and syrup using your fingers and not make a mess.
I’ve done the research on this one too.
*thinks a moment*
*invents syrup filled pancake calzone*
This morning my wife ate a bowl of oatmeal with chopsticks.
Brown sugar instead of syrup makes this one doable.
I dunno, I’m not having to do extra work wrapping stuff up in order to eat things with a fork.
I guess it depends on the chopstick-to-mouth transference. Then again, that issue would probably arise when eating it with your hands.
I guess I’ve never found the need for more than a fold with a bag clamp. I’m also kind of surprised you’re not eating the whole bag. Then again, on further thought I guess I’m surprised you’re doing anything that enhances cleanliness.
I’m gonna go with “need work” then. How about the gravy?
I don’t have the time to read this today – but I want to hand you a gold star for having the most incredible header I have seen on Ricochet recently.
Also, if I have 13 different forks I don’t have to spend time selecting which one of them would be best for a particular food item.
I prefer a bowl and a poiny stick. It’s old school.
Thank you, Hank, for a brilliant post! I really loved it – humor and wisdom wrapped up nicely, along with things I did not know.
Isn’t me (Texan) using chopsticks cultural appropriation?
Maybe we should all revert to our childhood and just use fingers. They were invented first, and besides there’s nothing better for eating ribs or fried chicken.