What are your weird food rules?
What are your weird food rules?
For example:
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When you open a fresh jar of peanut butter do you only work through one side until it is completely empty then start on the other side?
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Or when you get those shallow tubs of hummus does it have to make it back home undisturbed? Then one of the baggers at the grocery store shoves it sideways into the bag completely ruining the symmetry.
My last bite should be of my favorite part of the meal. Finish my least favorite part first.
The greatest compliment I can pay a meal is that I couldn’t choose which part to make my last bite.
I do this too. It took a while for my wife to fully understand that if she wanted to try something on my plate, she better not wait til the last few bites
Yes!
I also save the last bit of candy or other snacks, sometimes for days, until I really want it (most recently, I left the last 2 pieces in a box of Buncha Crunch for over a week. Yeah, it’s weird. I know).
My partner used to finish things I’d leave, which upset me. Then he’d finish it but replace it with an unopened packet, which I appreciated but it still bugged me.
He doesn’t understand it at all, but he’s learned that saving the last bit for “the right time” is important to me. Seeing him leave my little crazy treats around for days at a time makes me feel so loved.
I used to do this but I have noticed one slight downside to this. My food goes cold by my last bite so the last bite does not have the optimal flavor.
My new thing is I try to eat my favorite part when I feel like the food is starting to go cold so I can still hit that peak.
I suppose that is one of the few upsides of being a fast eater.
I used to do this too, but then realized it was a big factor in my over eating. If there’s too much food on the plate then I don’t get to enjoy all of my favorite element unless I stuff myself.
Food should be finished at the same time. You work gradually around all of your sides and main dish so you have exactly one bite of each left, and then you finish your plate.
My SO drives me nuts because they can just eat the entirety of the main dish and then eat all of one side, and then all of another.
I've never seen anyone else ever do this and now I don't feel as alone.
I eat this way and people look at me like I have two heads.
I never want to eat in front of anyone who has replied to you so far. I'm a chaos eater. Nothing exists besides the current bite. I didn't remember what the last one was and haven't decided what the next one will be.
I'd like to introduce you to me - I eat the starch, then the veggies, then the protein. Order of preference, descending.
I eat like your SO, though I do mix it up a little sometimes, but it's because I'm saving my favorite thing for last. I don't want to end up with my least favorite thing at the very end.
I've never wished I could eat in front of another human being more than I do right now. I just really want to trigger you with this and I don't know why.
Start with your favorite dish and when its gone move to #2.
That's like ejaculating on someone's face and then working your way to foreplay. If this isn't against the Geneva convention it should be.
Always eat the pizza crust. If you don't, I will.
People who don‘t eat the crust shouldn‘t be allowed to eat pizza. Don‘t like the crust? Don‘t eat pizza. Aren‘t hungry enough? Eat it with the crust and pack the rest.
It's okay, officer. I'm saving it for later.
Username checks out
Food cannot touch on the plate. Each item must have a clearly defined DMZ between it and its neighbors.
Flavour L
I was this way as a kid. I'm not sure when I stopped caring.
Carry on with your DMZ, soldier.
Same. When I was young, I would RAGE if a pea so much as whispered to the mashed potatoes next to it. Now I reflect that I have bigger problems than this and don't stress about it. Medication also helps. Somewhat.
A friend's dad feels so strongly about this that he has cafeteria style trays so each food item can have its own little area walled off from everything else.
Man, I'm the complete opposite. I tend to mix everything. As a kid I would even shape some dishes into a smooth rectangle after first crushing the potatoes and mixing it with the rest.
A bite is not good unless it has a little of each thing on my plate. The flavors must all be in every bite.
I respect your opinion, but I am completely the other way.
A meal wants to be a journey through your flavors.
Each getting a small time to shine, before coming together in the end for that one last perfect bite.You ever just take an entire plate's worth of food and put it in the blender to see if there's another level to this?
Any time I buy chips and dip I have to always work from the top of the dip down, trying to keep it level all the way down. I have no idea why I do this, but it drives me crazy otherwise. If someone else takes a chip and digs straight down to the bottom of the tub I just don't want it anymore lol
I am imagining the horrified look of the other people waiting to get some layered bean dip watch you take the top layer.
Well, a big shared dish of homemade dip is much different! I would never take the whole top layer off of a seven layer dip! My hangup is specifically about dips served straight out of the little tub from the grocery store lol
I do this with ice cream
I do exactly the opposite, at least for shallow containers: I start at a side and go across, leaving the remainder untouched
Absolutely no digging in to the tub of butter, and no other food bits (usually bread crumbs) must be left inside.
If dug in to, it must be smoothed out before putting back in to the fridge. As for the crumbs, take them out and put them back on to the bread they came from. Now the butter can be put back in to the fridge.
Yes, may I sign up to be a butter acolyte?
Absolutely. Butter acolytes unite!
We get cream cheese by the 40 ounce tub because it's insanely cheaper and we cook with it relatively often.
My dad puts crumbs in it all the time.
How hard is it not to do that?
I'm not sure. My partner isn't as pedantic as I am, so I end up scooping his day old crumbs on to my toast the next day.
I love that you buy in bulk because you're right - it definitely is cheaper buying more if you can eat it all before it spoils. What kind of foods do you make with cream cheese? Genuinely curious. I love cream cheese but I can't finish it fast enough.
My rule is that if you intend to touch the butter/spread/sticky stuff with a utensil, that utensil cannot touch the bread. You just drop the portion on the bread from a height until you think there's enough to cover it, and then you can spread it with that utensil, but if you need to revisit the jar, you need another fresh utensil.
You can't get crumbs in there if there's no cross contamination from the equipment to begin with!
You get better at estimating over time, but having one extra piece of cutlery to wash occasionally is less infuriating than unexpected stale crumbs and food that spoils more quickly from the contaminating yeasts and other organisms.
How good pickles are is inversely proportional to how whole they are.
- Whole pickles: blegh
- Pickle wedges: no thanks
- Pickle strips: on a sandwich, sure
- Pickle chips: yum, on a sandwich or alone
- Diced pickles: oh yeah, please
- Pickle relish: hell yeah!
I have this but in reverse (and less extreme). I can eat a good pickle relish, but it doesn't do much for me. Then, the delish goes up as we approach the whole pickle. The whole pickle is sour and crunchy. Perfection!
Haha, we must be arch nemeses.
Is relish basiclaly like the pickel equivalent to salsa?
When I eat soft candies, I always have to bite them into pieces in a specific way. Like if I have a cola bottle gummy, I will bite off the "cap" first. If I have a gummy bear, I will bite the bottom legs off, separate the head from the arms and then split the legs and arms from each other. The gummy cherries, always bite the stem off first. Gummy bats, the wings separate from the body. Gummy coins I usually try to split down the circle, i.e. splitting in two thinner coins.
Most of the time it's just inside my mouth but sometimes I hold it in my hand and bite it off like that.
Also chocolate bars has to be eaten in the squares the bar is divided into. No splitting it across squares!
Bite their legs off first so they can't run. Smart.
I read the first few words as soft candles and was so confused.
mmm love me some wax 🙃
Corn on the cob must be eaten from left to right. You must eat all the way around the cob so that section is clean before moving on to the next section. I suppose I'd accept right to left in the same fashion; it's the people who take totally random bites with no rhyme or reason or uniformity that make me crazy.
Ooh, I’m more typewriter with mine. Left to right in horizontal lines.
Question, do you rotate up or down? I always hate the first row because there isn’t a kernel to bite through cleanly with my eye teeth so I always rotate up.
Up or down, doesn't matter (although I may pick one unconsciously, I'll have to pay more attention next time), as long as you get it all before moving to the next section.
This is the way.
I thought this was universal corn law
What about row by row? Like a typewriter.
I like taking a bite anywhere on the cob, turn it randomly, bite somewhere else leaving little corn "islands" along the way. Bite, turn, bite.
Savage
Just as long as you butter your bread first then roll the cob into the bread. Mmm, best spread.
There is no 5 second rule. If it touches the floor it's literally inedible.
Nice try household pest, that food is still mine
My dog doesn’t agree with you. If it touches the floor and nobody says NO fast enough, it’s his 😁
Depends on how much I like the food 😅
This is the way
Agreed unless the place is very clean and the food is solid and i really like tge food then i just eat it maybe done this one or two times in my life .
No floor is clean enough to do this.
I used to, and then I realized that "germs" exist and they're called bacteria and viruses, so I stopped doing it. I only trust tables and surfaces because they're (at least supposed to be) cleaned with sanitizer.... Even then, it's iffy.
Eating anything from the floor, regardless of how much or how little time it's been there, is not something I ever want to risk. Regardless of how clean a place appears to be.
I have enough GI issues without getting some mystery stomach bug because the wing that fell on the floor for 2 seconds was really good and I didn't want to lose it. I'd rather go hungry.
If it's a wet food this is definitely true. If it's dry, like a chip, it won't really pick up much unless the floor is visibly dirty.
Yeah, it will. It may be worse for "wet" food, but it's still true nonetheless for "dry" food.
I will say that most people's experience with this is fairly positive, in that, those that eat off the floor, especially those that obey the "5 second rule" don't usually get sick from the activity. The fact remains, 5 seconds or less (or not) carries much of the same risks of getting some kind of stomach bug. They may be mitigated by contact duration, and the gut is incredibly good at eliminating bacterial and viral infiltration into the body, but it's still very much luck.
Luck that it didn't make contact with a bacteria or virus that will have a negative effect. Those bugs are everywhere, even on "clean" surfaces (whether visibly clean or otherwise). Unless you actively sterilize your floors continually, the microscopic organisms are there. Whether tracked in on your shoe or foot, or they're transferred to the area by contact with something unclean or bacteria ridden....
An extreme and obvious example of this is someone dropping raw chicken on the kitchen floor and not sanitizing the area where it landed. That bacteria from the uncooked chicken is on the floor. Since it was not properly cleaned and sanitized, it's very very likely still there. Walking through the kitchen to a living space will contact transfer the bacteria to every location where you step; and imagine you walk around the couch. Later, enjoying some chips on the couch, you drop a chip right were a foot with the bacteria landed, and that bacteria is transferred to your chip.
No 5 second rule will save you from the Salmonella poisoning from the chip on the floor.
Salmonella is not the only risk either, the chaos of tracking in bacteria from outdoors and public spaces is very very real. Going to the shop and walking through a space where someone had previously walked, who works in a place with some other nasty bug that induces GI suffering... It's all over their shoes and now all over the floor, and now that you've been there, it's all over your shoes too. You go home and like a sensible person, take your shoes off at the door, but in doing so, you walk over where you've stood in your shoes, so now you've transferred that bug from your shoes to your socks/feet, and now you're tracking it all over the house. Same deal, now that it's on the floor, you drop something and then within 5 seconds, pick it up to eat it and bam, vomiting, diarrhea, the works. You miss work but the boss is tired of your shit, so he fires you and now you can't pay rent. Next thing you know you're homeless, turning tricks under the king st bridge to pay for your heroin addiction.
so very much this, people have zero clue how much contamination happens just from the instant of contact or how quickly bacteria reproduce.
They're worse than rabbits.
I briefly microwave my ice cream before eating.
I don't want it to be soupy. I'm going for soft. And I am too impatient to let it sit on the counter a bit to reach that sweet spot of consistency.
I used to do that! Never encountered someone else who did.
I some times add heavy or whippimg cream to it
Sandwiches are eaten like a typewriter. It drives my partner bonkers, she says I'm nuts....jokes on her, she's still hanging around 😂
Sandwiches are eaten like a typewriter.
I'm so confused. You pivot your elbows and smash the sandwich into your face like the letters hitting the page? You take lots of fast, noisy bites like the sound of typing? You nibble the top piece of bread from left to right, then the filling from left to right, then the bottom, going 'ding!' in between?
I will eat all of the chocolatey edges of a Kit Kat before I start to eat the wafer bit that’s left with just two thin layers on top and bottom at that point.
Kitkat is from nestle . Just putting this information here its your choice to do what you want with it.
I also do this. There's two of us!
Do you eat the chocolate fluff in between the wafer layers before eating the wafers as well or do you just eat the wafers together?
Kit Kat buddies! Sometimes I will peel them apart and eat the fluff, but not always.
I don't hate crust but I prefer the texture of a sandwich without the crust, so I eat most of the crust before eating the rest of the sandwich... I usually only do this when eating alone lol
Haha, I always save the best for last. Same thing. Whatever I’m eating, I get the mediocre stuff out of the way first.
I pity your lack of freshly baked bread (crust). Crunchy, even better with seeds…
When it comes to things like chocolate bars, cookies, brownies, pop-tarts, ect., I almost always pop them in the freezer for a bit because it changes the texture.
Cookies/brownies with chocolate chips/m&ms are the best for this, because the chips get crunchy, while the cookie part is chewier.
Do you pop the pop-tarts into the toaster afterwards? They’re much better toasted imo
Nah, but just because it'd also reverse the effects of freezing them. but next time I get them, I'll try toasting them first!
That's one of my favorite things. I started doing that one hot summer and now I do all year round. Cold chocolate is the best chocolate.
The only weird one I have is that I can't do cereal and milk. 100% rate of vomiting resulted the two times I tried. I grew up on dry cereal and will, for all roughly two times a year I eat it, continue that. No, I'm not interested in adding water/ice/juice; that's just making wet bread with extra steps. Doesn't bother me that others do it.
Being poor and living out of a car in my early 20s for a bit rid me of any childish restrictions otherwise.
Finally, a reply that actually fits the question
Everything gets cut up before a pan gets turned on.
No plastic in the microwave. (Ceramics and glass only)
Range has to be clean before and after cooking.
Edit to add - can't believe I forgot this. I'll eat any leftovers cold and any fully cooked soup or chili cold too. I just don't care.
Everything gets cut up before a pan gets turned on.
But... onions and mushrooms can easily cook as long as you might take to prep everything else, and they just keep getting better.
No plastic in the microwave. (Ceramics and glass only)
Absolutely. Unless I'm drunk, then a frozen burrito miiiight go in with its wrapper on. Fortunately, alcohol provides near perfect immunity to anything I'd be concerned about while sober.
Range has to be clean before and after cooking.
This is a good rule. Ten years from now when I've finally managed to adopt it, I am certain I will remember you fondly and hope you are doing well - how the time flies when you have a clean range, etc.
Edit to add - can't believe I forgot this. I'll eat any leftovers cold and any fully cooked soup or chili cold too. I just don't care.
Also don't care about reheating leftovers - except rice, I barely like it hot, so cold is a definite no.
I'll add mine here, it's pretty straightforward: TURN THE FUCKING MICROWAVE DOWN YOU NEANDERTHAL!
Oh I'm aware and if I have time I let them go for a bit first. But if I have to cut stuff while food is cooking then I have a panic attack. It's just too much tracking things.
Yeah the amount of people unaware that letting the heat spread throughout the food is almost as important as getting the heat in there is crazy. 600W is the highest I'll sett my microwave, ever. And that is for easily mixable things like soup. Things like casserole only get 300W.
As a line cook, cutting up everything before a pan gets turned on is just good mise en place. You shouldn't start cooking until you know you're ready and haven't forgotten anything. The whole process is way easier and more relaxed when you've got all the components together in advance
Oh hey, turns out I'm in good company then! And yeah I do it that way specifically because of stress.
Everything gets cut up before a pan gets turned on.
What if your pan has a chopping fetish?
The 200-mile rule. Sushi is amazing but raw fish has to be trasnported somehow. If your eating seafood and are not within 200 miles of a body of water where it could have been caught... Probably best to pick something else.
Montana is not famous for its aquatic cusine.
And I too do the peanutbutter thing you mentioned.
Vast majority of fish you're eating is flash frozen, even if you're on the coast.
And the flash freeze helps to kill parasites on the fish, so theres is that too.
Alaska has a rule where a long as they freeze the fish on the processing boat (ie before it gets to the on-shore processing facility) they can label it as "Fresh Never Frozen."
I mean, we don't even do this within Japan. Most things are either flash frozen or kept alive until they can be served. Hell, on TV last night they did a segment on how a lot of the Tuna used by a major Japanese sushi chain (Sushiro) is caught in Malta, frozen on the boat, and then brought to Japan. I get the idea, but it's not a good rule these days.
Basically none of the fish you buy even right at the ocean is from that ocean unless you buy it right from the fishing boat (and even then....)
This is why I get imitation crab/lobster
I must eat from a small plate to make my little food seem big. NO BIG PLATES ALLOWED!
My wife did that for a while. She stopped when she realized she was just piling the food higher instead
My wife pours the milk into an empty bowl then brings the cereal box to her seat and pours it in one spoonful at a time. She insists this makes sense to do, and it's the only way she'll eat cereal.
Maybe she wants to keep it crunchy 🤷
Honestly kinda genius
The spoonful at a time is odd, but it probably gets less soggy milk first.
A colleague of mine cannot allow beans to touch some other foods on their plate. So in an English breakfast for example, they require some kind of bean barrier, such as a sausage, to prevent the beans from touching other elements of food on their plate. I find this weird.
Makes sense to me. If he wanted his entire breakfast to taste like beans, he would have arranged it that way.
So what, he'd throw away the sausage?
Asparagus is finger food, no ifs or buts about it.
Anything can be finger food if you're brave enough.
After that one incident, I can confidently say that habaneros are not a finger food.
If I can't eat a combination of the main dish and a side, the side doesn't go with the main dish. Lucky for me, that is generally the case with most foods.
Desserts are the exception, but I don't count them as sides.
At the risk of sounding like a monster, I can't think of a single main/side I wouldn't combo.
Can you give an example that doesn't go together?
Yesterday I was eating some miso soup and then was offered a grilled cheese. I had a grilled cheese and miso soup for lunch.
Not the classic combination you might think.
Soup is not food.
This is the best way to reference
I like to eat green beans like french fries. I'll even dip them and catch up and/or barbecue sauce.
Nothing on my plate can touch, especially if they are different textures. Textures are almost as important as flavor. This is the main reason why I don't eat zucchini.
When I really like something I want it the same way every time. Don't try to dress it up with new stuff, it was perfect before, I want it the same way.
Some foods should not be touching other foods but I can't use one of those cafeteria trays because the texture makes me gag.
My solution to it is using glass or ceramic plates and bowls for each item. There are exceptions of course.
Silverware is another thing altogether.
I always scrape my ice cream and cheese. If I get a nice piece of Gouda or cheddar and I'm feeling snacky then I will take a sharp knife and scrape it. I swear it's so much creamier and smoother in your mouth, eating it normally makes it look like cardboard in comparison. Same thing with ice cream, scrape it with my spoon while serving.
What drives me insane is that my mom will literally take a bite out of the block. Even with Parmesan.
A green salad should never contain anything sweet.
This probably doesn't count, but I am also firmly of the opinion that water chestnuts are not food.
I dunno, candied nuts are pretty amazing paired with Gorgonzola in a salad (I’d throw some sliced pears and strawberries in there too).
That said, I used to hate fruit in a green salad, my taste just changed over time.
Candied walnuts, dried cranberries, and carrot slivers are sooo good in a salad. Especially with a sweet balsamic dressing. It’s pure summer on a plate.
Agreed. Green salads should be savory.
Jesus christ do I hate water chestnuts. I don't know how anyone ever did decide that they're food. Starvation, I guess.
I can't eat a sandwich if I don't have chips with it.
No seed oils. No ultra processed food or drink, or to an utter minimum. I mean, I will always eat a pizza or a bag of chips or something at some point. So, it balances out. Little sugar, since it is already everywhere.
Make everything at home, if possible.
I only like yellow onions in cooked things, I'll tolerate cooked white ones but I won't buy them myself. No raw onions ever. Red onions are only acceptable when pickled, but they can fuck right off otherwise.
I cannot eat cheese unless it is melted. I just hate cheese's taste
Any particular cheeses? They all taste wildly different to me
If you don't eat that chicken wing clean, we can't be friends.
You get one pass and that's if you only take 1 wing.
I mean I get it but at the same time many of us do not like eating cartilage.
It’s why I don’t like wings, or most bone-in chicken.
Leftover pizza needs to be heated up in a pan in medium heat. Its the only way for the pizza to not become soggy, to the crust have some crunch on it and to restore the cheese melt.
I will argue with anyone in my house that goes against this!
Air fryer
Oven at 425, about 6-7 minutes. It's a little drier but I grew up on concession stand pizza...
That said, I'm definitely trying the pan.
Even better, damp paper towel over the slices, microwaved to heated through. Then while that's happening melt some butter in the pan, put the hot slices in the melted butter, cover with a kid and wait a few minutes. It's more work bit it's almost perfect if you feel like getting more dishes dirty.
I always eat a slice while putting the rest in the oven, set it to preheat to 400-425... And it is usually done when the oven finishes preheating
Get a convection toaster oven and your leftover pizza game will improve significantly.
5 mins at 400 in mine and the pizza is pretty much as good as it was when fresh. No preheat required.
Sides should ideally be eaten before the main - unless it annoys whoever I am eating with
There is one correct way to eat pop tarts or other toaster pastries. Nibble off the sides, then eat the non-iced side, then fold the iced side in half so you get a double filling, double iced pastry. Finally you can expericence nirvana, the effort is worth it.
Same, but I toss the edges.
Sandwiches should have their contents rearranged so they each bite has exactly the same amount of filling. If that cannot be done, the bites with the least filling should be eaten first and those with the most should be saved for last.
I bristle on the inside when my kids want a slice of bread for breakfast. Toast is for breakfast, and bread is for other meals. I don't even actually care about this, but my dad did when I was a little kid and I clearly internalized that lesson.
Bought a fancy pizza the other day. They put zero thought into the distribution, instead opting for giant discs of goat cheese and spoonfuls of sauce spread about. Some bites were great, most were missing crucial ingredients for a pizza. Like sauce and cheese.
Friend, I feel this so hard. There are times a pizza should have this feature, but they are rare.
If I'm having pasta, the bowl always have a flat plate beneath, even if I don't plan to eat another course after
My rule is there are no rules. I like to eat dangerously and without borders.
Peanut butter never expires. Ever.
I have no way to test this theory. If I buy to much peanut butter, I'll have eaten to much peanut butter... Long before any suggested dates haha
God damn right. My peanut butter has a shelf life of about 5 days. I’m happy to dispose of it into me.
There’s a “food theory” video on the ‘tube about how long you could survive locked in a food (grocery) store. It points out that food may turn rancid but can still be “fit” to eat - I think peanut butter fell into this category. I don’t know whether the video is factually accurate but it is entertaining all the same.
Salads and sandwiches should be served room temperature, never right out of the fridge cold
Only sandwiches in the shower. Noodles are right out. Edit: nobody liked my joke, sad
Look at this guy that hasn't figured out where to eat pizza.
Sort by color, then eat in order of worse to best. Only really applies to things like M&Ms and Skittles. It's basically edging for the blue ones.
Same, but for the red ones for me.
I cut up pizza mozzarella so that each disk of mozzarella remains uncut. Sometimes it means extremely chaotic cuts. But the rationale is that cutting through molten cheese is extremely messy, so I avoid it if I can.
Also, Brussel sprouts are the best green vegetables.
Liquid dairy grosses me out, never puked but gagged a couple times. Cream, cream based sauces, melted ice cream (though if I eat it fast enough it doesn't melt!), queso, but melted cheese on pizza is somehow ok.
It's so dumb, I somehow conditioned myself.
I'm not drinking tap water or microwaving anything unless I'm about to die without doing it.
I'm lucky in that tap water is better than bottled water where I live. Do you never reheat leftovers?
I don't really drink bottled water either, unless I'm away from home and didn't bring enough with me. Usually I'll just filter it myself.
I love leftovers! They go in the oven or on the stove though... Maybe in the air fryer if I want them quick and they were supposed to be crispy.
Meat should be cooked through when eaten by humans. People who eat rare/medium rare/medium steaks are basically dogs.
People who cook steaks welldone deserve the stockades. But only mushrooms can be thrown at them.
Woof!
Good boy!
My weird rule is I don’t buy food…. Kidding not kidding
You say you're a dancing bear, but that sounds like something 3 raccoons in a trenchcoat would say.
Everyone gets a minimum of one chance for BS. I don't like people giving me BS.
Why so strict with Beef Stroganoffs?
I wouldn't even accept one chance for bullshit in my food.
