Can you use chopsticks?

Next to eating peas with a knife, chopsticks are the ultimate in hand/eye coordination! Can you use chopsticks or do you live in a "chopstick free zone"? Inquiring minds want to know ... :D

edit: subject line (fyi, you don't have type 'POLL' in the subject line :silly: )

Anything else, I can eat with chopsticks no problem.

They hold the bowl up to their mouths and use the chop sticks to scoop the stuff in their mouths. :-)

The Japanese hold the bowl up, but not to their mouths, and they do not scoop the rice.

A minor point, perhaps, but certainly important to the Japanese mind and culture (or, at least, the Kyoto culture) that they are not rice scoopers.

don't leave home without it! :evilgrin:

and I was jealous of all those who could gracefully eat with chopsticks!

It is easy to pick up the chunks of Sushi with chopsticks. Before you know it you will be able to eat anything with chopsticks.

I practiced by picking up popcorn - it worked! ;)

I don't hold them like the diagram shows.

how do you hold them? :hi:

But I see chopsticks as a stupid limitation of the tactical oppotunities one has with normal cutlery. Blame Confucius.

We're a bicultural Japanese/American household. We mostly use o-hashi (chopsticks), and no shoes are allowed in the house.

I've come to prefer them over the years. They're not cold like silverware. in Japan, they say that the use of chopsticks stimulates the brain and helps prevent senility, like knitting.

That's very interesting. I knit, crochet, and use chopsticks! Apparently I'm going to stay sharp!

On the other hand, I got up from my chair last night to write something on a memo pad, crossed the room, and realized that I'd forgotten what I wanted to write down. :shrug:

I've noticed a difference between asian cultures regarding the design of their chopsticks. It's probably a meaningless difference but I wanted to take this opportunity to say, "hi, neighbor", too. :hi:

Chinese chopsticks are not. They're both better at different things, though I'm more used to the chinese variety.

Especially "training" chopsticks they give to children or foreigners.

If you eat real Chinese food you can see the genius of chopsticks and their adaptability to the culture.

The last time I tried to eat bok choi with a fork I had to throw the damn thing away and go looking for my chopsticks. The only way to eat julienned meat and veggies is with a chopstick or a shovel. And when you know what you're doing you can pick out fish bones much more efficiently than you can with a knife or fork.

Eating exclusively with chopsticks is also one of the greatest diets on earth. You're not supposed to shovel your food in there. With chopsticks it slows down your eating time so you feel full around the same time you're finished eating.

It's probably one of the few thing requiring fine motor skills that I can do proficiently.

Did you teach yourself or did you have a mentor? :D :hi:

especially for rice

Yes I can use them put it seems like such a waste of time to do it.

if you can use them properly, they're a preferable tool for eating the food they were designed for--ie, not cutting a steak.

But lack of use has made me awkward. I generally don't bother with them unless they're the only form of utensil at hand.

I had a job for one year between college and law school working for a large Japanese trading firm in NYC. The first week I was there, they took our department out to eat to welcome me and another woman who had just started there.

They took us to a Korean BBQ place called Woo Lae Oak of Seoul. All the food ( except for the rice and kimchi and other little dishes they serve with Korean food) was cooked on grills at the table- and they did not give us forks. I didn't want to look like an ugly American, but I really didn't know how to use sticks and with a hot grill, hands were not an option.

So I very quietly asked young Miyabe-san to teach me quickly! He did and the rest is history.

The key to eating rice is it has to be a bit sticky. If it's fluffy, eating it with sticks is nearly impossible. I can however, pick up indivdual peas.

If I dip one chopstick in a little honey first.
;-)

They are easy to use.

My father traded with the Japanese shortly after WW11. We had many dinners with Japanese merchants. I started learning to use Chopsticks at 5. I'm fairly proficient now.

Chinese are amazed that ANY American can use chopsticks.

trying to teach me to use them when we've dined out at Asian restaurants. At a sushi bar in Toronto, I got as close as I have been to mastering them. But I just can't get the hang of them.

don't move the 'bottom' chopstick, it's stationary. The 'top' (a-hem) is the stick that moves. (Let me do it --- :spank: bad 9_S_F!).

using a sports metaphor, I'm more accustomed to being "behind the plate" than "on the mound". But I do know what you're talking about, of course. :-)

That's a very good way to explain it. Thanks.

T

it can be lots more fun and exciting when top and bottom move......

but I use the "scoop and shove" method with the rice bowl unless the rice is sufficiently sticky. Can use them proficently otherwise.

I think it's more a matter of practice than skill.

I can WORK them bad boys!

Buy them at the asian market - a pittance for a big bundle.

"not on the piano" ... wise guy! :D :hi:

I practiced by picking up peanuts with pencils.

By the time I actually had to use chopsticks to survive, I was an expert!

:D

without even asking. (haole = Caucasian person) :grr:
In Honolulu, chopsticks may in fact be the preferred utensil; they at least hold their own with the plastic forks.

The person who taught me made me eat a bowl of green peas with them, and I was a pro after that.

My husband taught me to eat soup with chopsticks. (This only works with Hot and Sour or Wonton or other chuncky soup, but it really gets the waiters' attention in the chinese restaurant!) You eat all the chunks with the chopsticks and drink the broth.

Once when we had finished eating our soup w/chopsticks and then proceeded to eat our meal using the rice bowls instead of dumping it on the plate, the waiter did a double take, asked if we had ever lived in Asia and then called his boss over and said"Look, they are more Chinese than we are".

We use them at home. And asian food does not taste correct when eaten with a fork, unless it is Indian food. Curry for some reason requires silverware.

My daughter at age 3 decided she wanted to eat with them too. Well she just could not get it, so she got down from the table, went to the drawer got a third chopstick, and again attempted to eat. Her theory was that if two wouldn't do the job, then she needed 3. She was a pro with chopsticks by the time she was six.

traditionally in India, they used no utensil at all--well, except for bread. One scoops up the food with the bread itself.

And it does taste better with that yummy bread. I better watch it I will end up at Maharajah tonight LOL

What I do is I put a rolled up napkin in between the two chopsticks and then tie a rubber band around it.

Works like a charm! :P

:D

wife. Actually, she is first generation Taiwanese, but too lazy to use them most of the time. I started using them to be culturally aware, but over time some things are easier to eat with chop sticks. Sushi, Chinese food, digging crab and lobster meat out of the shell etc.

One sore point is that every Chinese restaurant in the U.S. assumes the dumb white guy needs a fork. Funny thing is, the wife always grabs it. In China, I was still the dumb white guy, or Lawei (La-why), but your out of luck, most places didn't have any other utensil.

Wrist injury. So I usually have to either let my food get cold about halfway though or switch to a fork.

I can't switch hands - my right hand is dumb as a post.

PCat

What do you think?

I tought myself years ago when in college and started getting into Chinese food. For as uncoordinated a person as I am, for some reason I am the master of chopsticks, and became one quite quickly. I can even pick up individual grains of rice with Japanese chopsticks, which are now my preferred style.

I don't like eating a meal without them.

Eating salad with a fork is fricking intolerable. Cooking without chopsticks (like when I go to my sister's and cook) is downright miserable.

My partner is Japanese, and when her friends would come visit they were always surprised at how well I used chopsticks. When I visited Japan this Spring, I impressed a lot of natives. :-)

I can't catch a ball or hit a baseball or etc., but I can use chopsticks like a fiend!!

At least God gave me one physical skill.

in fact, it kept a friend and I from starving, once.
We went camping on maui and where all settled in and discovered that we had no forks or spoons.
Not a problem!
Went to the nearest kiawe tree(bush, whatever) and a little whittling later...2 pair of chopsticks!
I was proud of my "McGuiver" moment.:P