I am a tactile eater. There, I’ve admitted it. I like to eat with my hands. I am a finger food fanatic. Not just your traditional finger foods…For
me, if it’s not in liquid form, my preference is to pick it up. To touch it. Yesterday, I
was having a snack and was eating it with my fingers. My snack was fermented beet slices and they were delicious, by the way. Here is a little
word to the wise… when one eats pickled beet slices with ones fingers, one can
expect a bit of stainage. Eating pickled
beets without utensils results in red stained finger tips. So, if you are going to have a snack and that
snack happens to be pickled beets, and you don’t want to expose your finger
food fetish, you might want to use a fork. Just saying.
Before we go any further, yes, I know how to use utensils, and
yes I do use utensils in public, mostly,
and often at home, but mainly out of
habit and guilt I think. And yes, I wash my hands well before I partake in any fork free pleasures. That said, when the opportunity presents itself, I prefer
to be a hands on kind of gal when it
comes to food.
Over the years, I have learned to embrace the uniqueness
that is me… and this is just another one of those areas I’ve learned to accept
and embrace. I prefer to touch my
food. It’s just a part of who I am…take
me or leave me. But if you do take me, and if you should happen to invite me
over for dinner, you might be wise to give me a paper napkin instead of one of
your fancy cloth ones…just in case. "Hide the best linens, Honey! I've invited Wynette over for dinner!"
I know I am not alone in this. There are more of us finger foodies out there
than you might think. For example, if I
were living in another country or immersed in another culture, I might fit
right in…Also at preschool…I would fit
right in at a preschool too.
My brother used to give me a hard time about pretty much everything. In his defense, he also taught me to play
baseball and basketball and and he was an amazing big brother, and still is. But,
he gave me a hard time about a lot of things because that’s what big brothers
are supposed to do. Thusly, he made it his mission to harshly critique the
whole eating with my fingers thing. And
apparently, a smudgy glass is one of the telltale marks of a tactile eater…”I
wonder whose glass THIS one is?” He
would say as he inspected my not so pristine looking water glass while clearing
the dinner table. Oh whatever, brother, I might be hungry later, and if I am, I
can just lick the outside of my glass. You just keep eating those french fries
with a fork. Dork.
My therapist reminds
me that it is OK to have some smudges in ones life and says I should just let
my brothers hurtful comments about my smudgy glass and my sticky fingers go…I’m
not convinced…about letting it go. I
hold grudges. I’m imperfect that way. And over the years, I have had a special knack for getting
my brother back. As you may recall, there was the incident with the Jart,
and I also admit that I may have once played
a small role in an event where he swallowed an S hook. He was putting together his new pitch-back I think, and put an S hook in his mouth as he worked and I may have given him a slap on the back or
maybe jumped on him and covered his nose and mouth with my hands. I don’t remember exactly, but apparently,
paybacks are a 5 year old with smudgy, sticky little food stained hands...Oh whatever, judgers. It was a long time ago and
I am a work in progress. Plus, not to worry, it all came out in the end. No
surgical procedures required. Case closed. I was talking on the phone to my niece today and
told her about the S hook incident and how I was planning to write about it. She
giggled and exclaimed that she couldn’t wait to read about her dad ingesting random
hardware and she laughed as she pondered the shape of an S hook, the path that it took, and marveled
at it’s safe passage and eventual departure.
I love that girl! Love her dad too.
OK, back to the beets.
So, I stood there in the kitchen, admiring my red fingertips, a byproduct
of my beet eating method, and suddenly I was struck. I was just standing there with my teeth in my
mouth, minding my own business when out of nowhere, my brain just up and
decided to take a happy little skip in a marginally related, but mostly random
direction…Mad Cow…And I was suddenly
thrust into a memory from childhood. Of
strolling down to the neighborhood convenience store to buy a snack. My two snacks of choice back then were pistachios
or the ever popular and oh so cool Lick-M-Aid... sometimes also called the Fun
Dip. I’ve never understood that…same product, two different names…Helmans/Best
Foods…why? But I digress. Anyway, pistachios or
Lick-M-Aid. What to choose? Both heavenly treats for a touchy tactile taster
such as myself. By and large,
it was pistachios that would win the battle for my heart and my gut. For sure,
if it was the Fall, I would get pistachios because people gave out Fun Dips for Halloween, but nobody
ever gave out pistachios, so that pretty much sealed the deal. And I would buy a bag of lovely red
pistachios.
For mysterious and mystical reasons that I did not question,
when I was a kid, pistachios were red.
Not naturally red, but rather dyed red.
And the red bled. On everything.
And there was no hiding the fact that pistachios had been consumed. Red fingers, red lips, red tongue, and red
stains on clothes from wiping said red fingers and lips. Back then, I never questioned the redness of
the pistachio. It just was. So now,
curious, I did my research and came to find out it was purely cosmetic. The red dye was nut makeup. Neat. Apparently,
back then, the harvesting process caused unsightly blemishes on the shell of the pistachio
and distributors, in all of their wisdom, thought it wise to dye those
hideously imperfect little guys red. Great plan. Add a little artificial colorant to an otherwise
healthy snack. Perfect. I remember when naked, undyed pistachios
started to appear in stores. I thought
them odd. Less attractive…less appealing
somehow. A movie star without makeup. A cake without frosting. A pistachio that wasn’t red was all wrong. I had been brainwashed by a society that told
me if a pistachio wasn’t caked in red foundation, it wasn’t worthy of my time,
my money, or my taste-buds. Now, of course, I know. Now I know that the naked
nuts, perfectly pristine in their natural, undoctored form, were superior. They were undunked and free. Free from the
burden of ridiculous and unnecessary red dye. And eventually, slowly but
surely, real beauty won out and the
red pistachio all but disappeared in favor of the natural nut…until recently. I recently read that red pistachios are making
somewhat of a comeback. Apparently the dying process has been improved and the
red doesn’t rub off so much anymore so some of the nut jobs are bringing them
back. They are bringing red pistachios back…seriously. Now that’s nuts.
OK, back to the topic at hand...handy eating. I did a little research on that topic too, and
I found the most wonderful news! Eating
with your fingers is totally in keeping with the whole paleo/primal
lifestyle! It is perfectly acceptable practice
among the caveman hunter/gather types and actually has some super cool
benefits. So hooray for that! Turns out I am way ahead of the game on this
one. When I became a Wahls Warrior, a
Paleo Princess, I had to learn to be a good greens and veggie eater. I had to work at increasing my fermented food
intake. I had to expand my meat horizons unto uncharted territory. I had never even heard of
Kombucha before and I was a novice smoothy maker at best. But on this one, on eating with my fingers, I
am a rock star from way back. I am a seasoned pro. And to find out after all these years that it is actually
good for me? Huge bonus. For once, there is something
that is good for me that I actually already did in the first place. Yay me!
So what’s so good for
you about tactile eating, you ask? Well
let me just tell you what I’ve come to learn. And I know it’s all true because
I found it on the internet. The
following is so good and written so well that I’m just adding it word for word
from a post from theprimalist.com…
5 reasons to get your
hands dirty:
It’s primal. Eating
with your hands is common in many parts of the world. Utensils are a man-made
invention that not all cultures warmed up to. We’ve learned so much from our
ancestors and various hunter-gatherer tribes about health and nutrition – could
they be onto something here, too?
Improved digestion. Feeling
your food is a like a heads-up to your stomach, signaling “Incoming!” Your
hands become an extension of the digestive system. Millions of nerve endings in
your fingers relay the message that you’re about to eat, including the
temperature of the food, level of spiciness, etc. to prep the stomach for
digestion. Handling the food with your fingers releases digestive juices and
enzymes.
Heightened awareness.
Many experts have noted the importance of being relaxed and “present” at
mealtime. A calm, aware state allows optimum digestion and helps with not
overeating. Eating with a fork and knife can become mechanical, done
absentmindedly while watching TV. You’ll inevitably feel more connected with
your food when you eat with your hands.
Engages all senses. The
smell of your cooking fills your home. The feast looks appetizing. You hear how
crunchy it is as you take that first bite. And of course it tastes delicious.
But as far as feeling it, you’re limited to the textures you experience in your
mouth. Or are you? Eating with your hands adds a tactile dimension to your meal
and engages all of your senses. Some people firmly believe that to completely
enjoy your food, you simply must eat it with your fingers.
It’s fun. Don’t kids
just look so happy and carefree, eating with their hands? Live a little, try
something new, have some fun :)
So there you have it.
I am vindicated. I am actually quite a progressive and evolved warrior. My dirty little fingers secret is actually a
super cool paleoish gut healthy practice. So there, brother! And so I will display my red stained fingers
with pride.
Oh, and just one more bit of food for thought…ever wonder
why restaurants mostly offer appetizers for Happy Hour?…I think maybe it is because
appetizers are mainly finger foods and
finger foods give us an excuse to eat with our fingers, and eating with our
fingers make us happy! Hence the name
Happy Hour!
Happy Happy Hour!
