FINGER FOOD

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!