Readers weigh in
Lurking in your lettuce is a seeded quandary wrapped in red skin: To pierce or not to pierce, that is the question. When it comes to tomatoes, etiquette expert Ann Marie Sabath urges a pre-slicing piercing. What's your position?
From the Los Angeles Times
Olive pits should be removed from one's mouth using one's index finger and thumb and discreetly putting the pit either on one's butter plate, the edge of one's dinner or salad plate. Never should anything be spit.
Ellen C. Lichterman @ 4:38 PM PST, Nov 17, 2007
Following on with 'Tee' and her comments about knives and cherry tomatoes. Unless the dinner, or salad, knive has a serrated edge -- it is a challlenge to slice, or saw, a tomato, of any size, with a dull edged knife. I suggest, based on experience, to place the tomato inside the salad, then use the fork to spear and then eat it whole. After all, it IS bite size. I would suggest it could be equally 'dangerous' to, "sort of hold it (the small, slippery tomato) in place with my fork and saw through it with my (dull, bulky dinner) knife".
R Ben - Again @ 4:34 PM PST, Nov 16, 2007
Re: The Olives. I remember reading, back in the early 40's, Emily Post. One of the surprisingly many things I remember was eating Olives. Her direction was to eat the olive with a fork, with fingers only in the most informal occasions. Then, to use the fork to transfer the pit to the edge of the dinner plate (not the bread plate). This was before pitted olives were that common. I find it bizarre that Ms Sabath would direct that one leans over and spit the pit out onto their plate. (But then she did also direct that one need not cover when sneezing.)
R Ben @ 4:08 PM PST, Nov 16, 2007
Isn't it rude not to drink after you've been toasted? As if you're declining the toast?
Kari @ 6:29 PM PST, Nov 14, 2007
I don't dare pierce my cherry tomatoes with my fork. I sort of hold it in place with my fork and saw through it with my knife. Piercing it is way to dangerous.
Tee @ 6:44 PM PST, Nov 13, 2007