Do you know that even in the way we eat our foods you use find art? Yes, you need art in wearing your dress as much as you do with eating your foods. You don't just grab a fruit for example and plunge it into your mouth, or let your pointer finger dive right into the middle of a black forest cake and out it goes directly into your mouth with matching finger licking sound effects. So, in this column, let us learn some of the ways of eating to fully enjoy your food. By the way, there are two kinds of foods: foods eaten with a spoon and fork and foods eaten with the fingers.

Breads and Pastries

1. Non-sticky pastries like breads, cookies, pieces of cakes without soft frosting and plain doughnuts are finger foods. However, if they are served on a plate with a fork, eat accordingly.
2. Eat with a fork or with a spoon cakes that has soft frosting or has soft filling between its layers.
3. Cream puffs, chocolate eclairs, napoleons and all other filled pastries are eaten with a fork.
4. Many sandwiches are finger foods, but use a knife and fork to eat one served with sauce and to eat some of the triple-deckers. Always break or cut a sandwich, including a hamburger on a bun intopieces of suitable size before eating.
5. Eat pizza with a knife and fork or with your finger.
6. Breads served with butter are broken into bite-size for eating.

Fruits---Small fresh fruits are finger foods. Eating large fresh fruits is determined by the kind and ripeness or juiciness, canned and frozen fruits are eaten with a spoon.

1. Small fresh fruits such as cheries, grapes, raisins, dates and candied fruits are finger foods. Seeds of fruits may be removed from the mouth between the thumb and first finger. Place them on the rim of the plate.
2. Peel oranges and eat the easily separated sections with the fingers. Oranges can be peeled round and round, making a continuous spiral of peeling using a knife.
3. When cut in half, oranges, pears, mangoes and avocados are eaten with a spoon.
4. Except at picnics, watermelon is eaten with a fork; seeds are pushed to the side and remain on the plate.

Meat, Fish, Poultry

1. Do not chew the meat from chop bones, rib bones or steak bones except at outdoor picnic. Otherwise, you use knife and fork to eat with the separated meat from the bone.
2. Cut the flesh of chicken from the bone then eat with a fork.
3. Crisp dry bacon which shatters with the fork can be a finger food.
4. To eat clams, oysters and snails out of the shell, steady the shell with the left hand and remove the edible parts with the small seafood fork provided.
5. Use dinner knife and fork for eating fried shrimp, clam, crabs and lobster served out of the shell. However, if shrimp have tails that are intact, they may be held with fingers and the edible part is eaten to the tail. Shells are returned to the plate.

Vegetables---In general, eat vegetables with a fork, but fresh crisp relishes are finger foods.

1. Place vegetable relishes on the plate in that order of preference.
2. French fried potatoes and onion rings are fork foods. Potato chips and shoestring potatoes are finger foods.
3. Do not break open a baked potato and scoop the contents out on the plate but rather add butter or sauce and eat it bite by bite from the shell.
4. If it is not broken into halves, break corn-on-the cob between your two hands.
5. Use the knife with the fork in cutting wedges of lettuce or any salad ingredient that the fork alone does not cut. When salads are served as separate course, forks and knives are usually provided.

      Remember to chew your food slowly. Eating slowly allows more time for your stomach to signal the brain when it is already full. By the way, the napkin should be placed on your lap, not on your neckline. Its purpose is to protect your clothes from food drips. If you use it to wipe your lips, do it gently putting your lips lightly. Well, I hope you have learned something from our pointers.