Extensions

I've been eating lunch with some of my students lately. A couple of them have come up and asked me to eat with them. I can't say no to that! They invariably ask me if I can use chopsticks. Of course, I can. I've been using chopsticks for as long as I've been eating at the Happy Dragon. That's been since sometime in the 80s. I'm no expert, but I'm no slouch, either.

In America we might use chopsticks, but we don't use them in the same way the Chinese do. In America, they are just a replacement for a fork, not a replacement for a knife and fork. We cut up the food into bite-sized pieces before cooking and then pick up each piece at the table.

In China, the food is not cut up that much. You get giant sprigs of broccoli or cabbage, whole chicken legs, fish with the bones still in it. Using chopsticks to manipulate the food into -- and often back out of -- your mouth is definitely a skill I'm still learning.

I was making chicken soup this evening (I have finally fallen victim to the cold that's been going around school). I've been practicing using long-handled chopsticks instead of tongs in my cooking. I'm doing this partly because I want to get better at using them, partly because chopsticks are bamboo and my pans are nonstick, and partly because it just looks cool. I chopsticked the chicken legs out of my rice cooker (which doubles as my soup pot until I finally get a good-sized stock pot) and took them into the living room to pick the meat off the bones.

If you've ever made chicken soup, you know the worst part is picking the chicken off the bone. If you wait until the chicken cools, it's really nasty and fatty and slimy. If you don't wait, the chicken is scorching hot and burns your fingertips. Well, I had the chopsticks there and... wait a minute. This was pretty easy.

Chopsticks are neither a replacement for forks or for knives and forks -- they are finger extensions! It all makes sense now. Eating in China is a lot like eating with your fingers, except you aren't using your fingers. But you still nibble meat off the bone, pick things out of your teeth, and use your incisors to bite your vegetables (which sucks for those of us whose previously working bite no longer works because our fake teeth are no longer in exactly the same position our real teeth were in). 

When I first started using trekking poles while hiking, it was very awkward. I didn't really trust the to hold me; I didn't know how to hold them. But now, I feel naked when hiking without them. I rely on them for balance while walking up and down steep slopes. They turn me into a four-legged animal.

While chopsticks won't give me two extra fingers, in fact, they take away three fingers, they do extend my reach and keep my fingers from being burned -- or getting all dirty. I still have quite a ways to go before I am a chopstick expert: I have a lot of finger dexterity and hand strength to work on. But I feel like I'm now approaching it from the right perspective.