I’ll admit I’m a pretty messy eater. I drop my food, spill my water or just entirely miss my mouth (how is this even possible?), but I’ve noticed that my eating incompetencies seem to shine most when eating salads. Instead of eating it, I always end up wearing it. The leaves somehow get flung into my gigantic head of hair, and the differently shaped vegetables make it difficult to get that perfect forkful.
With that said, here are a few tips on how to eat salad while still managing to look semi-civilized:
1. Find an anchor. Whether it be a kidney bean, cherry tomato or piece of chicken, spear into the salad with any one of these first. It’ll firmly hold your lettuce so you won’t drop it somewhere along the way from your salad to your mouth. If your salad just has greens, make sure you have some romaine lettuce to use as your anchor instead. It’s as trustworthy, durable and is essentially crunchy water. Yum.
Photo by Kavitha George
2. Avoid plastic forks.
Photo by Kavitha George
3. Ask for dressing on the side to prevent a smeared mess across your cheeks and face. Dip your fork in the dressing and then proceed to stab your greens.
Photo by Kavitha George
4. If you don’t like to aggressively stab your salad like I do, try the scooping technique. Use your fork to scoop up your lettuce and vegetables. This technique has a high risk of food falling off the fork, but when done right, it can achieve a great mouthful of salad.
Photo by Kavitha George
5. Don’t have a knife? No problem. Use the side of a fork to cut the vegetables and lettuce into bite-sized pieces.
Photo by Kavitha George
6. Chopsticks! They make life so much easier. If only I knew how to use them…
Photo by Kavitha George
7. Use your hands?
Photo by Kavitha George
8. Or you can just eat it however the hell you want! Rock the lettuce-in-hair/cheeks-smeared-with-dressing look. Trust me; you’ll still look fabulous.
Photo by Kavitha George