Etiquette lessons?

[Jock Scot]

I'm having a hard time picturing that. If I understand your description correctly, it seems like a very awkward way to do it. You're basically putting the fork on the plate with the tines pointing down, so the back of the fork is raised off the surface, then using a knife to mash the food onto the back of the fork? I'm guessing that takes practice to get it on there correctly. Thanks for the explanation.

OK, a couple more etiquette questions:

1. When eating, say, a steak, and you take a bite with gristle in it that you just can't chew or swallow. What's the correct way to deal with it? I seem to recall that the recommendation is to discreetly spit it into your napkin. But then what do you do with the napkin that contains a half-chewed piece of gristle?

2. Eating soup: usually the soup spoon is a very wide spoon. What's the proper way to use it? Are you supposed to just raise it to your mouth and then slurp the soup off of it? That seems to be the method I've seen people use, but surely that can't be considered good etiquette, with all that vulgar slurping going on. Yet the spoon is too large to fit in one's mouth (or at least I can't fit it into my mouth). Help?

3. After-dinner coffee. If it's served in a coffee cup with a saucer (similar to tea), are you supposed to hold the saucer below the cup when drinking? Or is it acceptable to just pick up the coffee cup and drink it, leaving the saucer on the table?

4. Another napkin question: when you're done eating but you're still sitting and talking, what do you do with it? Fold it up and set it on the table, or keep it in your lap until you're ready to get up and leave?

1. Cut the gristle off before putting the good meat on the fork. If you can see the gristle and you have no alternative to try and eat it, cut the meat into very small pieces---if all else fails you can swallow it! If you are faced with a really in-edible bit then yes, discreetly put it in your napkin and the discreetly place it on the side of the plate and carry on as though nothing has happened.

2. Soup spoons should be "loaded" from the far side of the bowl by dipping the FAR edge of the spoon into the soup. You sip quietly from the near side of the spoon and at no time is the spoon put into one's mouth.

3. The saucer is left on the table.

4. When you leave the table the napkin if left at your place at the table, the side plate is the usual place although on your place mat, if there is one, will not be wrong. Under no circumstance should the napkin be folded when finished with.