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greenlandgem
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08 Dec 2009, 9:25 pm

I've got a lot of little issues with food and eating (not bad ones, just "quirky"!) but today in the office one in particular has garnered a bit of attention from my coworkers. It used to amuse my friends (and probably my enemies too) at school - I've done it as long as I can remember.

When eating M&Ms (I don't really like Smarties), I usually spill out the entire bag (or portions of it, if it's one of those big ones) and turn all the Ms face up. Then I eat them by colour preference (least favourite first), eating only the damaged and off-centre Ms and working towards an ideally "perfect" print on a well-formed, uncracked and un-chipped candy. I then leave that one "perfect" M in that colour and work on to my second least favourite colour. I will work all the way through the bag (sometimes over many sittings) until I have a full colour spectrum of perfect little Ms. I will then eat them either one by one by colour preference, or all at once (though this is rare, I like to nibble rather than scarf). For some months several years ago, I would keep the most-perfect spectrum of the last bag until I had the next, then would select the best of the two to create a new, more perfect spectrum. Sometimes I vary the routine a bit, particularly if eating M&M minis.

I find eating M&Ms in a movie theatre, for example, very difficult as I can't see the colours and this distracts me from the film.

Funnily enough, I actually converted several clearly non-AS people to this method, which is apparently very addicting.

Just wondering if anyone else had any similar funny and harmless eating quirks! :)



blastoff
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08 Dec 2009, 9:52 pm

Uh, yeah. I do that. Smarties are the candy of choice for me for this.



aerofan_1
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09 Dec 2009, 4:33 am

Yep,
Been there and done that!

I like to arrange them by the colours in the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum and go from red to blue in order.
I've done the same thing with skittles (which I actually don't like very much) and also swizzles candy where the colours are faint, but still just visible.

It's for this reason that I don't eat candy at the movies!



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09 Dec 2009, 4:44 am

I would turn them face up as a kid. Now I arrange them by colour, always making sure I eat the blue last.

I've got to eat at certain times otherwise my stomach will ache even if I wasn't that hungry five minutes ago.

I always mix my food with rice/pasta/noodles before eating it. I will spend a good 2-3 minutes to make sure it's all mixed together.

I hate eating with people. At a restaurant is fine but in the home I prefer to eat alone. Today I woke up, went to make breakfast, someone else's toast popped from the toaster so I went to my room and back to bed. I got up an hour later to make myself breakfast.


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Wiedinmyer
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09 Dec 2009, 6:10 am

I would do very skittles and M&M's growing up. I'd also do much the same thing with breakfast cereals (eaten dry)... Something like Trix would be eaten one color at a time, or if I had Cap'n Crunch's Crunchberries, I'd eat all of the yellow bits first and save the crunchberries for last. My brother used to make fun of me when I was growing up for making a slight humming noise when I ate. I'm not sure if that was related to partial deafness (chronic ear infections) or not, though.



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09 Dec 2009, 6:38 am

I organized my M&Ms into color and lined each color up in a matrix... no more than five across. Then I ate them top-down. I can remember trying to taste the difference in colors.

I don't think they are this way any more, but there used to be a noticeably uneven distribution of colors in any given bag. There were always a ton of dark brown ones and very few green ones. I remember demonstrating something for math class (it was either statistics or probability) which involved sorting two of those 500 count M&M bags. At the time, it was noted that this was a rather unusual math project.

The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is watching the static charges of certain cereals, like Cheerios and Kix. After awhile in the milk, they would attract each other. I would make patterns with my Kix using this weak force.


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09 Dec 2009, 9:33 am

I don't do this regards to perfectness of M&Ms but do the same thing as you with colours, starting with brown because I like bright colours, I wouldn't leave a brown one... M&M dispensers are one of my collections


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greenlandgem
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09 Dec 2009, 10:56 am

How funny - I didn't expect such... conformable results!! I, too, noticed that M&Ms used to have a large proportion of dark brown (when there used to be two browns) and very few greens, and that now the distribution is more equal. I also eat the brown first, and the blue last, with variations between depending on my mood but clear preference given to primary colours.

I've never met anyone else who did this. I guess I'll put one more point down on the long list of "coincidences" pointing towards my being an Aspie. :D

Speaking of movie food: does anyone else spread butter/jam/peanut butter to the veryvery edge of each slice of bread/toast/cracker/whatever? I've also been teased for this one, but.... The corners just look so neglected and naked otherwise. And the bits of crust protruding uncovered from the edge of the jam just look so... incomplete.



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09 Dec 2009, 11:15 am

i hate food touching. i hate gravy making things run together. i eat one thing at a time, often by taking a little at a time around the pile of food till i'm at the center and eat that. i pick my pizza toppings off my pizza and eat them first.

i'm at a point where i can control those issues when i'm out with other folks, but indulge in them when i'm home.

when i was a kid, i would hide and throw away all meat. i wouldn't eat lunch at school because the penutbutter got nasty and oozed into the bread. i eat meat now, and won't make penutbutter sandwiches i don't intend to eat ASAP.
i need to cut up all my meat into small pieces before eating them, though. and refuse meat on the bone. refuse meat unconditionally if i bit into something hard/chewy/whatever.
don't want food that resembles what it was when it was alive.


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09 Dec 2009, 11:31 am

greenlandgem wrote:
does anyone else spread butter/jam/peanut butter to the veryvery edge of each slice of bread/toast/cracker/whatever? I've also been teased for this one, but.... The corners just look so neglected and naked otherwise. And the bits of crust protruding uncovered from the edge of the jam just look so... incomplete.

I never thought about it much before but I do this. I don't like the taste of of dry toast. Every ingredient in my sandwiches is distributed as evenly as possible, except for the spinach which is allowed to occupy a more central position. But if the stuff's sloppy, I'll reluctantly keep it from the edges so it won't drip - I hate unevenness around bread, but I hate cleaning up even more.

I suppose I'm quite fussy - the (soya) milk has to go in the tea last, I've got preferred ways of getting food and drink together, and I don't like to change them.



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09 Dec 2009, 11:38 am

greenlandgem wrote:
Speaking of movie food: does anyone else spread butter/jam/peanut butter to the veryvery edge of each slice of bread/toast/cracker/whatever? I've also been teased for this one, but.... The corners just look so neglected and naked otherwise. And the bits of crust protruding uncovered from the edge of the jam just look so... incomplete.


Sticky. No. Not cool. :| I like a small gap for this reason.
I don't go nuts if it gets on my hands, but I really really avoid it. I'm known to open a new jar of PB so that I don't get it all over my hands when trying to scoop to the bottom of the open one.


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09 Dec 2009, 1:21 pm

RampionRampage wrote:
i hate food touching. i hate gravy making things run together. i eat one thing at a time, often by taking a little at a time around the pile of food till i'm at the center and eat that. i pick my pizza toppings off my pizza and eat them first.

i'm at a point where i can control those issues when i'm out with other folks, but indulge in them when i'm home.


I am like this, especially when dressings are involved (syrups, salad dressings, gravy). Dressings should only touch the food they are meant to, anything else is just wrong. I also tend to eat my food from least favorite to favorite, kind of a treat at the end I guess... :)


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09 Dec 2009, 4:34 pm

I also used to eat smarties, M&M's and Skittles in this manner. I have never met anyone who actually does this, but am glad I wasn't the only one.

greenlandgem wrote:
Speaking of movie food: does anyone else spread butter/jam/peanut butter to the veryvery edge of each slice of bread/toast/cracker/whatever? I've also been teased for this one, but.... The corners just look so neglected and naked otherwise. And the bits of crust protruding uncovered from the edge of the jam just look so... incomplete.


Yes, all areas of the toast or crackers have to have butter, cheese spread or whatever on them, otherwise you have dry bits. The nakedness and incompleteness is something I have to agree with, greenlandgem. I don't know how people eat toast that isn't sufficiently buttered or crackers that are not covered from corner to corner in cheese, what is the point?

My other quirky mannerisms that provide amusement to those around me are as follows:
:star: I have a plate that my boyfriend refers to as my 'dog bowl', although if he were correct, it would be 'cat bowl'. This is because it is divided into three parts so that, if I want to eat three specific food types, but do not want any of them to touch, I will use this plate e.g. bangers and mash with baked beans - I hate it when the beans or the sauce come into contact with the potato. Previously, I had put the potato on one side of the plate and the beans on the other side, with the sausages acting as a partition between the two, but this didn't always guarantee no contact. Now I don't have this problem with my 'dog bowl', it has made meals like this more enjoyable. The only foods I like to eat together are pasta and sauce dishes or ones with gravy, such as roast dinners.
:star: If I'm eating a baked pasta dish, or a baked dish of any kind where the food remains in the dish it was baked in for a single portion, I will eat it neatly from one side to the other. I cannot abide a scruffy looking baked dish. Plus then I pick everything up from the sides of the dish as I go along so the sauces don't go cold. If it is from a dish where the food was baked for more than one person, I will eat the edges first and the centre last as this means that every mouthful stands a greater chance of being hotter, plus it looks neater.
:star:I usually eat one thing at a time and usually in the same manner. For example, if I am eating Steak and Kidney pie with vegetables and a jacket potato, I will eat the vegetables first as they go cold quickest, then I will eat the pie and, lastly, the potato as this stays hottest for longest provided you do not break the skin until you come to eat it.


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09 Dec 2009, 5:57 pm

bonuspoints wrote:
RampionRampage wrote:
i hate food touching. i hate gravy making things run together. i eat one thing at a time, often by taking a little at a time around the pile of food till i'm at the center and eat that. i pick my pizza toppings off my pizza and eat them first.

i'm at a point where i can control those issues when i'm out with other folks, but indulge in them when i'm home.


I am like this, especially when dressings are involved (syrups, salad dressings, gravy). Dressings should only touch the food they are meant to, anything else is just wrong. I also tend to eat my food from least favorite to favorite, kind of a treat at the end I guess... :)


haha, I'm the same way. I got some divider plates a while back to keep my food separate, but lost them all somehow :( But now when I'm done, my plate usually still looks like one, with the edges of the food creating the dividers basically, lol-there are always lines of food I will not touch left on the plate because something is touching it, or might have touched it. I never eat the edges of the foods.

My boyfriend always laughs at me because I only eat one thing at a time, and always the same things. For instance, at Thanksgiving I will never try any new foods, and will only put up to 3 things on my plate at one time. I will not take a bite of turkey, then potatoes, then stuffing... it's one thing at a time. Every once in a while I might mix potatoes and corn, but I will leave individual parts of them as well, just to keep my food in order to eat it, lol. Kind of like a color spectrum with food. If he can talk me into trying a bite of his food, it has to be either before I start my own plate, or at the very end after I finish my own stuff. I won't mix taking a bite of his meal into eating my own, and it has to be before he has eaten anything off of his own fork, or a part I cut off myself from an area he has not eaten off of.

I also freak out if anyone so much as touches my plate by accident. I won't eat the food on it if someone has nudged my plate around with their hand or elbow, has touched my fork, or has picked up my can of soda. I have to start from scratch any time any of it happens.


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greenlandgem
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09 Dec 2009, 8:03 pm

Fiz - I do everything you mention! I never had a divided plate but my mother often joked, exasperated, that she should just give up and get me one. I've gotten better with age, but when I was little, I used to get very upset when things touched. And dressing or gravy leaking and touching something it isn't supposed to is enough to ruin a meal - especially since I despise dressing of any kind.

I also have a particular way of eating mashed potatoes: I can't just stab a wodge of butter into it and have at 'er. I carefully smooth the potatoes into a mound, then with the knife carve out a hollow in the mound by removing a "plug" of potato. I then put butter and salt in the hollow, smooth the plug of potato over it, leave it a moment to melt, then carefully cut the mound of potato into squares, and eat the squares from the outside in, leaving the most buttery square for last. This used to be an enormous production (I've streamlined and simplified it somewhat for public) and earned me much unwanted attention at Girl Guide camps. :? With gravy I make a well inside the potatoes and use it as a dipping pool for my (carefully separate) veggies and meat. I suspect this isn't QUITE as rare, though.



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09 Dec 2009, 8:51 pm

I have to stir everything that can be stirred. Even when I make myself a sandwich and use mayonaise, I HAVE TO STIR IT! Even if they are packets, I have to squish them around until I think they are not watery.

I also eat everything seperate. Even when I make a that sandwich, I pull it apart.