Don't Mess with My Oreos

The law of the tan m&m must be obeyed.

Bull feathers. The tan was a weak imitation of the dark brown.

Sigh. What's the matter with you people?

Never heard of Smarties till Beth brought it up. I lead a sheltered life. Or maybe they weren't invented when I was a kid.

Hey I can remember when a Three Musketeers bar was actually big enough for three people. Of course the division of said bar was frought with stress. No knife. Three people making sure they weren't being short-changed. The divider was in trouble if all the pieces weren't exactly the same size. I was often the divider. How did I get myself into such messes? Thinking back, it wasn't so bad. I'd just divide it, take the biggest piece (there was always a biggest piece), and wait to see if anybody was gonna argue. Serious stuff. We shoulda taken turns being the divider. This is a helluva time to come up with a solution.

regrettably, the box of Smarties doesn't always arrive with a perfect assortment - so I have to make it perfect

so there, to you and your index finger

i have to admit, i'm not a big oreo fan, these however

mmmmmmmm

You finished ROOM? Did you like it??

Yes.
It gave me a different perspective on many things.
I'll have to read some of her other stuff.

buncha weirdos!

I just eat - as long as there are no brussels sprouts in the vicinity. Vicious, toxic little beasts!

That's close. I buy small packages of M&Ms that I empty into a shallow bowl on my desk. The first thing I do is separate them into small groups by color: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, brown. My goal is to keep the same number of each color, so I eat the "extras" first until all the groups have the same number. Then I eat one of each color so the groups stay the same size. When I get down to the last M&M of each color, I decide which color combinations I like best that day (my mood changes), and eat two at a time, leaving my favorite color combination for last.

Geez, seeing that in print makes me feel crazy.

Oh I still mix my corn in the mashed potatoes, yum.

I am with margo - you're all a bunch of weirdos!
I just eat, no OTC, no color coding, no separating, no nothing - just plain eating!

Eva, Tres interesting. You're not a single color fan. You're making COMBINATIONS. A complex approach.

CJ, margo, After reading about all the stuff that people do with their food, I'm wondering whether "just eating" is normal. Well, if you sit down to a meal, don't care if one kinda food touches another kind, don't care about colors, or food order, that's your business.

Rituals and food go together like peanut butter and jelly. I can not eat my Rockford Pizza my way without thinking of the time when my family and I were celebrating my winning the Pine Wood Derby at the Pizza Hut on Alpine and Harrison, and I was showing off by putting as much red pepper on each bit of topping and crust as I could stand, and how my Mom told the story for years after to all her friends and family about the night I ate slice after slice of pizza loaded down with red pepper on both the topping and the crust, and how that night everyone razzed me about what a freak I am.

Out of five only two of us are left now, eating pizza is one way that I remember the departed.

hawkeye, You're connecting eating rituals to memories. This makes sense and isn't weird, IMO. Having to eat Oreos in groups of three or not allowing one kind of food to touch another doesn't make sense in any overt way. This is where the weirdness enters the picture.

I dont get why you think this is strange, my family are Catholic where they make big deal about getting a tasteless bit of bread and a sip of bad wine, in my zen tradition we turn the making of tea into a time consuming chore......it is all about the controlling of the process, of feeding the soul not just the body.

I have another one...when I get regular burgers at McDonalds I have to smash them with the palm of my hand before I open them, press down hard and smash them down to about 1/4 size. I dont do this with any other burger place, and it is only the standard hamburgers and cheesburgers that I have to do this with. I cant not do it either, I have tried. I have done this ever since I can remember eating my first McDonalds burger, I think it happened because we kids were eating in the back seat of the car at the only Mcdonald's in town at the time on East State Street (back before McDonalds had an inside, when everyone ate in their car) and I accidently sat on mine, and decided that I liked it that way. My kids think I am nuts.

If colour, and one food not touching the other is important, how do you cope with casseroles, stews, etc., where everything is mixed together?

What a dope . . . the stew or the cassarole is fine . . . but it can't touch the salad on the plate, nor any side dish. Sheesh . . .

I do apologise - obviously I don't have a full grasp of the rules (or your rules, anyway)

Actually, i think a lot of kids have this must not touch obsession. One of my nephews was often able to distract his brother, and then reach over with his fork and stir all the food together. His brother would burst into tears, and sometimes his mother would make him a new plate, sit him at the other end of the table, whop his brother on the back of the head, and then eat the food on his original plate.

hawkeye, There are all kinds of ritualized connections between food and religion. As for the burger. I think it's become a ritual, but it was originally based on taste, which makes perfect sense. If you smashed the burger just because, that would be more of a ritual, IMO.

margo, You so-called normal types just don't get it. A stew is a food entity. Set is right. It can't touch the salad. I think someone said that stews are unacceptable because all the foods are touching. A purist.

So last night I was watching TV and saw a commercial in which someone made a sandwich and then took a bite. He didn't cut the sandwich in half. Oh the horror! Cut the samwich in half you neanderthal. Bingo, another food ritual from me. You gotta cut the samwich. In the privacy of my own home, I cut it into quarters. Why? Because. That's why.

Is this about something like which part of the chocolate easter bunny one habitually eats first?

As a child I alway started with the ears ... because I figured that would cause the least pain. I never felt good about eating the bunny's face.