Spoon vs Fork Culinary Take Down
It’s time to revisit that age old question: which is the superior utensil, the spoon or the fork? Pick your alliance, because the battle for superiority is begins at high noon next Tuesday!
*Competition runs from 12 pm EDT Tuesday, July 1st until 12 pm EDT Thursday, July 3rd. Signups begin TODAY at noon EDT. *
Learn a little more about the contenders —
The Spoon:
This ancient utensil has been around since the Paleolithic era, and has certainly stood the test of time. The first spoons were made from shells, husks, and nicely shaped rocks or pieces of wood. Over the years they have undergone many a transformation in size, shape, material, and purpose, but they’ve never gone out of style. Here’s a sampling of the variety of spoons we have today:
- Table spoon – your run of the mill, everyday spoon. Ole reliable.
- Tea spoon – a small spoon for serving tea or coffee. The jolly hobbits of spoons.
- Iced tea spoon – long handle. The basketball players of spoons.
- Grapefruit spoon – has some gnarly teeth for attacking the elusive grapefruit.
- Ice-cream spoon – looks like a small shovel, which is perfect for shoveling mass quantities of ice cream into your face!
- Caviar spoon – a spoon made without silver, which affects the taste of the delicate fish eggs you are consuming. Pinky out.
The Fork:
The fork is a much more modern addition to the utensil family. Likely due to the fact that humans have a natural pronged utensil attached to the ends of their arms, the fork has been less in demand over the course of human history.
One of the earliest stories of forks making their debut in the western world took place in 11th century Italy. The Byzantine princess, Theodora Anna Doukaina, brought a set of gold forks as part of her dowry for her marriage to the Venetian doge Domenico Selvo.
This created a huge scandal amongst the Venitian population, who saw the forks as an affront to God, who gave the populous perfectly good fingers to shovel food into their gullets with.
“God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks – his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them when eating. -St. Peter Damian”
The pampered princess also brought the finger bowl and the napkin to the Venitian people.
So which will it be? Ancient and reliable spoon, or gaudy, scandal-inducing fork? Pick your weapon and let’s find out!
Points breakdown:
Earn 5,000 – 1,000 bonus
Earn 25,000 – 5,000 bonus
Earn 50,000 – 10,000 bonus
Every 25,000 above 50,000 – +5,000
Winning team – 10,000 bonus (each team member must make a minimum 5,000 points to receive this bonus)
1st, 2nd, 3rd overall winners: 9,000, 6,000, 3,000
*The winning team will be determined based on points per player. This means that the winner will be determined by the strength of the players on the team, rather than by cumulative points.