feeding-spaghetti-with-my-fingers

This has been a trip of many firsts. On our bus ride from Trinidad to Santa Clara in Cuba, I have added to the list feeding spaghetti to my 3 year old daughter with my fingers. Fingers, being thicker than the teeth of a fork, are less than ideal for pronging through spaghetti. Being attached to my hand, and by extension therefore also my arm and body, they are also far more difficult to twirl around to pick up useful amounts of spaghetti. Add to this that she also wanted none of the tomatoes in the sauce, and it made for quite an experiment. Paola was to repeat the experiment with our two year old son about half an hour later.
I can’t think of many foods less appropriate for eating with fingers. Soup, I guess, would feature prominently on that list. Rice wouldn’t, and eating mansaf, the Palestinian / Jordanian dish of lamb and rice tastes infinitely nicer through fingers than it does with a spoon. Given that this dish has its origins in farms and in poorer communities, I find myself also recalling how such basics as a knife and fork are luxury items for much of the world. And by extension how so much of what we take for granted would be unimaginable (and sometimes unwelcome) comforts for many. And that to ignore, abuse or hoard our privileges is at once inhuman and irresponsible.