At the very beginning of Elena Gorokhova’s remarkable new memoir A Mountain of Crumbs (which, at the risk of repeating one of its blurbs, really is like an Angela’s Ashes for the Soviet era, all beautiful and evocative and worth your attention), Gorokhova swiftly sums up the provincial baseness of her mother’s people by saying that they were from the country, “the kind of people that lick their plates.”
I came to San Francisco alone with my kids this week in part to go to my grandfather’s 88th birthday. And he, like Gorokhova’s people, was the kind of person who licked his plate. No matter what context, what the dress code, where the plate was or what kind of food had been on it.
It was, of course, a source of horror and shame, particularly for my grandmother. And she’s not alone. A 2006 survey on UK manners (funded by the Great British Chicken trade group) was reported in the London Evening Standard with suitable scorn:
Today’s parents have not only forgotten their manners — but are too busy licking their plates and watching the telly to pass them on, a survey has revealed.
The report showed that 24% of Brits licked their plates and “more than half admit to eating chicken drumsticks with their hands”. One quarter of respondents burp at the table, 36% talk with their mouth full and 47% “leave the table while others are eating” (although, really, given all the gross things everyone is doing at the table, I’d want to leave too).
But here’s the thing: my grandfather can’t lick the plate anymore. He had a severe stroke last year, and although he’s a tough sonuvabitch and recovering apace, he’s lucky if he can lick his chin, much less pick up a plate.
I kind of miss his licking his plate. I mean, sure, it’s gross. But I feel like idiosyncrasies–even ill-mannered ones–tell us something about who people are and where they came from. Growing up in the eighties, it was hard to imagine what his life as a Southern California kid during the Great Depression was like, and he never talked much about it. So I began to imagine is that licking his plate was a legacy of privations long ago. It’s a kind of heirloom, or at least a genealogy.
My grandfather used to goad his six grandsons into licking our plates (probably just to piss off my grandma). I imagine that, if I ever were to try it as an adult, my wife would put a quick end to it. But maybe now, when I return to New York, I’ll give it plate-licking another shot. I know the kids would be down–the 2-year-old acts like Karen Finley every time I put him in the high chair anyway. Not everything that gets handed down through the generations has to be pleasant or upstanding, right?
I ran straight to my computer (from my iPod) to put in my 2 cents (Canadian). My husband and I lick our plates, in front of our kids, at the house only, and only when maple syrup, or some other pricey, sticky, yummy thing is going to be wasted. We teach our kids that there is a time and place for everything, even licking our plates.
My Irish-Canadian grandfather, if my German-Canadian grandmother hadn’t have been as vicious as she was, would have totally been a plate licker. I often think of my “perfect(ly evil)” grandmother, writhing in her grave, when taking that final divine lick.
maple syrup. totally. we are fortunate to have a corner in our kitchen where we can hide to shamefacedly lick our plates behind the boy’s back, ostensibly on the way to the dishwasher.
i’ll smoke pot in front of the babe (vaporizer) but i won’t lick my plate in front of him — such is the formality in our household!
I don’t have kids myself but I do lick the plate occasionally. I do it only around the closest friends and family and they always know that it is the highest sort of praise for their cooking art. So I think when I do have kids at some point they’ll be taught that there is a time for (almost) everything – even plate licking. :))