Fork and Scissors?

This isn't the pho I had for lunch, but it looks like it.
Image by Way Tru.Yesterday I stopped by the new Vietnamese place in town and got some pho. I love pho, but that's not what this post is about. Rather, this post is about scissors.

Pho, in case you don't know, is a flavorful Vietnamese soup with rice noodles and various forms of meat. The pho I had today had sliced steak, meatballs, and beef tendon. Pho usually comes with a side plate of bean sprouts, basil, long coriander, jalepenos, limes, and... sometimes... some other things. You can add these things to your pho to taste.

(Really, this post isn't about pho.)

(Scissors!)

I like to tear the basil and cilantro up into the pho, but it is a bit of a tedious process. Today, it made me wish for my kitchen shears. I love my kitchen shears in a manner very different from that in which I love pho. I do not, for instance, love to eat my kitchen shears... not that I've tried. I suppose they might be tasty, though I find it unlikely.

Anyway. Shears. Scissors. Yes. I use shears in the kitchen to make short work of fresh herbs. I wished that I had them at lunch today. I got me to thinking: Why don't we use scissory-things as eating utensils?

I cut raw meat with shears. Cutting a steak with them would be easy. It would arguably be easier and neater than using a steak knife. Knives are better for cutting up harder or larger foods, but the sort of thing that tends to be on our plate seems like it would be well-served by scissors. Pancakes? Sure. Pasta? Scissors would be great.

Sure, they have moving parts and they are marginally harder to clean, but you are also (I suspect) less likely to cut yourself with them.

They'd also work better with chopsticks than a knife does, I think.