Maggie's Autumn Scientific Poll, #1: How often do you eat dessert?

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Wednesday, September 14. 2011

Maggie's Autumn Scientific Poll, #1: How often do you eat dessert?

Among the people we tend to dine with, nobody ever orders a dessert.

I am one to enjoy good stinky cheeses with a sliced pear after a dinner, or maybe a tiny bowl of fruit with some creme fraiche, but if nobody is ordering anything except coffee, you hate to be the only one still greedily munching.

Dessert seems to have become a special treat in America, only for special occasions. Nobody wants to act like, or look like, a pig at the trough.

How about you?

Posted by The Barrister in Food and Drink, Our Essays, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 12:10 | Comments (26) | Trackbacks (0)

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It depends upon what they offer - Tiramisu? Probably. Apple pie? Sometimes. Vanilla-Bourbon Sorbet? Like a tick onna dog!

#1 Fred Zeppelin on 2011-09-14 12:51 (Reply)

it's a question of age. Middle aged people worrying about their weight don't order dessert. But when I was younger...

#2 Park Slope Pubby on 2011-09-14 13:04 (Reply)

I love desserts, but have been trying to greatly reduce sugar consumption out of general health concerns (weight is fine, general health is fine, but I understand that sugar is bad in all sorts of ways, so I'm trying to avoid it). Now the closest thing I have to dessert on a regular basis is some fruit or dried fruit after lunch or dinner, and a small piece of dark chocolate once a day. Now I only eat dessert if I go out or if it is a special occasion (like a holiday). In most places, I don't order it, but there's a bakery that serves a nice lunch, and I normally get dessert there, and there's a restaurant in my town that has great desserts of all sorts, so I normally get dessert when I go there. There's also a buffet I frequent with some regularity, and I can't go to a buffet and not get a dessert. Needless to say, I haven't kicked the dessert habit yet, but at least I don't have cookies in the house these days like I used to.

#3 Kurt on 2011-09-14 13:15 (Reply)

Depends on the restaurant and the occasion. Like you, for most meals dining out, no dessert unless the restaurant offers a unique dessert that is praised to the heavens and is an experience not to be missed, but if the restaurant has a good "cheese cart" with a wide selection of cheeses I could not buy even in a specialty store, I save space for that to end a fine meal.

#4 Agent Cooper on 2011-09-14 13:24 (Reply)

I will get uncomfortably stuffed if I eat dessert after a meal. But I do like to make things like apple or pumpkin pie, carrot cake or rice pudding and eat them for breakfast.

I do like some desserts -- coconut or Italian cream cake, for example, but there never seems to be a good time to eat them. A cookie here or there is okay as a snack.

#5 D on 2011-09-14 13:36 (Reply)

We're a family of dessert makers and eaters, but don't order that often in restaurants because we're tightwads.

Besides, we usually eat out at sushi, Chinese or Indian restaurants (cuisines we can't make ourselves)-- and they're not known for great dessert.

But everyone should eat dark chocolate -- it's a health food. No joke.

#6 Jim Bass (Link) on 2011-09-14 13:38 (Reply)

At the ripe old age of 63, I work to keep myself fit and trim. Thus, this effort and [I guess] genes have allowed me free choice of whether or not to eat desert. The few times a month we choose to eat out, we never order a desert. On the other hand, every meal - lunch and dinner - at home ends in desert. But - and I am convinced this is the real secret to good health and weight control - we never eat any meal that we do not prepare ourselves with fresh ingredients. No frozen or pre-processed dishes are served in our home.

#7 boqueronman on 2011-09-14 13:42 (Reply)

I don't order dessert because by the time I slog through an appetizer and a main course, I'm too damned full. Even a fat bastard like me has difficulty eating dessert with today's serving sizes.

#8 Randy Rager (Link) on 2011-09-14 14:41 (Reply)

I'm addicted to ice cream. I could eat it every night. If only I were a teen again, active and slim....and working at a soda fountain when I did eat it every day.

Now, it's for the kids, who have dessert every night. My dessert, in an attempt to keep belly fat down to reduce spinal pain, is a cup of tea with skim milk.

Every 3 days I'll indulge in a cup of ice cream.

I hate not having dessert.

#9 Rick on 2011-09-14 14:56 (Reply)

Used to share desserts with my wife.

#10 Curtis on 2011-09-14 14:57 (Reply)

Coffee ice cream and home made pecan sandies. It is the reason I am so generously svelte. I'm ashamed to admit this, but I have, on occasion, eaten a whole quart of coffee ice cream and a dozen pecan sandies at one sitting....

"I'm Tom and I'm a coffee ice cream/home made pecan sandies oholic....."

Other than that, apple pie in the fall - with coffee ice cream. :>)

Oh and the occasional coffee ice cream milk shake or frappe.

Ok, maybe not so occasionally.

#11 Tom Francis on 2011-09-14 15:08 (Reply)

Up to a certan age, I could eat a three course meal, in recent years, i'm quite happy with an over 55's selection, with reduced portions...........

#12 David on 2011-09-14 15:21 (Reply)

I almost never eat dessert because the portions of the main course are so large when I eat out that I have difficulty just finishing them, and I'm not a small man.

I wonder if restaurants aren't shorting themselves by offering such large portions that its usually not feasable to order an appetizer and dessert with dinner.

#13 Incunabulum on 2011-09-14 15:25 (Reply)

Key Lime pie if on the menu and while no one else usually orders they usually get a spoon just to try some. I really should order 2 slices.

#14 grant1863 on 2011-09-14 15:31 (Reply)

The maidservant at Wittgenstein's Cambridge asked what he wanted for lunch. Wittgenstein said he didn't care so long as it's the same thing every day.

I'm the same way except I make my own lunch. The dog appreciates the consistency too.

#15 rhhardin (Link) on 2011-09-14 15:47 (Reply)

It's not just an Amerian thing. I've noticed the penchant for foregoing dessert (or "sweet" or "pudding") here in Canada too.

Having lived in the UK and Europe for several years before returning to North America in 2007, I started to noticed the trend there too.

Indeed, in many places it does seem dessert has been increasingly relegated to something you enjoy on its own with a coffee outside of meal hours.

I'm not much of a dessert guy myself.

Mind you, if anything like panna cotta, crème caramel or crème brûlée is on the menu - I go for it.

#16 JJM on 2011-09-14 15:58 (Reply)

What you describe reminds me of the years I spent in Europe as a child in the 1970s. Every so often we'd go out to a bakery or cafe for afternoon tea/coffee and some dessert. The afternoon coffee and cake ritual is quite well-established in Europe. I'm starting to get hungry for dessert now, just thinking about it. As luck would have it, even though I now live in a western, desert state, there are actually two little Viennese cafes/bakeries. I may have to visit one of them again soon!

#16.1 Kurt on 2011-09-14 17:28 (Reply)

Twice a day? Life is short, eat dessert first!

When out for dinner, we usually share. And I eat my meals planning to eat dessert. If desserts are not on the main menu, I ask the waitress what they have for dessert. Often times, half of dinner goes in the take home box so that I have room.

I'm really bad at buffets.

#17 KF on 2011-09-14 17:24 (Reply)

I love dessert, particularly the first bite. I am a proclaimed one bite only dessert eater. Mostly. It is not a bad way to approach the subject as there is only a small amount of denial, and one's collection of beloved broken-in jeans will never get tight, and muffin "toppage" (for you guys, midriff bulge) is kept at bay. I fall off the wagon from time to time, and fell quite spectacularly at a diner in Cheyenne of late. I ate another person's pie as well as my own. It was snowing out and not winter in any shape or form. Pie, in such a case, is in order.

#18 MissyW on 2011-09-14 17:33 (Reply)

I lost my sweet tooth by the time I was 20, I suppose. Is this normal?

I'd rather have a third helping than dessert.
Or have a coffee and cigar.

#19 lordsomber (Link) on 2011-09-14 17:35 (Reply)

"I lost my sweet tooth by the time I was 20, I suppose. Is this normal?"

Short answer: NO! I hate you. heh.

I have an enormous sweet tooth at 58, and have had all my life... unfortunately the chemo has destroyed the ability to eat the stuff, Lord knows I still try. I started cooking desserts in my very early teens (both parents worked... unusual in the 1960's) and my mother taught me how to cook. I went on a serious diet early in the year which saw me shed 45+ pounds, and helped with the sweet tooth for awhile. Unfortunately it returned at a time when anything sweet tastes like cr*p. I know it tastes like cr*p. And I continue sampling the cr*p hoping things would be different THIS time. Sigh....... Maybe at the end of this series I will have lost that sweet tooth and the weight will stay gone. I hope. Anyone wanna buy shares in Arizona swamp land?

#19.1 JoeC on 2011-09-14 20:55 (Reply)

seldom if ever do I have dessert. I'm a grazer and have no appetite after a good meal.

#20 TGSG on 2011-09-14 18:02 (Reply)

Who am I, a mere humble sinner, to reject His bounty by foregoing dessert? I fear the Day of Judgment, having to account for my foolish denial. Better have a second helping, just to be sure.

#21 Ed on 2011-09-14 21:24 (Reply)

Oh dear--do I need to say anything more than just sign my comment?

I am forever in the kitchen and baking is my favorite art form! There are only two of us at home--fortunately the men and boys working the farm next door are always "dropping by"! I can do a brilliant Meyer Lemon Sabayon tart; a drop down and cry chocolate thing. I have no box mixes, no frozen dinners, etc. in the house--it's all from scratch. I am even now learning to do the Thai and Indian cuisines. Not so bad for a beginner in these cuisines, if I do say so myself.

Dessert--ahh dessert--I think perhaps it is best the next day when you are alone in the kitchen !

#22 apple pie on 2011-09-14 23:33 (Reply)

eating out - one dessert for the table always ...

#23 Liz on 2011-09-15 14:30 (Reply)

We limit dessert to weekends. Our weekend starts on Friday.

Sigh. It's better than every night.

#24 weaver (Link) on 2011-09-16 13:34 (Reply)

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Wednesday, September 14. 2011

Maggie's Autumn Scientific Poll, #1: How often do you eat dessert?