Tableware

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‘Twas my birthday last weekend. I received a couple gifts…a nice BK&T camp knife, and a very expensive, very Japanese, mechanical pencil set. (In my line of work, mechanical pencils are far handier than the usual yellow #2 variety.)

As I was admiring my loot, I was reminded of an article I saw a while back about the gear that soldiers have carried throughout the centuries. This isn’t the same article, but it’s close to it. The original article, which I can’t find, noted that even in the most underequipped armies, across the span of time, there has been one piece of equipment that nearly all soldiers or combatants carried. Surprisingly, it’s not a knife. It’s a pice of ‘field gear’ that is about as innocuous and undeadly as you can get. But…every soldier since the Romans carries one in some form or another.

A spoon.

If you think about it, it makes sense. There’s nothing you can eat with a fork that you can’t eat with your hands. But a spoon…..a spoon makes soups and stews possible to eat. A spoon makes forkable food faster to eat. A spoon is pretty much the one eating utensil to have. Knife? You already have one on your belt or attached to the tip of your rifle. Fork? Anything forkable is fingerable. But a spoon is a completely different story.

Not content to let things lay after a couple thousand years of fine tuning, mankind tried the two-fer of the spork. While I appreciate the intent, I have found that, again, anything I can eat with a fork I can eat with my fingers. So why compromise the efficacy of my spoon?

Having said that, there is a certain appeal to the spork that is not a spork…the ‘reversible grip’ eating implement. This is what I use when I’m afield. Actually, thats not true. Because I’m an evil yuppie survivalist, I spent the extra coin and got the titanium version because titanium.

It actually rides in my pack when I’m traveling, along with a couple freeze dried meals, a canteen cup, esbit stove, and a bottle or two of water. Does the titanium version do anything the plastic version does not? Mostly no, but I like the notion of a tool that is wildly overbuilt for its intended purpose. Gotta say, it is delightfully lightweight, though.

And while I love imagining what sort of ‘load out’ I’ll need for Der Tag, the simple truth is that even in the best of times a man’s gotta eat… so even when the zombies are shamblin’ about, I’ll still probably be needing to eat more than I need to shoot. So, I give some thought to my eatin’ irons and think the reverse-grip sppon/fork combo is the way to go.

I know, I know…nothing sexy about a spoon. Hard to imagine a survivalist getting worked up over tableware when there’s guns and knives to get excited about. But…the amateurs talk tactics, the professionals talk logistics. And nothing is more logistical than figuring out how the hell youre gonna eat soup after the apocalypse when you don’t have a spoon.

24 thoughts on “Tableware”

  1. My wife has started going back into her office, and I recently bought her a hobo knife from AG Russell. Hers is only a knife and fork, but they also make a few that have spoons. They fold mostly like a pocket knife, but the parts separate so you can use them individually.
    I bought her the Boxcar Jack, but they have some others.
    https://agrussell.com/search?query=hobo

  2. Yes indeed, a spoon is a vital piece of kit (a toothbrush isn’t far behind in importance and utility).

    For 3-ish decades I always carried a spoon in the field. Tucked safely in the left breast pocket of my utility blouse. The type and style varied over the years, but always a spoon. Preferably with a deep bowl and a longish handle. Plastic is ok. Stainless steel is better.

    If the pocket of your blouse has a flap that buttons (and it should) that is the proper place for your eating iron. It’s absolutely line 1 gear, just like a knife.

    Never liked the spork concept.

  3. Mike Hoare, of Congo Mercenary fame, recalled seeing a man under fire ‘…dig for his life with a spoon…” outside Katanga.

    No one’s first choice for a digging impliment.

  4. One of the other advantages of having tableware was hygiene. Before mankind had infrastructure with clean water and soap, people were mostly filthy especially hands. The Romans were keen on building magnificent bath houses perhaps because they saw value in frequently washing the gunk off of themselves.

    There was/is a very good chance that most people’s hands contain fecal matter and in the recent past the #1 cause of death was dysentery.

    The upper class always went with silver which has antibiotic properties. Simply having a clean spoon could mean the difference between being healthy and able to function being curled up in a ball on the ground with body fluids emanating from the lower end of the digestive tract.

    • yes! and that double-ended thing means nasty paws are all over the other eating end, and in a combat/survival environment not likely to get washed properly. that’s why spoons have handles. eating with fingers in that same environment is begging for trouble. get the set that nests together with a case/pouch and be safe. it doesn’t weigh that much. btw, plastic melts. jus sayin.

      • This is another point against the spork — and forks too for that matter — it is difficult in the boondocks to get a spork/fork truly clean. A simple basic stainless steel spoon and knife are easily wiped clean and then boiled to sanitize Drill a hole in the end so they can be dangled in boiling water from a piece of cord or a twig.

        The US GI mess kit flatware is designed for just such use, and can sometime be found at reasonable prices. At least for now, as mess kits are rarely if ever used these days and eventually the ones in storage will all be sold off or scrapped.

  5. During my flying days you could spot a USAF loadmaster as they always had a plastic spoon in their left arm flight suit pocket made for pens/pencils. I always kept a metal spoon as part of my flight kit (stowed in my helmet bag). The only hot meal I was able to get on the old KC-135A/Q model aircraft was anything you could add boiling water too (provided you had a hot cup that plugged into the galley station). Cup a Soup and other just add hot water meals beat some of the boxed nasties we would get from the flight kitchen.

  6. Ditto for the UberSpork. A couple of the plastic variety, and a titanium one for the go-to-hell kit.

    At work, random potlucks appear and disappear with some regularity. Tired of the sometimes-presence of plasticware, I bought a single-serving set of German tableware from the china aisle at WalMart, which stores in its own plastic box inside my locker there, and you’d have thought I had invented gravity the way normal folks marveled at the idea of not eating with picnic ware.

    The spoon even eclipses the folding stainless chopsticks I acquired, because they don’t let you eat soup, just the chunks thereof.

  7. Great practical thoughts.
    As you mention, logistics and food will matter more than guns whatever the future brings.

  10. It’s been a long time, but if I recall correctly, upon joining the Marines in ‘58, we weren’t issued spoons – lots of other stuff, but no spoons. Of course, when in the field, we ate from C ration boxes, which contained plastic utensils.

  12. Very good points – I’ve always kept a spoon around but mostly by accident and not design… I now know better! I was reading a book about a massive power failure and a very minor side bit was a “survivalist” recommend the spoon as you could eat with it and open cans too. I looked into that and sure enough:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmTg2ZfJCEI

  13. Spoons are the ultimate eating utensil. I do not like restaurants that have a fork and a knife wrapped in a napkin. But I am odd that way

  16. As a truck driver, I spend a few nights every month in mediocre hotels that have a “full” breakfast which consists of bagels, bread for toast, and (hopefully) small packs of jelly, jams, and peanut butter. I load up on these “complimentary” but still paid for items as often as my pockets will let me.

    A spoon is a requirement to consume peanut butter outta those packages when on the road, otherwise your tongue will fall off trying to lick it out. Ask me how I know.

    I also take home all coffee cups, tea bags, coffee bags, and soaps as again they are all paid for. I’m sure the maid may wonder where it all went, but oh well.

    Last, if you get a spoon, get a metal one, preferably titanium as CZ mentions. It can also be used as an efficient entry or pry tool if readily available. I wish Leatherman would make a tool like the Charge or Wave that came with a spoon.

  17. I’m not positive, but I think I recall the same advice in a post about the spoon in a very good blog named The QUIET SURVIVALIST. Maybe in one of the posts labeled Living in the Bush, or something like that.

    Or another blog, Ben and Bawb’s Blog, another great blog about military, hunting and historical living. I get confused and mix these two blogs up.

    Good advice, that spoon. It was mentioned that the reason why the spoon was so needed was that while food in the military might be delivered hot, they did not pack in implements as well. So that spoon became a very good tool to have because everybody has to eat at some point in time. I keep one as well, bending the back handle end so that can be hooked over a pot bail over a fire and also serve to help prevent it from falling into pot.

    Thanks for the post – a good one, as well as many good comments made by others.

  18. I have one of the titanium sporks, long enough I only paid half the current advertised price 😉
    Reading thru the comments I had a thought – could a silver coated titanium version be made or would the metals be incompatible? Might be the best version if it can. I don’t camp anymore but it would likely be a good piece of kit for ‘just in case’.

  19. Though most of history most people only used a knife and spoon. Anything you can eat with a fork you can eat with a point of a knife.

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