Before You Ask “Will You?” Ask “Are You Choking?”
Movies make it seem so romantic… the engagement ring sitting at the bottom of a sparkling flute of champagne. The engagement ring suspended in a dish of mousse. The engagement ring tucked into a crisp green salad. So what’s the problem? Unless you or your intended have fingers the size of tuba valves, most of the nibbles we take are larger than an engagement ring, making them difficult to locate in many dishes and, as Gourmet reminds us, a choking hazard.
When Carlos Lopes, former managing director at the Hotel Bel-Air, in Los Angeles, set out to propose to his first wife, he planned the evening to perfection. He selected a fine restaurant. He hatched an elaborate plan. He schemed with the maître d’. And, at the desired moment, the waiter brought Lopes’s girlfriend a crème brûlée into which the pastry chef had discreetly tucked Lopes’s life savings, in the form of a diamond ring. “Only I was so naïve,” he remembers today, “that I didn’t realize you ate crème brûlée with a large spoon and not a small one.”
Smash went the crust. In went the spoon. And before Lopes could say, “Um, I have something to ask you,” his brilliant-cut one-carat surprise went sliding down his intended’s throat.
Oopsie! I’ve always wondered who first came up with the idea of putting an engagement ring into food. If you adhere to the two months salary rule, that could very well be one expensive piece of bling, and the last thing most brides-to-be want to do is have to thoroughly clean their new jewelry before putting it on. Heck, my rings (engagement and otherwise) get dirty enough from sporadic everyday wear. I can’t imagine having to use an old toothbrush to scrub crème brûlée of all things out of the tines of a six-prong setting.
Or is that just me? What do you think — are engagement rings hidden in food the height of romance or the height of fail?
I only see it working if the ring is simply hidden by the food, and not in the food. I’ve seen pastry chefs (on The Food Network, natch) create lovely sugar dome “shells” that they place over the ring, which is placed on a nice clean mint sprig or something.
It still involves a romantic dessert, and a surprise reveal, but there is no chance of ingestion, and the ring stays clean.
And for those who actually chew their food, extensive dental work is not usually in everyone’s dream proposal/engagement.
I’ve never gotten the whole ‘hide the ring in food’ deal. Even if you entirely fail to swallow it (choking hazard) or bite into it (with the resulting chipped or shattered tooth hazard), you’ve still got a soggy or gooey or crumb-encrusted ring. How romantic is that? To me, not at all.
On top of all that, it’s become such a hackneyed, overused image in our culture that I think it also represents a sad failure of imagination unless the lady is so taken with the idea that he knows she will be disappointed if it doesn’t happen to her.
Honestly, I’m glad Mr. Twistie and I went to the jewelry store together, rather than his hiding my ring in food. I got precisely the ring I wanted, he saved a bundle of cash (because what I wanted was completely non-traditional and he probably would have picked something a lot more like what everyone else has), and nobody needed a trip to the ER or the dentist afterward.
It’s not cleaning out the creme brulee that would bother me. At least that way it didn’t get swallowed and, well, you know.
I think it could be very romantic if done right. It should be presented on the food, not hidden. If you want a surprise do a dish with a cover and unveil it for her.
I like the “dish with cover” idea – it’s as close as I’d want the ring to come to the comestibles. Mostly jewelry + food + dental bills and/or discomfort – in various forms. Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie sucked back in the day – the blackbirds didn’t begin to sing when the pie was opened, they flew all the hell around, panic-stricken, flying into candles and strafing the ladies’ gowns. I’m thinking only food should ever wind up on a dinner plate or in a meal.
The newest story is a ring hidden in frosty!
http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/She_said_yes_after_swallowing_the_ring_20090303
Some stories on it even show an x-ray.
Toni: Good compromise! And yet I could still see something happened that would create a situation wherein the ring could be eaten.
Jennie: Indeed, diamonds and teeth should not mix… ever.
Twistie: I’m not too worried about the cliche aspect of it — most proposals contain some measure of cliche simply because so many people get engaged. If it works for the couple, lovely. That said, I wouldn’t have wanted a food proposal, either. Too hazardous!
class factotum: Ouch!
…and as for the Frosty ring incident, ick! I sure hope that they cleaned the heck out of that piece of jewelry before showing it off.