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I'm selling my house and had my kitchen floor replaced and it shows everything. I live alone and I'm always washing it, so I must drop every d*mn thing I chop, use, cook, prepare, hold, look at, or even thing about! I can't think of a plate or specific food, but if it fell on a clean spot, d*mn straight I'd eat it--LOL.

I was making oatmeal scones recently and when I went to pull the can of oats out of the fridge I had a total I Love Lucy moment as the top of the can came off, spraying oats all over the place. It felt like it was in slow motion! I was so sad that no one was home to giggle with me over it.

Needless to say I couldn't save the oats. I just dragged out the vacuum cleaner and ran to the store for more oats.

I spilled a bag of mustard seeds last night. Cleanup was a bitch.

@AuntJone - Perfect! I only eat things off the floor when no one's watching. My husband, on the other hand, eats things off the floor constantly. No matter who's watching.

I've laughed at every comment so far!

@charm city cupcake: Mustard seeds. Yoiks! I spilled some quinoa a while back and those little guys bounce around. Ehhh. Did you experience the "silent scream" when your spill happened, too? I laughed . . . but was not amused with myself. In the least.

( . . . and I did cook the quinoa I spilled)

That five second rule really scares me sometimes!! @AuntJone - What about the rug??

A way of life over here. Daily event. It's so bad, that you can be assured at least one quarter of any given area of the kitchen floor has been washed on any given day. So, if it's something that's going to be cooked, it gets a quick rinse and into the pan it goes. If the dropped food doesn't have moist, greasy, sticky or other "magnetic" qualities, I'll usually look it over, maybe blow on it (no idea what this is supposed to accomplish, but it makes me feel better), and pop it into my mouth.

Along the lines of the mustard seed and quinoa... I've been known to accidentally overflow the pepper mill when refilling it. Nothing like little black peppercorns bouncing all over the freakin place... Especially love trying to find them on the mostly black granite counters and the black cooktop.

Slightly OT but related... I'm a person who almost never drops breakable things -- I can literally count on one hand the number of items I've broken in the past ten years up until about a month ago. That's when, all of sudden, I embarked on an inexplicable drop/shatter jag. In the past month, I've dropped on the (extremely hard) travertine floor a heavy ceramic dinner plate, a pyrex pie plate (very, very bad idea as these literally explode throughout the room), a wine glass, and a drinking glass. WTF??? The most memorable one, and the one that started it all, was the ceramic sugar bowl and its lid. It had just been freshly filled with sugar, of course, and I hadn't even made my coffee yet.

The words coming out of my mouth would've made the devil blush...

My niece is 14 months old and when she gets something she doesn't expect put in her mouth, it comes right back out. Sunday we gave her some frozen yogurt. It wasn't what she expected, so it came back out, then she realized it tasted good, and was about to bend down and lick the floor of the yogurt place where she'd spit it out.

At home my most recent drop was a lollipop on the couch, I rinsed the fuzz off of it, and put it back in my mouth.

I drop and eat all the time. My kitchen is reasonably clean, so I really don't worry about it. I've yet to get sick from my own food. That said, if I drop something on the carpet, it goes directly into the trash. All that lint? I don't think so.

My most recent? Sauteed cherry tomatoes. (A) I forgot, as I often do, that my hands are not made of kevlar. I pick it up. Ouch! falls on the floor. I use a fork to get it from the floor, blow on it, and yum! VERY tasty.

The most recent food item I dropped was coffee....about 1/2 a can....all over the front of my cabinet & on the floor. Needless to say there was no saving that....I had to do the vacuum cleaner thing too...although I did try to tempt the cats....they just don't do coffee. The ice cream I spilled last week was easier...cats definitely do ice cream!
LoCo....I know EXACTLY what you mean about shattering dishes...even those that aren't supposed to break. At Christmas time I was getting Pyrex plates off the lowest shelf of my upper cabinet...which normally shouldn't be an issue, unless you're 5' tall, and you're trying to get a stack of 12 heavy plates from a shelf taller than you. The plates jumped...yes...I swear they did....they jumped....right out of my hands, and all over the kitchen floor. 2 of them shattered into millions of pieces all over my kitchen. Once my mother & my aunt recovered from their coronaries....we thought we got the mess all cleaned up. I'm still finding bits of white dishes in really odd spots these days!

@chisai: I don't eat food dropped on the carpet either. Lint, hair and other alien stuff sticks to it. Gak.

@cmtigger: I'd eat a lollipop that fell on the couch, too. But not if it fell on the carpet.

@PerkyMac: Jeff Smith might eat food dropped on the kitchen floor . . . if he planned to cook it. Sandra Lee would probably not eat food off the kitchen floor. If she eats food at all.

Clearly, the lesson from this thread is that in order to have a more clean apartment, I need a pet to follow my tracks.

In my old flat (I moved recently) I dropped a bag of red lentils on the floor several years ago and NEVER, no matter how many times I vacuumed, managed to get all of them. Every time I stood cooking in front of the hob I would get lentils stuck to the soles of my feet. It was really irritating.

I recently dropped a veggie burger on the floor. And yes, I snatched it up and ate it (it was within five seconds, but the 'five second rule' was not specifically applied). I'm not exactly ashamed, but it's not information that I would share with anyone I knew in the non-virtual world.

i'm a klutz, and i insist on chopping things on a cutting board on the counter, then using the cutting board as a plate to carry it over to the stove to pop in a skillet. "carrying it over the stove" involves me simply turning around, because i have a small galley kitchen. yet, you'd be amazed how much onion/potato/carrot/garlic bits i manage to drop on the floor.

if it's going to be cooked, it goes right back into the skillet or oven. if it's meat, it goes in the trash. if i was planning on eating it raw, and i dropped int on the kitchen floor, it goes in the trash. five second rule be damned, i know how often i clean my kitchen floor, and i tell you, it ain't often enough!

there isn't a chance on the face of the planet. If it drops, it gets tossed. I don't care what it is or how much it cost. Unless the dog gets it first.

Blech.

@Susquehanna........I resemble that statement!!!

Actually, I can't remember ever eating anything I've dropped, but if I dropped an expensive hunk of meat or seafood, I'd wash it, but I wouldn't throw it out. I don't have kids or pets and my kitchen floor is spotless. I think that matters. Same rules apply outdoors - if something falls on grass that has been treated with chemicals..........it's trashed.

OMG Meplo be grateful! you dont want to see cats on caffeine! I have one that always drinks my coffee, we call him the rocket . The worst thing I ever dropped was a skillet I had put under the broiler to crisp up the top of a frittata. eggs everywhere, and they stick, even to the ceiling. Tried to talk SO into moving rather than cleaning but no go :(

Yeah, I drop and eat. Pretty frequently. But not stuff that's hard to pick up, because, you know, I'm lazy.

A few nights ago, I realized I had nothing to eat for breakfast the next day. I pulled out the rice cooker (for eggs and rice), and the 10lb bag of canilla rice. I managed to drop that heavy sucker in the sink and break two mugs.

As I portioned out my cooked rice for breakfast yesterday and today, I dropped plenty of it on the floor. I have not picked it up yet. I remain hopeful that the cat will develop a taste for cold, dried-out rice, and I won't have to clean it up.

Hmmm spectacular drops in my past include a tortiere that was baked in one of the infamous dollar store foil pans mentioned above. Ex hubby took it out of the oven, the pan folded and efficiently dumped the entire thing on the oven door, which of course, was hot so the contents COOKED onto the door. Then there were the hamburger condiments that were sprayed onto the living room wall when I tripped on my boyfriend at the time's cast. My mom once dropped an entire roast chicken on the floor with company sitting in the next room. I once flung a plate of spaghetti with meat sauce clear across the kitchen (I kept a hold of the plate but the contents went flying) when someone scared me as I was serving myself from the stove. Peppercorns are a nemesis. Oh and then the time I had raw cookies sitting on top of the stove waiting to go into the oven. Opened the door above the stove - my mom had not wrapped up the bag of rice correctly and it poured directly onto my cookies.

As a general rule, we salvage all we can! The cookies were, however, a tad crunchy!