How Do You Eat Cake?

Dear Miss Manners:
At home, I am a "dunker." I love to dunk everything (doughnuts, cakes, ect.) in my tea or coffee. It's the way I enjoy my milk and cookies. However, when I am in a restaurant or visiting someone, I "hold back" because I feel it is considered bad manners. Is it?
Gentle Reader:
In admitting that it is, Miss matters is tempted to add a word of consolation, indicating that she knows what fun you must be having at your home and is sorry to keep you from transporting it beyond your door. On second thought, it occurs to her that you wouldn't have nearly as much pleasure from dunking your cookies in your mild at home f you weren't aware that is was naughty.

Dear Miss Manners:
My mother-in-law has awful table manners. Not only does she not use serving forks, but she eats with her fingers, saying the food tastes better, and spits out the "skins", or anything she feels too tough, in a half-chewed wads onto her plate. We are going to visit her soon. Is there some polite way to tell her how unpleasant this is? She does not take criticism at all well.
Gentle Reader:
In the annals of crimes against etiquette, correcting one's elders and correcting other in their own house are not more heinous than expectorating food onto one's plate. Miss Manners suggest you direct your critical feelings toward your children's table manners. Children have no choice about taking criticism. If it will enliven your visit, you may correct then at their grandmother's table for doing the dame thing their grandmother is doing.


Dear Miss Manners:
How do you eat cake?
Gentle Reader:
So that you can have it, too. This is done by cutting a bite-sized piece with the end of the fork and lifting it up to mouth in such a way that crumbs drift down and lodge themselves in the shirtfront. These may be furtively picked up and eaten later.