OT Complaint Box | Picky Eaters
Matthew Kruk
Complaint Box | Picky Eaters
By SUSAN GOLDBERG
P.C. Vey
Having friends over for dinner used to involve a minimal and fairly
unremarkable to-do list: There were groceries to buy, along with flowers
and a couple of bottles of semi-respectable wine. I would put out some
guest towels and a collection of fancy soaps that were off limits to
blood relatives, and then - voil�! - dinner was served. Preparing for a
dinner party these days is far more complex, thanks to a vast and
bewildering array of dietary needs that seem to have suddenly overtaken
everyone I know.
Complaint Box Steamed?
Dish out the peeves. Send your essays - no more than 500 words, please -
to: metrop...@nytimes.com.
An unscientific survey of family and friends turns up one acquaintance
who is kosher, two who are more like kosher-style, in addition to two
vegans, a smattering of lacto-vegetarians and a couple who cannot digest
gluten of any kind. Accommodations must be made for my mother-in-law,
who is lactose intolerant, and a friend who is dangerously and
inconveniently allergic to peanuts. I must know at least a dozen women
who have declared lifelong war on complex carbohydrates. And then there's
my daughter, a wispy and tender-hearted flower child who prefers not to
eat "anything with a face" (although she will sometimes make random and
completely unreasonable exceptions for hot dogs and pepperoni).
Just thinking about feeding this crowd makes me want to lie down in a
darkened room for several uninterrupted hours. The head chef at Beth
Israel Medical Center would be hard-pressed to meet the dietary needs of
this particular group.
Being a hostess also requires me to navigate the tricky political
ramifications of dinner, which means keeping the menu free of veal, foie
gras and a host of endangered sea creatures. There are, I have found, an
astonishing number people who are breezily neutral on the subject of Kim
Jong-il, but consider an entree of Chilean sea bass the moral equivalent
of grand-scale marine genocide.
Because of these restrictions, having a simple dinner with the people I
love now requires a nutritionist, an Excel spreadsheet and considerably
more patience and culinary skill than I possess.
The very last straw was a friend who called before her family came for
dinner and - without a hint of shame - presented me with a detailed list
of their food requirements: Her husband doesn't care for shrimp, her son
requires a pasta side dish with every meal, and none of them eat the
dark meat of chicken, which she dismissed savagely as "dreck."
I have had enough with people who want to have it their way, and I am
done catering to the quirks of food-obsessed numskulls. If you eat in my
home, I will grudgingly respect medically diagnosed allergies, since it
puts a pall on conversation when a guest goes into anaphylactic shock at
the dinner table. But beyond that, I expect you to eat what you can,
ignore the rest and not make trouble. On Thursday, 15 people are sitting
down to Thanksgiving dinner at my house, and with God as my witness, I
promise you this: There will be dark meat.
Susan Goldberg is a freelance writer and editor and a consultant on
college admission essays who lives in Mount Kisco, N.Y.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Charlene
> On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 11:38:03 -0700, "Matthew Kruk" <nob...@home.com>
> quoted:
>
> >But beyond that, I expect you to eat what you can,
> >ignore the rest and not make trouble.
>
> expected anyone to do or not do something because of my
> obsessions...but it's surprising how often simply keeping one's head
> down and eating according to personal preference will *still* annoy
> the control freaks.
People have actually become physically violent with me when they see
an Epi-pen in my purse (yes, when they're not even supposed to be
looking there ARGH). They have to tell me that I'm a crazy evil
attention whore who's only pretending to have an allergy because it
gets me attention, and because it makes me special.
I'm sorry, but if you think people with food concerns are doing it
because they're crazy, are looking for attention, or are malingerers,
YOU are the problem, and the problem is all in YOUR head. YOU are the
one resentful that anyone's taking attention from you, that anyone is
daring to be different from YOU. If you don't like that I can't eat at
your house, that's unfortunate but that's YOUR problem, not mine. Too
many people have "tested" me by slipping allergens in food (to prove
I'm not really allergic, it's all in my mind, it's all for attention)
that the only person I can trust these days is me. Nothing like almost
dying and spending nine days in the hospital because some entitled
Internet College Male thinks allergies are all made up to cause him
problems. Fuck assholes like that.
I don't even want to know people like the writer of that article. How
dare someone care more about their own health than about not
inconveniencing her! She is the centre of the universe - how DARE they
not put her feelings before their physical health?
Bitch.
wd45
Kris Baker
"Matthew Kruk" <nob...@home.com> wrote in message
news:vyfOm.64712$Vr1....@en-nntp-01.dc1.easynews.com...
> November 20, 2009, 10:38 am
> Complaint Box | Picky Eaters
> By SUSAN GOLDBERG
>
> P.C. Vey
>
> Having friends over for dinner used to involve a minimal and fairly
> unremarkable to-do list: There were groceries to buy, along with flowers
> and a couple of bottles of semi-respectable wine. I would put out some
> guest towels and a collection of fancy soaps that were off limits to blood
> array of dietary needs that seem to have suddenly overtaken everyone I
> know.
>
> Complaint Box Steamed?
> Dish out the peeves. Send your essays - no more than 500 words, please -
> to: metrop...@nytimes.com.
> An unscientific survey of family and friends turns up one acquaintance who
> is kosher, two who are more like kosher-style, in addition to two vegans,
> a smattering of lacto-vegetarians and a couple who cannot digest gluten of
> any kind. Accommodations must be made for my mother-in-law, who is lactose
> intolerant, and a friend who is dangerously and inconveniently allergic to
> peanuts. I must know at least a dozen women who have declared lifelong war
> on complex carbohydrates. And then there's my daughter, a wispy and
> tender-hearted flower child who prefers not to eat "anything with a face"
Well, there's one solution to all of that: vegan. If you insist on being
the hostess to people who can't/don't eat anything, then you just have
to step it up and be a real hostess. Be accomodating, do not complain,
and just find something that will work for all.
Or just put it all out, and let them avoid what they want to avoid.
Kris
Brad Ferguson
<e7779372-0bf1-4a0f...@b15g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
Charlene <charlene...@gmail.com> wrote:
Uh, yeah, pretty much.
We have people over for Thanksgiving every year. A couple of them are
vegetarians. We always make a couple of extra sides for them while the
rest of us fall on the dead bird and devour it like vampires. No big
deal. They're *guests*, for God's sake, and they're treated as such.
Kris Baker
"Brad Ferguson" <thir...@frXOXed.net> wrote in message
news:221120091707182223%thir...@frXOXed.net...
>
> We have people over for Thanksgiving every year. A couple of them are
> vegetarians. We always make a couple of extra sides for them while the
> rest of us fall on the dead bird and devour it like vampires. No big
> deal. They're *guests*, for God's sake, and they're treated as such.
Of course. But sometimes, they switch on you (and don't
bother to tell you). My husband's niece was vegan for
years and was quite the pill about it. If she didn't get as
many different foods on her Thanksgiving plate as the
turkey-eaters, she'd complain that she was being
discriminated against.
So...the next time I cooked, I prepared six vegan sides with
great care.
She didn't touch them, and when I asked why, she said she
was going to eat like everyone else. "But that's OK" she
said to me, rather than being apologetic.
Bitch ;)
Kris
Joe Pucillo
> We have people over for Thanksgiving every year. A couple of them are
> vegetarians. We always make a couple of extra sides for them while the
> rest of us fall on the dead bird and devour it like vampires. No big
> deal. They're *guests*, for God's sake, and they're treated as such.
I'm reminded of a story that I heard someone else tell on a
late-night talk show about Tony Randall and "guests":
I don't remember who it was (perhaps Rock Hudson...?) who told
the story of being at Randall's home and finding a rather large
ashtray sitting on the coffee table. Now Mr. Randall was one
of the most vociferous anti-smoking zealots that you would ever
meet, and this took the storyteller by surprise.
He said, "Tony, why the ashtray?" To which Randall replied,
"Well, you smoke, so help yourself."
"But you HATE smoke."
"Yes, but you're a guest in my home, and as such, you should
feel at home. But, when I'm a guest in -your- home, I would
expect you NOT to smoke."
My eleven year-old daughter has a slight peanut alergy, and
most people who know us will make the necessary arrangements
with the menu, but she knows to ask and eat other things if she
encounters peanuts at someone else's home. My MIL always gets
me diet soda because that's what I drink - but she always gets
the non-caffeine stuff, which I hate - so I usually have tea or
water or something else. She's had the same diet caffeine free
soda in her basement fridge for years now... :-)
JP
Dave Sill
>
> I don't even want to know people like the writer of that article. How
> dare someone care more about their own health than about not
> inconveniencing her! She is the centre of the universe - how DARE they
> not put her feelings before their physical health?
>
> Bitch.
She wrote:
"If you eat in my home, I will grudgingly respect medically diagnosed
allergies, since it puts a pall on conversation when a guest goes into
anaphylactic shock at the dinner table. But beyond that, I expect you to
eat what you can, ignore the rest and not make trouble."
That seems like a reasonable attitude to me, although a little
overstated for comic effect. Doesn't sound like she thinks she's the
center of the universe or is unwilling to accommodate actual
medically-based dietary concerns, at least when they're presented
appropriately.
Guests don't get to order dinner as if they're at a restaurant. They can
inquire about the menu and decline the invitation if it doesn't meet
with their approval.
-Dave
J.D. Baldwin
In the previous article, Dave Sill <da...@sill.org> wrote:
> > I don't even want to know people like the writer of that
> > article. How dare someone care more about their own health than
> > about not inconveniencing her! She is the centre of the universe -
> > how DARE they not put her feelings before their physical health?
> >
> > Bitch.
>
> She wrote:
>
> "If you eat in my home, I will grudgingly respect medically
> diagnosed allergies, since it puts a pall on conversation when a
> guest goes into anaphylactic shock at the dinner table. But beyond
> that, I expect you to eat what you can, ignore the rest and not make
> trouble."
>
> That seems like a reasonable attitude to me, although a little
> overstated for comic effect. Doesn't sound like she thinks she's the
> center of the universe or is unwilling to accommodate actual
> medically-based dietary concerns, at least when they're presented
> appropriately.
Add to this the fact that -- and I emphatially am *not* including
Charlene in this -- many people do lie about having allergies, or
"self-diagnose" allergies when in fact they are merely medicalizing
something that annoys them. The most common such "diagnosis" is "I'm
allergic to cigarette smoke," which is medically impossible.
--
_+_ From the catapult of |If anyone objects to any statement I make, I am
_|70|___:)=}- J.D. Baldwin |quite prepared not only to retract it, but also
\ / bal...@panix.com|to deny under oath that I ever made it.-T. Lehrer
***~~~~----------------------------------------------------------------------