Karma makes a good point. Unless we are responsible for feeding a person (such as a child or a dinner guest) why do we care? It sure is a hot button for a lot of people.
Karma makes a good point. Unless we are responsible for feeding a person (such as a child or a dinner guest) why do we care? It sure is a hot button for a lot of people.
Related to this topic: adults commenting on other adults food choices in general. e.g., snarky comments like "do you know how many calories are in that pizza?" or "are you really ordering dessert?"
I've witnessed this, although not in my circle of family or friends, and I find it incredible that this is considered okay for meal conversation.
I have no problems in designing menus for friends who are vegan or veggie, or friends who have certain food allergies like coeliac disease. What I DO have problems with are those who 'don't like tomatoes', or 'don't like onions', or similar. The former are people who have specific dietary concerns - the second? EEJITS!
In our family we have one SIL who will eat no meat other than beef, including fish, and almost no veggies that didn't come from a can. Another SIL who would absolutely exist on the exact same fast food tacos and Pepsi and has no desire to expand that menu (and she's a about a size 2!). A BIL who will not even come into the kitchen if an onion is present. Several family members who are completely entrenched in the belief that dinner must have meat and potatoes or its not worth eating. Two nieces who think mac & cheese is as exotic as it gets. A future son in law who won't touch anything that ever lived in water. And on and on...
All of them are polite about it and are ever so slowly slowly expanding their horizons. I completely understand that BIL's taste buds shun onions, I really believe they taste terrible to him. Fortunately he has mellowed to the point that he simply won't say anything and will just avoid dishes with onion. Truth be told, he is the only one in the bunch that has a valid excuse to complain. The others avoid anything new just because they are scared of it. I mean really, they probably check under the bed every night, too. My approach with this neurotic bunch is to just make what I want to make and if they don't like it they can stop by McDonalds on their way home from dinner at our place.
Ah, Gregg.....are we related?????? With much of my husband's family, the only possible vegetable other than potatoes might be corn or in a pinch, peas. Meals were often what we like to call "Bradford County Beige", things like chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy and corn, unrelieved by any color or texture, accompanied by, when one was feeling adventurous, a "salad" consisting of a wedge of iceberg lettuce, and if caution was REALLY being thrown to the winds, a bit of carrot grated on top. Ranch dressing out of a bottle, of course.
The one time, shortly after our marriage, that I invited the whole family for dinner (being inexperienced in the limits of their diet), the one brother, with a disgusted UGH, discovered a mint leaf in his peas, the father held up an offending object in his salad, and said unbelievingly, "what is this?" (a slice of fresh mushroom). MIL and SIL pushed food around on the plate. Granny, in an attempt to be polite, said brightly "what kind of food is this?", and my poor sweetie, feeling protective, said between gritted teeth, "gourmet".
They left soon after, and several days later, for some reason, my SIL felt it necessary to tell me how "hilarious" it was that after the meal, they went home and made hot dogs......
It's been a long 35 years, hahahahaha.......I don't know why my sweetie fell so far from his family's tree. Perhaps it was going off to adventure in South America as an exchange student for a year, giving him for the first time in his life, a glimpse into other worlds, going away to college in a cosmopolitan city, doing a Junior Year Abroad at the U. of Madrid, in Spain.......but whatever it took to bust him out of that rut and into an appreciation of all the wonders of the word's various cuisines, I'm grateful.
It really IS more fear, I think, too, Gregg, than anything else. Anything unfamiliar, different, foreign or not like they are used to having food, triggers it.
The sad thing is that the one brother has a job where he travels and works all over the world, is posted to some of the world's greatest places for food, in the last few years alone, Paris, Dakar, Singapore, now in Caracas, Venezuela, yet wherever he goes, he either finds one restaurant that will make him plain food, just like he likes it, the same way every day, nothing unfamiliar, OR he has them put him in a residence where he can cook, if supermarkets are available, and he makes his own "Bradford County Beige" meals wherever he is. What a waste to be in places where food reaches astronomical heights in excellence, yet to be so afraid of something new that he just won't try it.
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