And then there are the people who will try to sneak stuff into your food. Apparently vegetarianism is a challenge to some people, and they will use things like chicken broth in dishes, either not knowing or not caring that chicken is not a vegetable. Some people are convinced that food allergies aren’t real, and will lie about a dish, as well. Or they don’t know that a dish contains mushrooms or pepper or eggs or nuts, and they just assure you that it doesn’t.
That is so true, that many ‘hosts’ dont’ know or care if anyone who will eat their food is allergic to anything. OR so-and-so says he’s allergic to garlic, so I’m going to mince this whole piece until it’s mush and stir into his food to see if he’s making up that shit…cut to person with allergy who ate onions leaving in an ambulance or even worse!
It doesn’t sound like a big deal as far as allergies go and it really isn’t, because it’s so easy for me to avoid altogether. But I am allergic to Cloves! I learned this after I ended in the hospital when I was 15 after my dentist had installed a temporary crown and filling after a root canal and the filling material he and most dentists use have quite a bit of Clove Oil in them! It has been known to numb pain since ancient times, so using it in dental products makes sense.
But six hours after I left the dentist, my hair and clothes were soaked with sweat, I was shivering and extremely nauseous with the worst headache I’ve ever had, before or in the 23 years since! I was also vomiting profusely, but after that stopped I started having acide reflux pain and burping. When I burped, I caught a distinct taste and whiff of the clove oil in my mouth! Alarms went off in my brain letting me know without a doubt that I had found the source of my agony! My mom was asleep in a recliner in the corner of hospital room, so I grabbed her purse and went to bathroom and started digging for various implements that I could use to rip out the temporary material my dentist had put in earlier that day! I finally found a tiny screwdriver for tightending the tiny screws in eye glasses and a pair of eyebrow tweezers with pointed ends…my mouth was a bloody mess when I finished performing surgery on myself using only stuff I MacGuyver’d out of mom’s’ purse, but I also felt fine four hours later and got to go home.
My dentist was surprised becasue he had never had another patient react adversely to the materials he used, but he found alternatives for my future dental work that were 100% free of cloves or clove oil!!!
Just the smell, or even the thought of the smell, of cloves makes my head throb!!!
“I have gastric issues with certain foods, so I try to avoid them in mixed company.”
That should do the trick!
That reminds me of a joke by, I think, Dan Cummins. “If someone asks you if you’re ticklish, it doesn’t matter what you say, they’re going to tickle you. Unless you say ‘I have diarrhea and if you touch me it’ll come out’”.
ETA it might be Demetri Martin.
After reading that, I feel compelled to share a story with you…
My cousin Joy grew up as a good Christian, Southern, smart and absolutely gorgeous young man here in Georgia. She was raised on a 30-acre farm just 15 miles north of Atlanta and her father grew almost every meat and fruit that they ate! He especially loved cantaloupe and had a gift for growing the sweetest most wonderful smelling and tasting melons I’ve ever seen.
But Joy simply didn’t like cantaloupe, she had tried it seveal times over the years and it just didn’t click with her taste buds. Despite this fact, EVERY night at dinner they would pass around each tray or plate of food and take what they wanted and put it on their own plate. Even after years of Joy turning down cantaloupe every single night, her dad (Uncle Allen) would try to pass it to her anyway and every night he would seem surprised that anyone didn’t like cantaloupe…he’d go thru a diatride similar to what you outlined above and poor Joy would just tune him out and ignore it…
Joy’s mother, my Aunt ‘Pete’ (nickname, and she’s actually my great-aunt) is one of the kindest, sweetest souls you could ever meet in this life! I’ve never known of her to raise her voice, swear, get noticeably angry or upset over anythingl…just mellow and low-key all the time…
One night, when my Aunt Pete was going thru menopause, the same insane cantaloupe discussion started…and Aunt Pete picked up the plate of cantaloupe, flung it at my Uncle Allen and SCREAMED- "She doesn’t like the DAMN cantaloupe! She has turned it down every night for the last 20 years and you still can’t get it thru your head…and she stormed off and went to bed at 5pm that night without dinner…
That version of Aunt Pete was never seen or heard from again, but Uncle Allen was suddenly able to remember that Joy hated cantaloupe an never tried to pass her that plate again! =)
I actually have Chrohns Disease, so I use that as my excuse when anything just doesn’t look or sound appealing…
And most people don’t ask any details after i mention Chrohns…but if they persisted, I would to say- “If I eat that awful food, you’ll be mopping up my shit off the floor…just so ya know…”
But that would probably be considered distasteful dinner-time conversation by some people…and shitting at the table would certainly be an Emily Post “No-No”!
And if you get really bored, you can drink bleach! 
Puhleeze! I grew up in the Pentecostal Church! We used Strychnine for Communion!! Bleach would be like sugar water! 
You could say “I mostly keep kosher, though for non-religious reasons”.
I’d like to chime in on the side of “don’t say Kosher, it will mislead people.” You’ll have a cheeseburger, for instance, and then they may think it’s OK to serve a cheeseburger to someone who keeps kosher. You could call it “kosher-style” if you want.
Also, there are lots of people with lots of foods restrictions nowadays. Yeah, there are some boors who will question you about it (as per Joey P) but thehellwithem. What with allergies and medical situations (don’t eat spinach if you’re taking blood thinner) and religious requirements and individual physiogomy (some people, like me, find cilantro tastes like soap) and just plain food preferences like yours, there’s lots of complications for anyone serving a group or party. No need to lie about it.
Every time we’re at a restaurant with the family, the poor waiter goes through hell, we’ve got a vegetarian and a low-sodium diet and kosher-ish. They cope.
Although, there’s also no need to tell someone every detail of your own choices, either.
Wow, you can handle beer with Crohn’s? Good on ya. You’re luckier than many. And that’s the thing about Crohn’s - it much more complicated than a simple list of foods. Some things that irritate one man’s bowel don’t bother another. So I’d go with the Crohn’s defense. “I’ve got Crohn’s, so my diet is pretty idiosyncratic. I’d love to come to your barbeque, but please don’t worry about feeding me.”
I’m the kind of host who really really tries to accommodate everyone’s needs and tastes. I make three kinds of guacamole for every event (plain, w/ cilantro and w/ cilantro and tomatoes) because my friends have different needs/preferences. I’m cool with that. I get pleasure from getting it “right”, and I’ve done it for so long that it’s really not a big deal. (I really make one big batch of plain and then divvy it out in separate bowls to add the potentially allergic/yucky elements. Takes only 30 seconds longer than making one batch with everything.)
If you told me you kept kosher, I’d be compelled to go to Skokie (a 'burb about half an hour away) and buy something kosher and get some paper plates and plastic forks and cups for you, and I’d keep the kosher food and dishes out of my kitchen. Because I *know *what kosher means, and it’s not something I can do in my kitchen without a weekend makeover and a rabbi.
But while I’m willing to do it, and happy to do it if it’s actually needed, I’d rather not if that’s not actually the issue. I’d prefer honesty and a saved trip to the store.
“What, you don’t like our religion?”
I for one like the Jewish religion just fine…as long as I don’t have to wear a yamaka, it makes my head sweat and then hair gel starts running down my neck…I’m fine with anything, as long as it doesn’t involve messin’ up my hair!
Well, I’m not supposed to have beer with Chrohns and, like so many other (often random) food and drinks, it can trigger an ‘attack’. I use self-administered Humira injections whenever I start to sense it flaring up. I also use fairly large doses of Dicyclomine (Bentyl) daily to keep it at bay as much as I realistically can. But I have to go off the Dicyclomine for a day or two (or four) every five to six days so I can go to the potty…otherwise, I would explode!
I find it hard to believe that anyone the OP is likely to meet will need his guidance to form a concept of what it means to eat kosher. I suspect that far more likely, onlookers will simply assume he’s a particularly lax Jew.
BigT writes:
> Anyone who says “find new friends” obviously either has little experience in the
> area or has been really lucky. Friendship is not something that just happens.
> It’s hard to find a group of people you mostly get along with, especially if you
> keep dumping them entirely if they do one thing that bugs you. Friendship is
> about compromise, and, yes, sometimes that means simplification.
>
> As for listing things, that’s all well and good if the list is small, but if it’s quite
> large, you will overwhelm whoever you are talking to. Talking to people
> constantly involves simplifying things, which often causes you to lose accuracy
> as well as precision.
>
> The thing about saying you eat kosher is that there is a built-in reason so you
> don’t have to discuss it. As a bonus, that reason is religious, so most people
> want to avoid that topic anyways. So it’s not just the list you are avoiding, it’s
> the inevitable questions afterwards, along with people who see you not liking
> food as a challenge.
>
> I wish there was a way to make the term more accurate without inviting a ton
> more questions, but I sure can’t think of any. Even saying “basically kosher” is
> enough to make people ask what “basically” means. Your version above is even
> worse, as it can start an entire conversation.
>
> And if you find that type of conversation more of a chore than fun, why wouldn’t
> you do what you could to avoid it?
I disagree. I think that your friends should make a little effort to accommodate your preferences. That includes at some point understanding what foods you really don’t want to eat. Once they understand that, they should quit asking you about it and quit trying to push those food on you. People who spend year after year talking about your preferences and trying to get around them are jerks.
I have one friend who is vegetarian and another who has a long list of allergies. We let them choose their food as they wish and don’t talk about their choices. We might point out what’s in some food we brought to a get-together if that’s relevant. We would act surprised in a restaurant if they ordered something that doesn’t fit their diets.
Sometimes my suggestion of saying that one’s diet is close to that of kosher or halal restrictions might work and sometimes it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t work if the person you’re talking to has no idea what those words meant. It wouldn’t work if the person you’re talking to might vaguely understand the words but who has never met someone who’s Jewish or Moslem. That’s certainly possible. Until I left for college, I had never met beyond maybe a passing conversation any Jewish or Moslem people.
Saying that your diet is similar to kosher or halal would work in certain circumstances. For instance, someone I’ve met says that it’s simplest to accommodate his food preferences in ordering a meal on an airplane if he picks the kosher or, even better, the halal meal, although he’s neither Jewish nor Moslem. I can’t imagine spending my life hanging around with people who are willing to accept my food preferences if it’s a matter of religion but who feel they can torment me for the rest of my life if it’s a matter of personal preference.
Hey, I’m just wondering how often you run across a seafood item that’s not shellfish but doesn’t have fins and scales. There’s eel at sushi or English pub pies, and I suppose you might run across whale meat in Japan or Iceland, but what else is there? (I’m assuming seaweed isn’t in that forbidden category?)
Catfish, shark and swordfish are examples of non-shell fish that are not kosher.
I’ve found two lines very useful:
“I’m afraid I’ll have to enjoy that vicariously.”
and
“I’m sure I’d love it, but I know it won’t like me…”
I can relate to this. People can be incredibly persistent about trying to get other people to eat, and then sometimes they act like the non interested party is being rude when they politely refuse.
I count calories and try not to exceed a 2 day calorie limit. If I don’t do that, I start getting fat. I avoid sugar, since it’s high calorie and I don’t have a sweet tooth anyway. I also avoid snacking, since it doesn’t fill me up and tends to just make me more hungry.
But 9/10 times when I tell people that, they either ignore my own dietary preferences or act like I slapped their face. This is especially problematic at my work, where everyone seems to eat candy throughout the day and it’s common for people to bring in cakes and cookies to share.
Co-Worker: Have a piece of cake!
Me: Thanks, but I’m not hungry.
CW: Have some anyway! It tastes so good!
**Me: **That’s ok, I’m not really into sugary stuff anyway. I’m more of a salty treat guy.
CW: Just try some, I know you’ll like it.
**Me: **Thanks again, really, but I try not to eat when I’m not hungry. Counting calories and what not.
CW: You don’t need to stick to a diet, you’re not fat. Try some cake!
Me: Thank you, but it’s not about losing weight, it’s about not gaining weight. And like I said I’m not really all that into cake anyway.
CW: That’s ridiculous, have some cake!
Me: I’m good, really. I have to get back to work now, I’ve got a lot of stuff to finish today. Thanks again though.
**CW: **You have time to eat one piece of cake!
Me: Look I’m not eating any fucking cake, ok? Why do you even care?
CW: Just have some!
Me: Seriously, piss off.
CW: I’ll cut you a piece of cake and leave it on your desk. 