I’m really getting tired of this. Far too often after the family dinners I go to at an inlaw’s house, I come home and end up vomiting or at least feeling awful.
Admittedly, I do not have a cast-iron stomach. I can eat spicy food just fine, but food that’s way too greasy tends to create problems with me. I’m also a vegetarian. I’ve been one for all but the first couple of the dozen years that I’ve known my husband. I do not eat beef, pork, lamb, poultry, seafood, or any other kind of meat/animal flesh/products made from animal flesh, though I do eat eggs and dairy. If I eat meat without knowing it, I become ill. This has happened a few times when I’ve bought food at a grocery store and not read the label carefully - like the “vegetable eggrolls” that listed chicken fat, broth, and meat among the ingredients on the back - and only after becoming ill did I check the label and discover I’d eaten meat. I’m an intelligent adult and a good cook; I almost always carefully choose what I eat, and if need be I fill up on stuff like bread and vegetables. I don’t expect extra-special treatment, just a little bit of thought like if you tell me something’s OK for me to eat, please be sure it is. It’s been a dozen years together, and my husband and I have talked with his inlaws (his parents and his sisters) a number of times about what is and isn’t OK for me to eat.
For a while, my inlaws were trying to sneak meat into my food. I’d come home from dinner with them and go throw up in the bathroom. The phone would ring and my husband would be talking on the phone with his dad, who’d be saying something about how that “worked” - that they’d sneaked meat in some form (broth, ground up fine, etc.) into my food and I’d eaten it. He tried to explain to them that I literally cannot digest meat properly, and finally got incensed that after an explanation or two (they’re older and vegetarianism just isn’t something they’d even really known anyone doing until I came along, basically) they just didn’t get the clue. Finally it seemed to sink in. His mom will occasionally ask me if I eat seafood, or eggs, or dairy, but that’s fine with me because it shows me she’s thinking about it. It’s not just them, they all seem to think that eating meat would be “better” for me. Even the sister who buys all this health/organic/macrobiotic/etc. food from specialty grocery stores and has a vitamin selection that would put theirs to shame was advising me on supplements to take so that I can eat meat - hello, I don’t want to!
So about a year ago for a holiday dinner, we go to the house of one of the sisters-in-law. She carefully points out the food that’s OK for me to eat, noting that the salad has some cheese in it, polenta has cheese, pasta shells have no meat, etc. (I kind of feel embarrassed when people do this, as I don’t want to seem like I’m a hassle, but I appreciate it that they’re thinking of me.) We’re eating away at the table, and as I start in on the polenta, their dad is asking the hostess about how she made it. I’m thinking that I prefer the taste of mine, but I take another bite as she’s explaining one of her special steps - she soaked the polenta grains in chicken broth. I put my fork down with the next bit of polenta on it, and start in on the salad instead. Later on, I gather my husband had words with her, as she comes up to me when I’m in the kitchen and talks about the polenta, how she skimmed off the chicken fat from the broth so it shouldn’t be a big deal. Right, tell that to my stomach. Clue phone - why the fuck did you tell me the polenta was all right for me to eat if you knew it had chicken broth in it? Better yet, if you didn’t know that I don’t eat animal broths, why didn’t you fucking apologize instead of making half-assed excuses about how I shouldn’t be feeling ill?
Fast forward to yesterday, Easter dinner. I’m sitting at a table with the inlaws, talking and eating snacks. My father-in-law puts down a plate of deviled eggs. I pop one in my mouth and nearly gulp it down, but catch a bad taste and greasy feel in my mouth, eww. I swallow it because I don’t want to be rude, and then look at the plate. Ugh, the filling of all of them is not firm/fluffy, but it looks greasy and half-melted, like the eggs had been sitting out in the sun for a number of hours before they were brought over. Considering some of the stuff left in their fridge on occasion, I wouldn’t be surprised if this were true. I threw up after I got home, and felt much better. Pity, since everything else seemed to be fine. Most of the people there said they didn’t dare touch them. My husband, who has an iron gut, ate a few and even he felt pretty bad later on last night.
[list=1]
[li]Cross-examine cook about ingredients - check.[/li][li]Don’t believe them half the time anyway - check.[/li][li]Carefully examine all food before consuming, checking for presence of meat products, contaminants, or signs of spoilage - check.[/li][/list=1]
