About fifteen months ago I had surgery that led to, among other things, my diet being rather restricted. The things I cannot eat include but are not limited to mushrooms, peas, corn, citrus fruits, pineapple and carrots. There are many more. When I say “cannot eat”, I don’t mean that they make me a little ill, I mean that they land me in the emergency room and give me a good look at the business end of a surgeon’s scalpel.
I still haven’t worked out a good and polite way to tell someone who’s making me dinner about this. If you’re a vegetarian or allergic to peanuts or hate tomatoes you can say it, but all I can say is “there’s a lot of things I can’t eat, and if I try to list them you’ll go to sleep halfway through and I’ll probably forget half of them anyway”.
So: you’re making dinner for friends or relatives. One of your guests is me. What do I do?
If you were going to be a guest in my home, I’d want you to tell me exactly what you couldn’t eat. Part of being a host/hostess is making sure your guest are happy and enjoy their meal. And don’t end up in the hospital.
I would feel terrible if I found out that someone forced themselves to eat something that made them ill. Tell them by all means.
Touchy issue…considering how dangerous it could be. How 'bout this: Come up with a couple dishes that prepare and travel easy and say something along the lines of “Guys, I love spending time with you and I don’t want you to go through the trouble of having to cook within the restrictions of my diet. Would you be terribly offended if I brought my own meal? You can just pop it in the microwave and heat it up.”
The thing is, if you don’t go through the complete list, with all the details, your host will be completely freaked that they might make a mistake and inadvertently take you out. I know I would. This would be a simple alternative that will still allow you to have dinner with your friends.
Tell your host/ess. Let them know what you can eat safely. Suggest, perhaps, you bring your own food that can be heated up and served there. If it’s a close friend, that shouldn’t be a problem.
But how difficult your world has become! I wish you success in dealing with it.
If I were your hostess, I would mind if you sent me a list of the things you can’t have. (I assume you have such a thing or could make one.) I’d be perfectly willing to work around it. It’s not like you’re just being picky.
Would you mind saying what kind of surgery it was? (Don’t, if you’d rather not. It’s just idle curiosity on my part.)
Probably the simplest method is a sort of back-and-forth. You say “There are a lot of things I can’t eat, including but not limited to…”, and ask your potential host what he or she will be serving. If the dish includes something you can’t eat but didn’t put on the first list, mention it.
Another option would be to recommend specific menu items which you can eat, possibly with recipes. Your host can then choose a few of those, and make sure they’re on the menu.
I just realised that my post makes my situation sounds worse than it is. Trace amounts won’t do anything to me; it has to be actual pieces (it’s a mechanical problem, so to speak). So far I’ve solved it by eating what I can and if I come across something I can’t (which is usually not the main attraction but some form of side dish) I don’t eat it or, if necessary, pick it out. Even the people who don’t know precisely what’s wrong with me know that I spent time in the hospital for something stomach-related, so they understand that it has something to do with that and as far as I know, no-one takes offense.
It’s more of a problem when eating with people I don’t know, like at the dinner with work a few months ago, where I wasn’t sure exactly what was in a certain bowl and had to call staff over to check, and they weren’t sure and had to check, and I ended up feeling like a troublemaker. I was reading a current Pit thread about an asshat vegetarian dinner guest and wanted to know what to do to avoid being an asshat, which is something I feel we should all strive to do.
cher3: I had to have my colon removed due to ulcerative colitis.
Hmmmm…that’s quite a different sitch. Maybe you can call ahead to the restaurant. Check out the menu beforehand so you’ll know exactly what you’re getting before you even arrive. Saves you embarrassment.
And you’re not an asshat if this is a necessary dietary restriction. You can’t help it. I’m glad you’re feeling better.
You should never be embarrassed to express your needs, as long as (and from what you’ve said, you aren’t) you aren’t obnoxious about it. People who have had gastric bypass or lap band installation, not to mention diabetics and those with anaphyllactic allergies, usually have no qualms about stating their needs. It’s no one’s business why, if you feel awkward telling the reason, but if they ask, you could always blame it on allergies.
I suspect the person in the pit thread enjoyed being the center of attention and a drama queen. Most of the vegetarians I know go out of their way not to be a problem. The same with people that have health issues.
My mother had stomach surgery and can only eat very small amounts of food or she gets really ill. She goes out to lunch with all of her senior friends and ends up sick because they criticize her for not eating so she over-eats. I have no clue why she doesn’t just say something.
I agree with the others – if I were your hostess, I would ask for the complete list, and/or I would send you the recipes for the things I was thinking of making, and asking if they were okay. I also wouldn’t be offended if you offered to bring your own food. I’d be even happier if we could come up with a combination of these – like, I make the main dish and the dessert (after getting the ingredients approved by you) and you bring another side and the veggies.
I definitely would want to know. We cook a lot and would never mind making changes to accommodate a problem like that. We’ve fed vegetarians and vegans, people on various restricted diets (low-carb, severe allergies, low-fat, …), would cook kosher if we had a kashered kitchen, etc. Truthfully, yours sounds about equivalent to some of my relatives with multiple severe food allergies.
I’d say make up a list of what you can’t eat to offer to your host. That way neither of you has to worry about forgetting what’s verboten. If you know of good alternates, include those as suggestions. That would be my preference, if I was inviting you to dinner. Depending on the size of the crowd, I might still make a few dishes that you couldn’t have, but I’d warn you when you came in.
Alternatively, depending on how restrictive your diet is, make up a list of what you can eat. (This is the easiest way with some of my cousins.)
Well in advance (like as soon as the invitation is received), explain it as you’ve done here - that there are many things you can’t eat or you’ll be in the hospital - and let them decide how to handle it. If they want to run recipes by you for review, that would be good, too.
I like the idea of having a few recipes on hand if someone asks for one, it will make their life simpler. Offering to bring a dish or two is also nice, but it depends on the host - some people would rather make you something special than have you bring your own.
For about a decade after I had my colon removed, my digestive system couldn’t handle most fruits and vegetables unless they were pureed. If I was invited to dinner at someone’s home, I would usually just tell them that I was unable to eat green salads and “roughage,” but that pasta, potatoes, rice, meats, cheeses, and breads were fine. If something ended up on my plate that I knew would cause me grief, I didn’t mention it. But I didn’t eat it, either.
I suggest you’re looking at it the wrong way. Be more positive. Try something like, “As a result of my recent surgery, I have to restrict myself to X, Y, and Z. If that’s too much trouble, don’t worry: let me bring something for myself and I’ll just enjoy the other dishes vicariously.”
Unfortunately, I’d have to go through the entire alphabet. Probably the Greek and Cyrillic alphabets too.
Thanks for all the opinions. It seems that you live in a more liberal culture than I (who said Europe was forward?); I eschewed meat for a while and that was nowhere near as easy or simple as it seems to be for you. Bringing lists of forbidden foods or bringing my own food would be, well, impolite. Ish. Still, no way around it I guess.
Kalhoun: I can eat lots of foods that I could before surgery; my diet doesn’t suck except that there are some things I really love that I cannot eat. Like pineapple. God, I miss it. I did once eat a pinky-nail size piece that I chewed the living shit out of, just to feel the taste. Thank the Lord for pineapple juice.
Something else to remember - When you are going to be eating somewhere that you are not that familiar with the kitchen-folk, make sure you eat something beforehand. I can’t eat any dairy, or I become violently ill. If I don’t feel like making my dietary restricitons prominent (you wouldn’t believe how many people ask “well, what exactly happens if you have some ice cream?” and I can’t describe it delicately!) then I make sure I am pretty well fed. If anything looks at all suspicious at a table or on a menu, I can avoid it and say with all honesty “Really, I’m just not all that hungry!”
I thing it might be easier to make a list of what you can have to give to hosts. That way they are in quandaries about what you can’t have. It also covers random, bizarre ingredients that you don’t know would cause problems. If it isn’t on this list, then they can assume you can’t have it.
I have friends with all manner of restrictions, and as a host, I do my best to make something that everyone can eat. Although that does lead to making one three things every time we get together with our gaming group, but that’s beside the point.
I must disagree. It is not impolite. Not even impolite-ish. You’ve got a medical condition that requires you to avoid a wide range of foods on pain of a trip to the ER. You’re being extremely gracious by notifying your hosts privately, in advance, so as to create the least extra work for them. Anyone who thinks that you are impolite would probably be upset that someone with two broken legs doesn’t stand up to shake hands.
You’ve got a couple of options:
Give the host a list (however long) of what you cannot eat and let them work with it. Many cooks are happy to do this, it’s an opportunity to rise to a culinary challenge.
Give the host a list (however short) of what you can eat and they can make something from it. As others have said this would be the simplest thing to do since you can give a short list of some simple dishes, it’s not like you’re asking for beluga caviar served out of a narwhal horn.
Ask the host if it would be OK for you bring your own food so as not to be a bother to the cook.
That’s about it. Your only other choice would be to keep quiet and spend the meal picking carefully through the food, wondering if that last mouthful contained something that’s going to send you to the hospital.
Be honest and upfront and give them all those options - #3 requires absolutely zero effort on their part, how much more polite can you be?