Yes, too easy to plead “it was an accident” or “I didn’t know X contained Y”. As we have seen in this thread, there are many who either don’t take food allergies seriously, think the sufferers are hypersensitive ninnies, or enjoying mocking them. Too likely to get a jury full of those types, if it ever went to trial, and of course the poor perpetrators of this farce acted all hurt because I puked all over their bathroom, as if I hadn’t warned them I was allergic to certain things.
Never went back to their house for a meal ever again, though, you can be damn sure of that!
Yes, there are. The problem is that many cultures have a “formula”, where, for politeness sake, you are always supposed to refuse the first time it’s offered. But if you follow said formula, there are options for “yes, I really want some” on the guest’s part, “no, I can’t really afford it, so please refuse it” on the host’s part, “no, I don’t want any, I don’t like/can’t eat that shit” on the guest’s part, or even “I’m snubbing you, intentionally” on either party’s part.
The US, being the proverbial “melting pot”, hasn’t absorbed any of those formulas. We just have 2nd or 3rd generation people who were partially raised in cultural traditions they never really understood (because they didn’t match the neighbor’s culture, being from a different part of the world, and all), so they can’t understand why this person “I’ve known all my life” keeps snubbing me when I try to get her to eat my mother’s “pig-gut bacon wonders” (clue: Google “Kosher”).
This is what’s known as “an idiot”. Unfortunately, they are the people pushing the food you can’t/won’t/don’t like to eat. I can show you half a dozen (at least) cultures that expect you to refuse, at least once, even if you want some. But they won’t/can’t tell you how to refuse, politely. They don’t even know what it is they’re looking for. I can only politely refuse one of them. And I like their food. Except for that crap. “Dessert? Shit! Who’d eat that?” It tasted horrible. Wayyy too much sugar. But you can’t politely tell them that, unless you share their culture. Which most of us don’t. So there are people who will push shit you can’t stand on you, solely because you don’t know how to tell them “No”, and make it stick in a way that they understand. Ain’t the American Melting Pot wonderful?
[answer to that last question is “Yes”, but it sucks sometimes when we have to actually do it. And, yes, I’ll try your goat testicles. I’ve eaten everything else… And even liked most of it.]
Seriously, most people who even have a food dislike, much less an allergy, have had to fend off people who absolutely refuse to believe that you [don’t like/are allergic to] whatever food they’re trying to push on you. It gets really fucking annoying, especially if it’s a popular food that supposedly everyone enjoys. My thing is mayo. No, I don’t want mayo on my sandwich or a mayo-based “salad.” Yes, I’ve tried it before. No, I don’t want to try it again. No, I’m not kidding. No, I didn’t like mayo the last time you asked, either. Etc.
MrWhatsit doesn’t like fruit, and fully admits that this is a weird idiosyncrasy, and still wishes that people would stop being dicks about it. His own mother continually tries to “sneak” fruit into his food when we visit her, I guess under the assumption that one of these years he’ll try one of her fruit salads or fruit breads or whatever and not instantly hate it and then she’ll be able to say, “Ah-ha! I knew you were just putting on that whole fruit dislike thing for 45 years!” and she will win. Whatever damage this does to her relationship with her son in the meantime is completely irrelevant to her, it seems.
My sister prefers her steak well done. She’s had medium rare and rare steak and prefers the flavour of a well done steak. She is not a philistine. Very few people accept that last point in relation to her steak preference.
For whatever reason, I do think the seafood-haters get this more than anyone. I love seafood myself so hey, more lobster for me! But my mom hates shellfish and has to endure lengthy monologues about how if she would just** try **the shrimp loving prepared with a *caress of this and a whisper of that and sung to before serving *or some such shit, then she would realize that it’s not that she doesn’t like shellfish, it’s that she’s never had it prepared correctly.
She has started counter-attacking with descriptions of how she likes her lamb prepared and people who don’t like lamb start to get it a little.
It would certainly be an education.
Before I ever had a migraine, I just assumed they were just exceptionally bad headaches. Now I know better, though it wasn’t until I’d had one that I realized how close to hell a migraine was.
[hijack]Out of curiosity, when you have a seizure, do you also have trouble with your emotional and taste centers? After I have one, not only do I have a several days-long migraine, I also can’t feel any emotion or taste anything at all, even hot peppers, for about three days. It’s very frustrating to fake emotions because I also can’t feel my face well and I feel like I’m over-acting when apparently I look normal. [/hijack]
I usually tell the more obnoxious ones that if they’ll eat a whole bowl of czarnina in my presence then I’ll eat their boiled, stinky giant bugs. No takers so far
My one sister went off on me once, basically saying “how do you expect anyone to take you seriously if you don’t eat seafood.” I reminded her of the one Chrismas where she got all in a snit and made her husband drive them 2 hours home in the middle of a blizzard because there were visible ONIONS!!! in a casserole :rolleyes:
She just started whining loudly (she was in her mid-30s at the time, BTW) about how she hates onions and we all know she hates onions and how could I do that to her??? When she announced they were leaving everyone else pretty much said, “Ok, bye, hopefully the turnpike’s been plowed.”
Good for your family! I don’t like onions at all, and I imagine because I avoid eating them I now have a bad reaction to them at times, so I’d have appreciated being able to see where they were, instead of being surprised. What a drama queen. Is she still married? :dubious:
Yep. She was lucky enough to marry one of the most passive men I’ve ever met. At family gatherings he tends to park himself in a corner and play with his smartphone (which is a whole 'nother rant but not for this thread) and ignore everyone including her. It was their 20th anniversary last month so it seems to be working.
If I knew she (or anyone else coming to dinner) had a bad reaction to onions I’d be happy to leave them out, but I’ve seen her eat that same dish bunches of times and the only difference was the onions were minced finely.
And she will happily snarf down Burger King onion rings because “they’re not real onions.” :smack:
Again, big fan of seafood here. Can count on one hand the types of seafood that I’ve tried that I did not like. But it would never occur to me that liking seafood was somehow essential for people to take me seriously. What does that even mean?
When challenged (and since I’m the kid sister that’s my job!) she’ll get all defensive and say something about it’s the texture, not the flavor. I gave up trying to make sense out of it ages ago.
lorene, I have no freakin’ clue what she meant by that. I guess in her mind sophistication = a white tablecloth restaurant with genteel patrons dining on lobster and oysters. To me, however, sophistication != pitching a hissy because there are ONIONS!!! in a casserole.
She will also make a fuss over the presence of tomatoes/tomato sauce (although pizza is OK), any legume but green beans (although she’ll happily eat her body weight in samosas even though there’s peas in them), cherries, strawberries, eggs with runny yolks, bananas, most nuts, raisins in things (she’ll eat raisins, but put them in something and it’s suddenly anathema), and I forget what else.
They say there’s one in every family, and she’s our one all right :dubious:
ETA mushrooms in any form are an abomination in the eyes of God, or something. My mother always makes crabmeat-stuffed mushrooms for Christmas Eve and she’ll pick the stuffing out and pass the mushrooms onto my brother-in-law :smack:
It’s because “seafood” is not a single, monolithic type of food that one can either like or dislike, any more than, say, meat or fruit is. Claiming to dislike it shows a ridiculous immaturity, the same as anyone claiming to dislike all vegetables.
