My Mother in law is Italian, and won’t take no for an answer either. She gets this glazed look in her eyes (like she hasn’t heard you refuse food politely three or four times) and quickly dumps another serving of food on your plate. Her food is wonderful, but oh so bad for the waistline. My sister in law, who is vegetarian and gluten-intolerant, is the only one who escapes the pressure. In my mother in law’s mind, if you don’t eat her food, then you don’t love her (silly, I know).
My advice is to just take a tiny bit, eat a small piece, and keep it on your plate, while complimenting the meal. Hopefully it will distract your in-laws long enough so that they will stop offering.
HA! This reminds me of my dear, departed (Jewish!) grandmother (Baba). She’d do the typical exchange; “Do you want something to eat?” “No, thanks, I’m fine.” “Are you sure? I have plenty.” “No, really, I don’t want anything.” Then she’d move into specifics; “I just made some lasagna last night, you want some of that?” “Oh, how about some pickles? I just picked them up fresh from the deli this morning.” “Maybe an ice cream. I’ve got sandwiches, cones, eskimo pies?”
It’s as if she was convinced that we really would like something, she just hadn’t hit on exactly the right something to offer us to get us to “take the deal.”
And then she’d start emptying the refrigerator, making a veritable smorgasbord on the kitchen table, because, you know, maybe she forgot to mention something she had, and if we saw it in front of us, we might actually realize we wanted something after all!
I don’t recall ever getting exasperated over it, but finding it amusing as hell. I miss her very much, and would give anything to be offered tons of food I didn’t want again.
Yes, yes YES. I hate, hate, hate this. My MIL does this (she’s of Polish descent). Drives me nuts. How about a sandwich? Hmmmm? How about a pizza (wth?)? How about I make you some eggs? (it’s 2pm-no one is hungry).
HOW ABOUT NO? With others, I say no thank you and smile. With her-I just say no thanks. And sometimes just no. She always gets pissed off, like it’s the first time anyone has ever turned down her tuna fish sandwich. Her daughter tells her to her face, “stop it, Ma”. I won’t do that.
It’s been 30+ years and she still doesn’t get it–I’ve given up. Taking anything from her does NOT stop her in the least; if anything, it doubles the amount she wants to give you. I don’t see this as hospitality one bit–I see this as passive/aggressive BS. This is woman who makes Marie on Raymond look like Mary Poppins, kay? Love is not uppermost in her mind when doing this–control and manipulation are. If you do take it, the conversation is immediately about how fast/slow you’re eating it/not eating it. How it differs from the last time you saw her and didn’t take anything/took something different. It’s a weird mind game and I won’t play.
It was worst when my kids were little. After awhile, I never had them eat dinner w/o me over there. They’d come home and puke, they were so full. Ugh.
Completely true, in Minnesota you offer three times. I disagree though, you can accept before the third time, though it isn’t the height of politeness to appear too eager and accept the first offer.
Offering a guest food is an act that’s trapped with much more than simply satiating their hunger. It’s a key part of being hospitable. Rejecting that hospitality doesn’t just mean ‘I’m not hungry at the moment, thanks.’ That might be all you want it to mean, but it’s just not so. So accept some hospitality, even if it’s a glass or water or a cup of tea, or a cookie. You don’t have to eat or drink more than a bite or two (in fact, having some left gives you the opportunity to say ‘Oh, no, thanks, I’m still working on this one.’ while having another nibble when they offer again) but to just flat out refuse to allow your hosts to host you has way too much baggage attached.
For what it’s worth, when I was in Italy a couple of weeks ago, while the very first word I learned was “thanks” (grazie), it wasn’t more than four or five more words before I had deliberately, and defensively, learned the word for “full” (pieno). My girlfriend’s family was pouring food down my throat every chance they got.
This was pretty much standard procedure in Texas when I was a kid; the host offers out of politeness and the guest refuses for the same reason. The offer and refusal are repeated; at the third offer, its okay to say something like, “Well, just a bit of that cake (or whatever).” Silly at best but ritual gives meaning to life.
When I took my then-new husband to meet my grandparents, the first words out of my grandmother’s mouth were: “You want a shot?” That was part of hospitality at their house, although they could take no as an answer to that.
What my grandmother couldn’t do was allow anyone to *leave * the house empty-handed. Mostly, she offered a banana or a plum. (It’s still a family joke, and she’s been gone 12 years.) The funniest thing was the one time a friend of my sister kept refusing fruit of any kind, so my grandmother gave him a dollar. She was a character…
Okay, so what if your relatives do that to you at your own house? My mother is actually notorious for that. She shows up with junk food that neither I nor my fiancee, nor my sister ever eat (or can’t eat).
I understand that she is trying to show us how much she loves us, but it can be frustrating.
“How come you never eat the snacks I bring?” She asks my sister.
“Because I’m lactose intolerant, Mom. Just like you. I can’t eat the cakes you brought.”
My grandmother was like that. I think it was a combination of “food = love” and boredom. After my grandfather retired, they just sat around at the kitchen table all day. Or that’s how it seemed when we’d visit. “Well, since we’re already in the kitchen…”
My husband’s grandmother has sat five feet from me on the telephone telling perfect strangers what I did or did not eat, how quickly, whether I ate it last time,
how many things she had to offer first, etc.
Or how about offering bespoken food and then later, “Oh, I gave Julie all of the X. I was going to save you some. I knew you wanted it. But she just wouldn’t accept anything else.”
But again, those are my in-laws. I’ve encountered variations on this from other people.
And no. I don’t care, I simply do not care and will never care, if some people think “Not taking no for an answer” is acceptable behavior in the name of hospitality. As in every other case in my life, if I say no, I mean no. That doesn’t mean push, wheedle, pout, threaten, shout, complain or try again later.
During my last visit to my grandma, she obsessed about what I ate (or didn’t eat). One minute she would say, “Eat whenever you want, I’m not going to worry about it,” but then she’d constantly be pestering me to eat. She got on the phone with my mom and worried at her about my not eating as much as she thought I should, and completely ignored my mom telling her that I’m an adult and if I’m hungry, I’ll eat.
The most surefire way to kill my appetite is to shove food at me. And I’m 31. I think I can tell if I want to eat or not. It’s like she doesn’t remember when I was a little kid the way I wouldn’t eat when harassed about it. Some things haven’t changed. You’re not a bad grandma, just shut up about food! I don’t eat breakfast at the asscrack of dawn! Deal with it!
I don’t think it’s a cultural thing with her, but it is obnoxious, whatever it is. In situations where it is a cultural thing, I choke something down if there’s no way around it. With Grandma, though, I just don’t eat much around her, and she doesn’t get it.
Ray Ramano does a bit about that. If you want a lot of food, just say you want a little. If you want a little, say you don’t want any. If you don’t want any…well then you have to shoot her. And you really got to land the bullet, if it grazes her it’ll just piss her off. Oh and don’t think you can leave, even just to get something out of your car with out her fixing you up a container to take home.
It’s like he was talking about my (italian) grandma.
BTW with my Grandma, food was about socializing. She’d rather chit chat over a bowl of coponata and fontina, then nothing. When my dad was highschool age and going out at night, she would eat dinner with him before he left for the night, then she would eat dinner with the rest of the family and she would eat again with my grandfather when he got home from work. Then they would go out and eat with their friends. Eating was about family and friends.
I’ve never done this myself, but it doesn’t particularly bother me when other people do it to me (it also helps that I’m pretty much ready to eat at any time). But there are certainly cultural differences in play. Like many posters have already stated, in many cultures it’s rude to accept anything the first or second time asked, so being asked three times is just the way it’s done.
Now, perhaps there are more issues at play in the OP’s situation. But in and of itself, being offered food three times is not de facto rude–that’s just a fairly standard social dance in much of the world.
Would I do it? No. Not my style and that game isn’t played quite as much here. But I don’t automatically assume someone is rude or being an idiot if they do it to me. My family is Polish, and you get some of that in regards to food sometimes (not really much anymore), but also with drink. If you want to stop drinking, you cannot say no. There seems to be a rule in some Polish households and gatherings that no drinking vessel may ever be left empty, so the instant you finish a drink, it’s refilled. The simple secret to saying “no” is don’t finish your drink if you don’t want to drink any more.
(I’d seen that before, but oh man, that killed me.)