Being a good guest is about respecting the space you’ve been invited into; you walk around in your outside shoes in my house, you are never coming back.
This. It's a give-and-take relationship. Both guest and host need to be accommodating and respectful to each other. A person's house isn't a restaurant. They are not there to serve and tolerate your rudeness--let alone for FREE.
classes of places you can visit:
The Few: trustworthy, reliable, understand how important it is
The Many: careless, unreliable, or just unknown; just take your own food
The Evil: actively resentful to their own guests, do not interact
relatedly, it was pre-Covid but I still remember how angry (in a quiet, resigned, "of course" way) some attendees at a conference were when they got to their small but clearly labeled table of gluten-free snacks to find it had been picked clean by people who didn't want to wait in a longer lineup
Like, it's *not* difficult. The majority of the food we eat, even in meat dishes, is not meat. Forgoing meat, as a meat-eater, for one Goddamn meal is not some major hardship. People are just goofy.
Should mention that there'd be a bit more thought put into it if I were vegan or had other dietary requirements but it's rarely much more complicated than that in my experience.
Yeah, I'm vegetarian and sometimes my mom worries that there won't be enough for me to eat, and there's always plenty. (And if not, I'm fine with pie! 😄)
A meal with lots of vegetable side dishes *can* go wrong, but it only needs a tiny sliver of thought to avoid it. Like, I have a potato dish that uses cheese. If I use our normal cheese, its not vegetarian. So I could imagine someone roasting the veg in duck fat, or adding bacon bits or something
You give me a big ol' bowl of roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, some of that corn-bread stuff, some cranberry sauce, all the veggies you got, I'll be happy enough. I'll even have plenty of room for ice cream and a bourbon or three afterwards 😋
The spirit of their point is fine (having options on hand just in case is accommodating and avoids awkward situations) but lmao that their outward response to "I have dietary restrictions" is "oh you silly lil guy, what a world we live in haha!"
If I don't give enough fucks about someone to find out what they like to eat, why would I ever invite/feed them???
It's not your guest's job to give you notice. It's your job as host/hostess to ask so they don't have to feel like they're imposing.
I have two different ways I host. The first one is where I make sure everyone is happy, and that planning is part of the joy of it.
The other one will be a group text like: "I'll be making these three exact types of gyoza on Friday because I'm craving them. Join me or don't 🤷♀️"
I mean, she literally said she's making sure to have something for every potential dietary need. I think that's more important than the fact she uses a not-great umbrella term
It's literally an article about etiquette. Imagine how Gilbert's vegan friends might be reacting to seeing that today. Or, you know, if she'd said "Always make sure to have something besides pork, because the whole world is funny about God now."
Now you are making me really think here.
'Hi, welcome to my home. Here is your welcome-ing gift bag. Inside you will find slippers, an iPod nano with songs my dogs made, and a bottle of champipple. Come inside!'
