“I have relatives who will bring raw meat to a family barbecue without being asked, and then insist on having the host cook it,” writes a reader named laureltanner. “They don’t like the patties the hosts use. I feel this is insulting.
“Am I wrong?” laureltanner asks. ”BTW, these are the same people who will serve homemade, but pre-frozen, chicken parmigiana with pre-frozen ziti on Christmas Day.”
First, laureltanner, let’s review the basics. When you are invited to someone’s home for a meal, it is perfectly fine to ask, “What can I bring?” The host’s answer will signal whether it’s OK to show up with an extra side dish, a dessert or a wagon load of your signature meat patties. “Just bring yourselves” is code for “I have planned the menu and don’t want you to change it.” In that case, a thoughtful guest instead brings a small gift — chocolates, flowers, a bottle of wine — and says, upon entering a host’s home, “My, something smells delicious.”
Is it ever appropriate to deviate from this script? Yes, if a guest has health issues — allergies, say, or a gluten intolerance — that rule out particular foods. In that case, the polite thing to say upon being invited to someone’s home is: “Thank you, I’m looking forward to it. I have a health issue that prevents me from eating [insert name of food here]. Shall I bring a [insert name of food you can eat here] to add to the menu?”
This gives a host plenty of advance warning to plan a menu that everyone can enjoy.
But this doesn’t really answer your question, laureltanner, because you are not dealing with a typical situation. You are dealing with a complication: relatives.
Whenever family is involved, things get more nuanced — with a tendency to turn weird, with murky emotional undertones. Family relationships are colored by history. Often, things have gone unsaid for years. When a relative shows up at your door with unwelcome meat, she may really be trying to tell you, “I resent the fact that you were always Mom’s favorite.”
Or perhaps she’s trying to say, “I wish you wouldn’t eat those packaged frozen beef patties because you don’t really know what’s in them, and if they’re tainted by E. coli, you could get really sick. But you never listen to me, so I’m not going to bother to bring it up.”
The way to get to the bottom of it is to ask nicely—not in an accusing tone that simmers with decades of resentment over the fact that she cut off the hair of your favorite Barbie when you were eight years old.
Listen to her answer with the same detached curiosity you would feel if she were your friend rather than your relative. Then say, “OK, let’s figure out a compromise so we can both be happy.”
Who knows, maybe you’ll be able to negotiate a larger truce that also eliminates her pre-frozen, Christmas Day chicken parmigiana.
Do your relatives show up with their own food? How do you handle it?
(image via RealSimple.com)
