Little Surprises

How far would you go to make your host or hostess feel comfortable, that is, not embarrassed, by a his or her culinary lapse or anomaly?

Let’s say you are having dinner with your sweet mother, or your dear auntie, and she has served your favorite—meatloaf topped with barbeque sauce and caramelized onions. You slide some mashed potatoes over to join the beef and take a big bite. It’s then that you feel the unmistakable sensation of a hair in your mouth. What do you do? Do you abruptly stop chewing, squint your eyes, stick your thumb and index finger into your mouth and grope around until you find it, pulling it out and then holding it up for inspection? “Oh look! I found a hair in my food!” Or do you discretely spit the bite out into a napkin, not saying a word?

Maybe it’s not a foreign object in the dish, but the dish itself. It tastes weird, not to your liking at all. In fact, you would rather not even try to choke it down.

Perhaps you are eating over at your buddy’s house, or maybe your in-laws. You didn’t know until you took a bite that the chicken was baked with a curry powder crust on it. And the soup tastes sort of swampy. What do you do? Do you say, “I can’t eat this. Do you have any peanut butter so I can make a sandwich?” Or do you politely pick at it and then stop by In and Out Burger on the way home?

When I was a kid, we used to go visit the relatives in another state. One aunt invited all her family over to join us in a dinner, using the “good china” in the top cupboard. As luck would have it, I got the top plate. Which was dusty. The pattern hid it, but when I sat down to my food, I could see the layer. It wasn’t that appetizing, but I did feel very noble about not embarrassing my aunt.

The best story I heard was from my sister. She was visiting her husband’s family and was served pheasant. The host was very proud of his presentation. She was served her section. Crunch! He had forgotten to remove the craw! She ate around it, not wanting to embarrass him by pointing it out. Yikes!

I knew one man who was so terrified and disgusted about the mere idea of a hair in his food that he required his wife and daughters to have very short hair. Does a hair do it for you? Or is it bugs? Grit?

Would you be discreet? Or do you feel like all the participants need to know what you found, or how you think the food tastes?