we don’t want to be difficult dinner guests. we want to be gracious and easy.
and we don’t have allergies, so there’s no compelling reason to be difficult.
but these days people do ask what you eat. we tried to be easy, but of course food came up in the conversation. when we mentioned that we “only eat local” our hosts suddenly looked upset that they hadn’t known the right thing to feed us.
we tried to make the distinction between people who “only” eat, say vegan, in a purist way and people who “only” eat, say local, for political reasons. this is a subtle distinction and it didn’t go over well.
we’ve been brainstorming the right thing to say so as to be easy dinner guests… here it is:
“at home, we only eat food that is in season locally, so anything from far away is a special treat for us.” (that way, they can feed us whatever they want and feel good about it.)
the one remaining issue is that we’re scared of corporate meat and have a hard time enjoying it. in order to avoid being difficult about this, we told them we’re vegetarian. of course we aren’t and they were confused when we dove after the paté… again, our good intentions were undermined by our reality … how can you tell people “we don’t eat corporate meat” when they do and don’t know the difference… please share your ideas!
