AIBU to think you should feed guests if you've invited them

have eaten a panini and a packet of crisp and a banana (in the street)

I've also popped in to sainsburys and bought 2 full bags of food and snacks

I've got enough to keep me going until and after the tiny dinner.

Thats a hell of a lot of food to me. Way more than anyone needs over a period of a few hours, breastfeeding or not.

YABU. Your family have strange manners if they think you need to offer meals to people at 2pm. Why would the average person want to eat at 2pm when they've just had lunch?

You skipped lunch then expected in laws to feed you. YABU.

Guests are always offered food and drink in my house, no matter the time of day or night! But I come from a family of feeders. None of us are overweight though, we just like to make sure that guests have everything they might need or want.

Why didn't you just go out and buy some lunch? There is no way I would martyr myself on holiday and go without food just because I am on holiday with someone with different eating habits to me.

@Lizziebest I wouldn't feel self conscious about eating food I had bought in front of them. If it embarrasses them then serve them right for being so inhospitable.

TBH if guests turned up at 2.15 I would assume that they had had lunch unless they had driven a long way. Nevertheless I would still ask if they wanted something to eat.

Fuck inlaws and their weird habits.

OP, eat at the front of them,they are rude to not to offer you anything.Tight as duck’s arse misers

For all these people umming and ahhing about arrival times.

I can’t imagine family arriving and to not offer them anything to eat, especially if there’s woman who’s breastfeeding,that’s regardless of arrival time.

„Have you eaten yet” would be followed by preparing food.

How the hell can you justify not feeding the family?

I didn't need to read past 'wheaten bread' to know you were Irish.
I recently had the pleasure of directing some American tourists in a cafe in Belfast to a bakery that does the BEST wheaten. They loved the stuff.

We had OH's cousin visit this afternoon so I made a stack of sausage rolls to go with tea, as we've no cake or biscuits in. It was lovely to see the glint in the cousin's eye when he saw them. They were bloody delicious, all hot and flaky. We ate the lot 😁

It’s all very weird because they made it weird by not offering a snack and have form for punishing hunger in women.

I would have called it out in my cheerful big-boned way, but I appreciate that others are socialised to accept this controlling madness.

I was once invited to stay for four days with a couple in the holiday home they'd rented. My god. They had this weird eating pattern, nothing for breakfast, a large lunch, no dinner. I suspect one of them was diabetic though it didn't stop them from downing a bottle of wine at lunchtime. They hadn't warned me about this either, just more or less expected me to do as they did. At the end of the third day I cracked and went to the village shop for crisps.

Visitors at 2/3pm would be offered tea or coffee with biscuits or cake if I'd made one. I'd have thought you'd have already had your lunch tbh.

Next time plan to arrive at their dinnertime. Be interesting to see if they have lunch that day and decide on no dinner at 6pm, or sit like Jack Spratt and his wife and leave you hungry.

Be prepared with a stash at all times.

Oh touché

I would consider it incredibly ill mannered not to offer food to guests, at any time of day. And I wouldn’t feel properly ‘welcomed’ into a home that didn’t, unless I was just dropping by for an impromptu coffee.

Between mealtimes, cake or biscuits. But most often a meal, big or small. I keep a small stock of little treats for unexpected guests. Feeding family and friends is one of the great pleasures of my life.

I agree this might be a cultural thing. As the child of a Jewish father and French mother food is simply offered. But I’ve found this to be true for other cultures too. I always knew not to eat much before the houses of Indian/ West African school friends.

In your position, I’d have sent DH out for hot food, or gone myself. Perhaps invited everyone to come for a late lunch. They’d get the hint, I imagine.

i don’t eat breakfast but I appreciate everyone else does.

i think this is what it comes down to. Some people are unable to imagine the possible needs of others (eg ND), some are unwilling to do so (selfishness), and a further set is perfectly able to imagine those needs but chooses not to do so to gain or retain power - whether they can admit that to themselves or not.

I think this formula can be applied to most human interactions.

Strange they’re rude with people eating in their house, yet the whole time you’re there you’re on your phone!!
Isn’t that more rude than eating??

Why would you need to secretly eat with breastfeeding?

I'd always offer food to a guest-unless they turned up unannounced and/or I really wanted rid of them-but I would be a bit surprised if they hadn't got round to feeding themselves by early afternoon.

Shame that at your in laws you can't just say I'm starving, can I make myself something? I would be raiding the cupboards and no one would mind. But it's odd you have missed two meals and turned up hungry when you know what they're like.

Where has the OP said she had some sort of mammoth journey to get there?

given her husband was able to take the children to soft play in the morning so they had hardly spent the whole day travelling!

Also "come at 2" is a pretty clear message. It means "we aren't inviting you for lunch, and we are also inviting you early enough to make sure we don't need to give you dinner".

This is fascinating - so you’ve gone for a visit at the requested time of 2pm and you’re on MN while sitting there with them? And then you’ve gone out to buy food and eaten some food on the street? What did they say about you going out? It’s all very weird frankly!?

OP the general consensus on my thread yesterday about my two very young children being offered food over a nearly 5 hour period was that I was unreasonable so you as an adult have no chance 😂

This is insane. So you ate a panini, a bag of crisps and a banana and also bought 2 full bags of other food, all to survive a couple or hours at your in laws?

I don't think your in-laws are the ones with a food problem

If we were hosting guests who were travelling for some distance and arriving at 2, then I'd assume that they wouldn't have had lunch. I'd make sure there was something for them to eat.