Home cooking. Or lack of. Post Christmas meal.

[MarianneSolong]

If you have people round for a big meal, would you expect to do some actual cooking i.e. bake or roast something, do veg prep etc etc?

I didn't see my family over Christmas, but went to see relatives for a 'big' meal yesterday. I brought prosecco and a large chunk of the Xmas cake I made.

The host couple provided a lot of Waitrose-type things. A pate for starters, and a quiche for main course. Cream doughnuts and carrot cake slices for desert.

There had been plenty of effort when it came to shopping, table-setting etc I realised that I had been harbouring an expectation that some actual cooking would have taken place.

(Cooking equals generosity/love? Do other people think along these lines?)

Also no exchange of gifts - other than my bringing bottlle plus cake - as the couple don't 'do' presents.

When the host couple had last come to me it was more of a just passing through visit, but I'd done a home-made soup (from stock I'd done myself) and home-made desserts.

However, I enjoy cooking. Not everyone does.

When my relatives last visited me, they had said they were passing through/stopping by for a coffee for an hour or so on their way somewhere else. I'd made a cake knowing that one out of the couple has a sweet tooth and then made soup etc when it appeared they were happy to stay for more than an hour or so and it was getting on into the evening.

When I visited them I'd been specifically invited for a post-Christmas lunch at which other family members had also been invited. (The full clan in fact,)

These relatives have no children, weren't working over the Christmas period and have a huge modern designer style kitchen, - with two sofas and seating areas round a kitchen island, plus a dining table for 8 - which means you can socialise and chat and/or helpfully chop stuff, set tables etc. Not a small cramped space where two people at most are exiled.

Another thing I realise is that since I married and had stepchildren Christmas has always been a moveable feast. In fact most years we have at least two Christmasses. One with my adult stepchildren plus partner's father - and another on the 25th where it might just be my partner and teenager. I tend to think of the big/most important meal as the one where most people are present, regardless of the actual date.

I can see that for other people the provision of turkey or whatever 25th is a huge and unusual effort and that after that nothing else much in the way of food from scratch is going to happen.

But none of their circumstances are relevant in that they gave you food - it may not have been what you wanted but it was food that they had been out and bought (and probably cost as much if not more than food cooked from scratch)

Personally I think that the fact that they choose to spend time with guests (a lot of people don't like others helping in their kitchen or think it's a bit rude to be breaking off convos to attend to their home made from scratch feast.

Lots of people have two or more Christmases but they don't necessarily expect a huge feast for each one. The fact it was for the whole family means that it makes even more sense that they would opt to spend time socialising instead of pissing about in the kitchen.

I think there are ways of cooking from scratch and spending time with guests. Soups and casseroles are easy to make in advance and just heat up.
(Roast dinners less so because of having to synchronise timings, and do a lot at the last minute.)

Arguably the 'beige food which needs to be warmed up for an exact period of time otherwise it burns/or is still frozen -or a selection of buffet foods which need to be set out on a variety of plates - actually takes more time immediately before or during the time people visit. Though being ready-made that's a less stressful option for people who dislike cooking and/or who are anxious about it.

But just because something is made from scratch doesn't make it taste any more pleasant than the beige party food.

If people want to cook from scratch, great, some people enjoy that. I just think it's a little rude to go to someone's house, eat their food and then moan that it wasn't all made from scratch, but like a PP said, I can see that you have your own issues with food going way back so I totally get why you feel that way.

Has it occurred to you OP that they may not have wanted to spend their time off cooking from scratch?

Just because you'd cook from scratch for guests, does not mean others would or should have to just because it is what you would do.

If I had a guest who complained that I had not made all my food from scratch, that would be the last time they'd be invited.

I dont like being cooked for or cooking for others. I have had food poisoning a couple of times and would not want to risk getting it again or giving it to others.

Of course it can happen with shop bought food but if it does then it feels like no one is to blame.

I would be gutted if I was served soup or stew ever at a get together so that would be a total waste of time

I think the 'issues' I have are more likely to be related to family history. (And Christmas if of course a time when family history is often to the forefront of people's minds.)

Like almost everyone I have preferences when it comes to cooking and eating. People's taste buds vary, so we experience food in very different ways. This thread wouldn't have gone on as it has done if there weren't a range of strongly held views.

I tend to enjoy meals most when there is some new and/or freshly prepared element, but others for one reason or another may prefer ready-made food which is often more of a known quantity.

That's what I meant about you having issues - I know you have posted about your mother's food issues so I understand why this time of year is going to remind you.

But it is only about personal taste - someone serving beige food to you would be like someone serving home made soup or stew to me - I would eat some to be polite but I would hate it. I wouldn't equate it with a lack of love though.

I think you obv have some deep seated issues wrt food and see those who don't put the same emotional value on it as somehow lacking.
How very sad.

I think the 'lack of love' thing is more of an instinctive feeling/gut reaction.

Of course when U take time to step back and rationalise, then the thought that people just operate in very different ways does enter the equation.

But it's interesting, that there are these very strong reactions from others.

'Quiche is lovely.' 'I hate Xmas cake, It's vile and would throw it in the bin.' 'I would be gutted if I was served soup.'

I can see that if you have young children and are the only person who cooks for the family, a day off where you're served any kind of food has much to be said for it!

Oh and food also makes me very happy! Please don't feel sorry for me!!

My situation is more like that of Nigel Slater and his book 'Toast'.

This is one of the reasons I like eating the stuff other people have cooked so much. So, they might for example serve me celeriac - but it's a bit bitter or crunch or something. But then I think, 'Oh I wonder how it would be if I tried this and cooked for a bit longer, and used chicken stock rather than a vegetable one. ' Whereas other people might think, 'What is this vile substance which I wil avoid for ever more.'

It's not just people who cook every day for the family - if you don't have a family to cook for every day and you hate cooking, you won't be knocking up a shed load of home made delights!

So as Badders says, it's really quite sad to equate effort in the kitchen with love.

It really is just someone serving you food you aren't keen on!

Food makes me happy OP but luckily a) I don't equate it with love because that is just plain nuts and b) I love food that comes in Waitrose packages as well as food that has come from a pot as long as it all tastes good.

I find your posts cringey.

How patronising in your above post, to allow people to have a day off from cooking if they have been cooking from scratch the rest of the time! Thank you so much for that.

I don't cook. I don't like cooking. I am bloody busy all year round doing millions of other things including working FT and ferrying kids around blah blah blah and I can assure you my kids don't feel unloved because they all know mum is a crap cook. In fact my cooking fails are family legend.

I still don't understand the 'no exchange of gifts' being a problem.

Surely, it's more a problem if one party gives a gift which the other hadn't anticipated and has nothing to give in return?

Some people equate home cooked food with a lack of thought/care/extravagance though - especially those who remember soup and stew being the go-to meals of a childhood in a cash strapped family where shop-bought foods like quiche would have been a treat/luxury. After all, since soup is basically just random stuff from the bottom of the fridge lobbed in a pan and simmered for a bit (when it comes down to it) is that really any less thoughtful than someone making a special trip to the shops to carefully select items they think you'll enjoy? If you're always knocking out slow cooked meals of your own they may also have thought you might fancy a change

And if you don't eat shop-bought food and go through exactly the same thought process (bet this would be nicer with crisper pastry, or what if I made this but added celery/bacon/sage?) then you really are letting your assumptions turn you into a snob because you're not even bothering to engage with what they're serving you.

Interesting thread.

Love the phrase "self righteous soup"

is that really any less thoughtful than someone making a special trip to the shops to carefully select items they think you'll enjoy?

^^This.

One of DH's favourite lunches consists of bread, olives, cheese, meat, salad, humous. Bloody lovely, and all shop bought. I don't make own cheese or grow my own olives, I'm sorry.

I agree that thought can go into shopping for somebody's favourite foods.

So that if my relative was aware that I - and/or my partner and/or my daughter - was/were very fond of salami and/or Kalamata olives and had remembered and gone to the deli counter, I'd have been very touched by their making the effort.

Probably all this relative know is that we eat more or less everything.

I suspect she got some relatively safe/bland stuff knowing that another relative who was present - who will eats virtually nothing - would probably manage to find something there to put on their plate.

Ahh, so you know perfectly well that the buffet was thought out carefully with someone's tastes in mind. Has it put your nose out of joint that it wasn't your tastes?

Meals with the relative who will eat virtually nothing (no diagnosed allergies or intolerances or medical restrictions) can be a little trying - because of their belief that talking at length about all the things on the table that they can't have and the ways in which they disagree with them is conversation that the entire company will find of great interest

But now that I've - rather belatedly - worked out things were organised especially with this person's needs in mind, it does make rather more sense.

I hadn't known until the last minute that Eat Nothing Relative would be joining us.

Ah.
Lack of understanding for those with medical issues too!
Wow, you are the gift that keeps on giving op :)
My poor mother who is coeliac should just starve I guess.....so thoughtless of her to have an auto immune disease over which she had no control.
Tut tut.
some people!

How do you know it's not a diagnosed condition!?
Are you their dr too!
There are many things I can't eat because they make me ill or give me a migraine.
I'm not coeliac or anything like that, doesn't mean my symptoms aren't real.
You sound just....awful.
Judgemental and unkind.

Eat Nothing Relative is biologically speaking a close one, and extremely communicative about their dealings with doctors. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they have has never once sought medical help for the numerous digestive difficulties she discusses with us all so freely. (Unlike the relative I have with gluten intolerance, and who thoroughly enjoyed every bit of the gluten-free Xmas dinner that my husband and I dished up.)

All family members do their best to provide Eat Nothing Relative with the food that they say they require. Including myself. Though I've been accused a couple of times of poisoning them. 'Cinammon can be fatal' were the words. (Though not on that occasion. They live on.)

Very like my mother.
She put up with terrible pain and gastric issues until she was finally dx in her 60s
It doesn't mean there is nothing wrong with her, however much she irritates you!
You would loathe me, im allergic to cheese, yoghurt and shellfish!
I suppose I could eat them to please (but I have to ask what sort of host would want someone to eat food they dislike....) however, projectile vomiting does rather ruin a party :)