To expect a snack when visiting someone's home for a few hours?

[Playdoughy]

Context matters clearly, so I will give some background.
We've been invited to friends' place who live outside of London (90mins car ride) and we agreed to come by over the weekend for a few hours in the early afternoon. The invite was not for an overnight stay but more of a housewarming situation - as in come and see how the place looks like (not for a group of people but just us visiting). They have been living in the flat for 5 months now, I am pregnant so couldn't take a trip during first semester due to sickness - now more up for it.
Anyway we had an early light lunch (luckily) and took off today to arrive after almost a 2 hour drive due to traffic. We had a lovely time chatting and stayed for around 2 hours (I literally had to leave and gave signal to my husband as I was starving to the point of being nauseous).
We got offered a tea upon arrival (drink, not a meal - to avoid any confusion) so I had a cup of tea -no biscuits involved.
I have to admit that on my way to the loo I literally stole a couple of crackers from an open bag sitting on a sideboard near the kitchen and I ate that in the bathroom (yeah...).
After we said goodbyes and went into the car my husband started googling for any nearby pub to have dinner - I advocated against in case they go out later, it would be super awkward if we stumbled upon them. So we grabbed some snacks in an off licence for the car and were on our way.
I mean surely as a host you have some concept of your guests travelling to see you and need to travel back - for us this would be almost 6 hours without a meal and I am pregnant.
I just don't get it. Even a box of digestives would have helped.
Maybe it's a cultural difference thingy, she is american he is scandinavian. Anyway aibu?

But did OP provide biscuits as a gift to the hosts. As apparently that is one of the rules too

If I was invited for dinner or lunch then I’d expect food but not for an afternoon visit

if I felt queasy with pregnancy I’d just ask

northem but British here

Exactly, there are no hard and fast hosting rules even if MN thinks there is.

In my social circle we would not take a bottle of wine or flowers etc if invited for a meal. It’s not a social faux pas, because it’s just not something anyone does.

Wouldn’t you just make sure you had eaten enough before going?

A bit unusual yes but not totally unreasonable.

Being pregnant you have the perfect excuse to just ask - “I’m starting to feel a bit nauseous, don’t suppose you have anything I can eat - just a biscuit or piece of toast or something”.

Uninvited people get offered tea and biscuits.
Invited people get a selection of snacks too.

For someone driving a couple of hours to see a new home? Of course you offer food.

I would ask them beforehand what their lunch plans were. Even knowing they had eaten lunch before, I would offer food and drink. Always! It is part of being a good host and looking after your guests.

No assumptions made. An offer of food and drink is showing appreciation and care.

That's actually not always how pregnancy nausea works.

Personally I’d have offered a specially made Victoria sponge - since it’d be a great excuse for making one and (dh and I) finishing up what the guests left. I only ever make one for guests or dh and I would be making 🐷🐷of ourselves too often.

In my social circle we would not take a bottle of wine or flowers etc if invited for a meal. It’s not a social faux pas, because it’s just not something anyone does.

In my social circle it would be quite the faux pas not to take wine and flowers.

Just to reiterate - I tend not to snack between meals however, if I have invited someone round for tea/coffee I would have cake or biscuits or both in even though I don't generally have them in the house as a rule.

On the one hand, you were there for two hours between mealtimes, so technically no need for food and some people don’t snack between meals. However, given the distance/travel time, I think the invitation was ill thought out. They should have invited you for lunch if a 90 minute drive was involved. As they didn’t, they were thoughtless and inhospitable not to have considered it’s a funny time, what should we offer them. They are socially inept and have no manners. You don’t ask someone to travel 90 minutes to visit and then fail to make them properly welcome.

Anyone coming over my threshold is offered food & drink, especially if they've travelled & are pregnant. Its just being a good host.

Ah, you're breaking the cardinal MN rule of being as miserly and orthorexic as possible. No wonder we have an obesity crisis.

its a bit odd they didn't offer you something however, 4 hours is pretty standard between meals - are you very overweight?

😂

How can you eat properly when you’re already driving 2 hours? So you drive 2 hours to see someone, 2-3 hours visit, 2 hours home again?
Leave at 11, back home by 6 and you still have to start dinner then.
It’s just rude to not consider how far someone is travelling to you.

I think this depends on the guests and hosts and how close they are.

It’s rare for example that i have meals with people i don’t already know very well. No one expects or receives gifts every time we are over.

Also I would offer because:

• someone who doesn't want anything can easily say no, I won't press them to accept
• no one should have to ask for food as a guest.

Have you found these friends in the past to be poor hosts OP?

Is it a habitual thing?

Or were they perhaps just distracted for some reason on this occasion?

I think the opposite, @FoldItIn — the posters shrieking about it being unconscionable not to offer food to a visitor are like the posters who dash around cleaning like mad ahead of visits or who post on here about providing ‘guest baskets’ for overnight visitors, and are almost certainly the people who don’t have many visitors because ‘hosting’ is such a huge deal to them.

I have lots of people visiting. I would probably have baked, as we don’t ordinarily have biscuits or cakes in the house, but not if other things got in the way, and it wouldn’t cost me a second thought if someone I visited for a couple of hours only offered drinks.

In my experience, normally considerate guests recognise that what you might eat during an early afternoon visit isn’t something most people are likely to have to hand, and bring something appropriate with them unless specifically told otherwise.

For a 2 hour visit, I don’t think food is a given. It would have been nice to have had snacks but I’d assume she just didn’t realise. No one’s perfect all the time and hosting doesn’t always come instinctively to everyone.

I'd have expected cake/biscuits for a mid-morning or mid-afternoon visit that wasn't around a meal-time.

But I can see how others who don't snack may have not felt hungry (if it was say 2-4pm) and it not occurred to them to offer food. If they're not used to hosting.

My stomach tends to speak for me in those situations though and would have started rumbling (not usually I can go 2-4 hours without eating! But if I were pregnant or had missed a meal).

In your shoes I would totally have used the pregnancy and asked for something to snack on - or given you had snacks in the car said you needed to grab them.

Had you been to their previous place? How were they as hosts then?

If someone has travelled over an hour to visit, not offering a biscuit or cake or something is really wierd in my view...

I don’t understand how people cope at work if they can’t go 4 hours without a snack.

No one has breaks more than every 4 hours, so you must be able to cope.

When doing a day shift I eat breakfast at 5:30am and then commute to work and then have only water until lunchtime where I eat my lunch and make a coffee.
Then I have my dinner after 6:30 once I’m home.
Its a good 6 hours before eating and even longer if I go shopping on the way home etc.

We wouldn’t have the chance/be allowed to eat during our actual job, which I assume is like most jobs.

Typical bitchy comments on this thread. Of course you should have been offered at the very least a biscuit or slice of cake. Very rude behaviour OP.