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?

Very rude - I would never host someone without offering hospitality, least of all a pregnant woman! Odd people. (And I speak as a Nordic person so Scandinavian-adjacent 😁)

I’d assume as adults they were capable of not turning up starving expecting to be fed in the couple of hours they were with me mid afternoon. It’s not children. These are grown ups. And brining a gift to a house warming is fairly normal.

no I’d not sit and think gosh they aren’t capable of feeding themselves so I need to feed them lunch and dinner in the two hours they are here. I’d assume they’d eaten before getting to me, and would eat after they left, not they were so ravenous between the hours of 2 and 4 they had to steal food and would be too scared to go for dinner.

I think your hosts were thoughtless and rude, maybe forgetting how long the journey was. I also think you should have asked - maybe if they had any crackers or biscuits and blamed the pregnancy nausea. Or suggested going out for a meal?

Equally weird you wouldn’t go to the local pubs afterwards! If they’d seen you hungry like that maybe they would have apologized.

The whole “snacks” thing gets right on my tits.

Exactly. What about fruit, salad vegetables and hummus, sandwiches, toast, peanut butter, marmite, soup, oat bars, cheese, crackers, eggs, yogurt, crisps? There is food beyond biscuits and cake, which posters were only suggesting anyway as an easy option that anyone can buy in a shop.

The foods listed above are suggested on a lot of MN food threads. They are normal.

The misuse of ‘starving’ on this thread for attempted comedic or dramatic effect is arguably quite distasteful.

In my house if you were there for two hours you aren’t getting fed proactively. But I also have a very open ‘help yourself policy’ - people don’t literally help themselves but they know that if they want anything I’ll get them it.

Some of my friends and my son’s friends don’t even ask or wait to be offered drinks now, they just go help themselves, as I have told them to do many times 🤷‍♀️

I take it you don’t get many return guests!

Most people don’t visit for free food. She will get repeat visits as they enjoy her company. Not as they come for snacks. Most grown ups don’t need that mid afternoon.

I was not implying this needs to be matched, but the plant alone was over 15, chocolates 10-15 and the wine around 15 too. So more like around £45-50 for the gift.
But then again, I just wouldn't think of showing up at someone's door for the housewarming visit and spending an afternoon empty handed.
I also don't expect the hosts to use what we brought to share with us - clearly there was no such intention (being pregnant I don't drink wine and my dh was driving).
I think a lot of people have put this down to a missunderstanding - there was really no missundertanding about the visit - they insisted we come over for s housewarming and spend the afternoon.
Again - I would have wrote exactly the same post if I was not pregnant (or hungry) because it is about hosting concept clearly differring between us and the hosts. I just mentioned the pregnancy because it amplified the effect (on me personally).

Obviously the hosting was very poor form but…. I don’t understand the mentality of not being able to go to the local pub afterwards for dinner, in case the hosts turned up there too?

Why would that be an issue?

Wouldn’t you just say, “oh hi X&Y, fancy seeing you here. We’ve just ordered some food. Would you like to join our table?”

I think it's rude to offer zilch regardless, but am curious to know what time of day you arrived and what time you departed. I know on the continent, for example, people don't eat between lunch time and dinner time.

You were there 2 hours, it's not that long really. They assumed you had lunch and were going to eat dinner that night. I don't think it's a huge deal. They likely had no idea you were so hungry. If they were friends I don't see the issue in just saying "I'm feeling sick sorry to trouble you but do you mind if I grab a biscuit/cracker". The fact you stole one is even weirder than them not giving you food whilst you were there 2 hours. and even weirder you didn't wan to go to a local pub in case you saw them later.

This is all very strange. I'm confused by the timings here. You say you were there for 2 hours, after driving two hours after having an early lunch. So were you there from 2pm-4pm? I think that's a weird time to arrange for a visit. Was there no discussion of getting together over a mealtime, whether that was in their home or at a restaurant?

Personally I would never eat between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, even when I was pregnant. If I was pregnant though, I would eat a substantial lunch especially if I wasn't sure where my next meal was coming from. Why did you have such a light lunch? Even if I had had a light early lunch I still wouldn't have been so desperately hungry by 4pm that I had to steal food! I may have felt a little peckish and I'm sure I would be looking forward to my dinner.

I seriously don't know whether I would offer food to afternoon guests, because I have never had guests visit at that time of day. I am in America and as others have said, it's not a given to offer cake or biscuits with tea or coffee. If this was a long planned and anticipated visit, I would probably plan to serve some sort of snack, but I have no idea what that would be. If you were visiting me at those hours, and we hadn't discussed lunch or dinner plans, I would assume you'd eaten lunch beforehand (perhaps en route) and would be planning to eat dinner afterwards (perhaps in the local area while you were there, although I would think that unlikely given how early it was).

I have been pregnant but would never think that a pregnant woman would be desperate to eat anything between the hours of 2pm and 4pm. I would assume she could take care of her needs at other times.

I have never visited a Spanish home where I wasn’t fed to the point of insistence - and I have been lucky enough to visit many. I used to be a slip of a girl and the matriarchs would always say I was too thin and needed to eat up! To refuse food would have been considered rude in these generous homes.
My parents’ boomer generation always always had nuts and crisps with dip etc out for guests if it wasn’t a meal time.
Im aware that food costs more these days…… but come on. A nice little cream tea spread won’t break the bank and lets your guests know you appreciate them.

You were hungry because you didn't eat enough lunch and then didn't eat your car snacks on the way either. Most people don't need to eat every 2-3 hours, it wouldn't necessarily occur to me that you would. But you know you do and it's your responsibility. If you know you will be struggling so much after 2 hours unless offered food then you should eat better before going in.

You say you aren't going back - are you going to drop these friends because they didn't give you busicuits? You'd rather steal food and drop the friends than say "can I have some of these crackers, I didn't eat enough at lunch?"

I would say you shouldn't expect food when visiting someone, and should have planned for the scenario that it wouldn't be offered and take snacks with you, I get the nausea when hungry I had the same but I would have taken something with me.

You could have taken a couple of cakes with you to have with tea as a house warming type thing?

Personally if I was the host I would have at least offered biscuits or cake with the tea given your travel time even if it wasn't a meal but I don't like to think of anyone going hungry in my house.

This. OP sounds deeply anxious. Even if they were rude not offering anything, OP is the one who comes off as strange in this situation for me.

I am from Yorkshire and my parents instilled it into me that as a guest, asking anyone for food is extremely rude. I guess there are micro-cultures within any given culture, rather than it being a 'norm' for all of the region(s).

I definitely wouldn't have asked in OP's situation for that reason plus it would have made me feel very awkward, if someone wants to provide food, they do, so effectively asking someone for food would seem extremely cheeky.

I think I would have taken the opportunity to go to the pub though. It would've crossed my mind to mention it in front of the hosts 'Anyway we'd best be getting off, where's good to eat around here please?'

I have dodgy blood sugar and although I can go a long time without food normally, now and again I all of a sudden feel nauseous and faint if I go too long so I do carry snacks in certain situations, but I don't know if I would have for a housewarming visit. At the very least I'd have expected some crisps/nuts to have been put out.

Think your reaction does sound a bit OTT. You hadn't arranged to meet for lunch or dinner - it sounds more of a drop-in situation. Yes, you had to travel a bit, but you could have stocked up on a few snacks. I don't know if Americans or Scandinavians are different to Brits, but as one poster put it - producing a cake is something I'd expect grandparents to do - not so much my generation. They could have upped their game a bit, yes, but this wouldn't worry me much.

it's not a social event, some of us are actually trying to get stuff done? 😂

and we also seem to survive without a biscuit for one hour.
You'd expect adult to be able to bring their own coffee, unless you have outsiders or clients.

Even when there's no meeting, people going on their permanent "tea round" are one of the most infuriating things in an office. Sit down, do some work or go to a coffee shop downstairs, stop faffing!

You actually counted the cost of the gifts? Did they want wine, chocolates and a plant?

Well you know in future to be more prepared I guess. Cutting off your nose to spite your face by not going to the pub was quite immature though. They hadn’t given you a meal so they wouldn’t have been offended.

Hopefully you will know to keep something in your bag to eat so you don’t have to steal food and eat in the toilet

I think a biscuit with a cup of tea is normal. I wouldn't have cake in unless I bought it specially. The only way I would defend the hosts is if they had a late lunch and maybe thought their guests ate en route. Or perhaps they were planning a sumptuous afternoon tea at 4.15pm but OP and partner announced they "had better get away because the traffic is so bad", at 4.00pm.

Generally, I might only offer tea/coffee if someone had popped in at this sort of time. But the sort of visitor i'd have popping in would be someone picking something up as they were passing or similar.

I'd never invite someone who had to do a 4 hour round trip for a couple of hours in the afternoon in the first place or accept an invitation like that.

That's the strange bit to me.

So a total of about 6 hours giving to visiting the flat (being invited) there and back and staying, all the effort that it involves and the expense of the petrol, wine, chocolates - and you still think offering a biscuit is too much bother for the lazy-arsed couple who just about made a cup of tea?

Of course they are responsible for their own needs - but basic manners and care for so called friends, especially a pregnant one, is the least one should expect.