The gender politics of food

[JellySlice]

A thread about the gender politics of chicken for dinner reminded me of a colleague who was organising a series of large business dinners hosted by our MD. My colleague would always order lamb for the men and chicken for the women. She was distraught one day when a male guest had to drop out at the last minute and sent his female colleague instead. My colleague genuinely believed that it was rude to serve men chicken, and that no woman would willingly eat lamb because it was too rich and heavy.

Is or was this kind of belief common? Man's food and woman's food?

[ErrolTheDragon]

If someone taking 4 roast potatoes means someone else goes without you need to make more potatoes! 4 is a perfectly normal number to eat.

I think that poster said it was a family meal for 20. Given the limited size of domestic ovens, surely it's normal in that case to only be able to do one or two roasties per person and then do some boiled or mash for those that want more.

[DidoLamenting]

@NiceGerbil

Ah I don't do stuff like veg lasagne at the group things we do. There's no specific 'main' really just a load of hopefully nice food!

Agree you need to assume everyone will want halloumi not just the veggies! It's too nice. Also everyone will plough through hummus and whatever is being dunked in it

I am a vegetarian (sort of) - halloumi is disgusting. Any meater can have my share of anything halloumi related.

[DidoLamenting]

meat eater

[BlingLoving]

@nicegerbil BBC good food parrot and sesame burgers. Go down a STORM but are a bit of a faff to make.

[BlingLoving]

Mmm. Weird auto correct there!! Carrot not parrot!!

[ErrolTheDragon]

@DidoLamenting

meat eater

I rather liked your accidental coinage 'meater'.

[ErrolTheDragon]

@BlingLoving

Mmm. Weird auto correct there!! Carrot not parrot!!

Yeah, a burger made of talking bird definitely wouldn't be veggie.

[DidoLamenting]

@BlingLoving

Mmm. Weird auto correct there!! Carrot not parrot!!

Autocucumber really is an evil genius.

[Thneedville]

As a veggie I always make sure I am near the front of a buffet queue, and in an office meeting I’m quick to unwrap the veggie sandwich plate!

If I don’t get my lunch I can feel faint and dizzy and anxious. Not a problem at home when I know there is food nearby, but at a work conference I might not have eaten since 6am. Is that just me?

The only male I know who is like that, actually worse, is a BIL who gets twitchy if he doesn’t eat lunch at 12 and tea at 6.

Oh and talking of airline food (seeing as the scope of this thread has expanded beyond the original remit!) - on our last trip there was only meat option and the lowest-common-denominator option of no meat, no dairy, no nuts, gluten free, no eggs, no anything. On a 17 hour flight my two pescatarian DC were not impressed with their chickpea meals.

[TheFormerPorpentinaScamander]

@ErrolTheDragon good point. I didnt think of that. The only person I know who regularly caters for 20 is my step mum. She only has a normal sized oven so fuck knows how she manages. There's probably 20 roasties each at Christmas. I think it's her super power!

[Thneedville]

@MadamBatty

To answer the question am I more senior than male graduate....I am his bosses, bosses, boss!!

I went into the office as a person was ill & to ensure that the grass got their equipment & all access for signing on from home.

I ordered sandwiches as there’s nothing open within a mile radius.

He knew I now had nothing to eat but didn’t care.

Just wow then!

I’m not surprised, I’ve had many many years experience of arrogant entitled newly graduated trainees, mostly men. Sadly they tend to do very well, the other arrogant entitled male bosses seeing themselves reflected, and mistaking noise and opinion for competence.

(I’m not bitter oooo nooo)

[ErrolTheDragon]

I’m not surprised, I’ve had many many years experience of arrogant entitled newly graduated trainees, mostly men. Sadly they tend to do very well, the other arrogant entitled male bosses seeing themselves reflected, and mistaking noise and opinion for competence.

Cant you get them on 'team player' ?

[WinterAndRoughWeather]

The idea that men “need” the meat is an incredible trick played by the patriarchy, given that biologically it’s literally the opposite. Pre-menopausal women need twice the iron that men do. I’ve started taking a supplement as I totted up how much iron I was getting (even as an omnivore) and it wasn’t close to enough.

As for straws, the prevalence of them these days is so annoying - partly the environmental cost, but also they’re so infantilising. Same goes for drinking coffee out of awful takeaway (or even reusable) sippy cups. I’ll have a proper cup thanks, and drink my G&T straight from the glass, not suck it through plastic.

[ErrolTheDragon]

When I was a child, we sometimes used to go to a cafe. DM would often have steak or scampi (the best things on the menu); DF would usually have egg and chips.^ She'd try to persuade him to have something else but^ he always said he liked it. In retrospect it may have been that he didn't want to spend too much yet wanted her to have a nice meal she hadn't cooked.

He was a lovely man. I didn't realise that they were perhaps rather unusually egalitarian for the time (1960s).

[ErrolTheDragon]

(I seem to have got some random italics in there)

[Goosefoot]

@Stripesgalore

Here is the post in its entirety. I don’t know why this is confusing. I also don’t know how, given that there were only 20 people at this buffet, they couldn’t have made sure there was a choice left for the person who had cooked the meal.

‘Friends were married in a lovely old house in the country. More than 20 of us stayed over and on the second day one of the guests (she's a professional chef) made dinner for everyone aided by me and a couple of other women.

We were about 50-50 vegetarian and meat-eaters and everyone had been polled and asked what they would eat.The majority of the vegetarians were women. When we laid out the serving dishes on the buffet table the vegetarian dishes were separate and clearly labelled.

I was one of the last out of the kitchen and by the time I got to the food all the veggie dishes had long gone. All the meat-eating men had filled their plates with everything on the table, including the veggie food. Four of us women sat and eate bread and salad because the men had eaten our meals. There was a lot of meat left over. Most of the men were unrepentantly 'Oh, we didn't realise.'

The whole thing was steeped in sexist entitlement. The vegetarian women got short measures and then tried to share their meagre dinners with those of us who'd been left out. Women did the cooking, serving and cleaning up afterwards and it was the women who went without because the men were thoughtless and greedy. I was so angry.’

The problem was it was put out as a buffet. You can't do that and expect that people will not treat it as a buffet. If you want to reserve certain plates for certain people you would have to label the - not as vegetarian, but "only people who have asked for vegetarian food can eat these". The whole point of a buffet is that you choose what you want from what is laid out.

I instances like this where there is not enough for people to just choose from what's on the table it's usually better to plate the food.

[tearinyourhand]

@TheFormerPorpentinaScamander

If someone taking 4 roast potatoes means someone else goes without you need to make more potatoes! 4 is a perfectly normal number to eat.
The trouble with a buffet and a large number of people is its harder to work out how much is 'your portion'.

I was the poster who mentioned that.

There were always loads of other potatoes, the roast potatoes were just an extra really. It was just home cooking, the oven was filled to capacity as it was with turkey, ham, stuffing etc. (And I've just totted up that when my parents, all my siblings and all the grandchildren were there for Christmas it was actually 14 adults and 11 children). No one was going hungry, my mum was very generous with the catering. Tbh even if there had only been one each the point isn't about how many roast potatoes anyone wants to eat, but about looking round the table and thinking 'I'll have loads and someone else can have none'. And he did it with everything. Biscuits, roast potatoes, meat, birthday cake; if there was a limited amount, he thought nothing of taking double and expecting someone else to go without. It wasn't like being at a catered event where you have no idea how much there is to go round. This was a family meal where it was clear how much food there was and how many people were eating it.

[NiceGerbil]

'If I don’t get my lunch I can feel faint and dizzy and anxious. Not a problem at home when I know there is food nearby, but at a work conference I might not have eaten since 6am. Is that just me?'

Totally normal. Going from 6am to probably 6 or later at a conference is 12 hours without food.

[NiceGerbil]

Ah yes.

So it's about getting in quick and piling on the best stuff you know will go fast.

Yep selfish.

[RomComPhooey]

Great thread! You see this all the time.

Local curry house. DH and I both order a big bottle of Kingfisher or Cobra each. They always bring him a pint glass and me a half pint glass, even when I ask for a pint glass when I’m ordering.

My grandmother always used to serve DH larger portions than she did for me. She would then offer him seconds. I said once: “I’d like seconds, especially because I started with a smaller serving.” Her reply: “Do you think you should?” Yet half an hour after dinner she was pushing her homemade biscuits Mrs Doyle-style “Go on, go on...” and getting offended because I said no. Yes, she had a lot of issues around food.

We went to a wedding in the 90s that I’m still scarred by. The stories of greedy bastards taking giant helpings and going back for seconds before some tables had even had a first pass and leaving the less favoured tables with nothing have reawakened the trauma. It was in the arse end of nowhere, so no hope of a delivered takeaway or chippy run. We left the reception at 9pm, bought crisps from the bar and went to bed early.

DH is a fish/salad person and I like red meat. We always have to swap our plates.

[NiceGerbil]

'Local curry house. DH and I both order a big bottle of Kingfisher or Cobra each. They always bring him a pint glass and me a half pint glass, even when I ask for a pint glass when I’m ordering'

Yes! Not our local ones but recently when we went away. Who the hell drinks a big bottle of cobra using a thimble?!

[NiceGerbil]

RomCom re limiting proper food and then breaking out the biscuits.

The women at one of my jobs when I was young did that. We had a really good subsidised canteen. I'd get a roast dinner or whatever and they would question me closely over was I going to eat dinner as well etc. Then at 3 they'd all start woofing down biscuits and were quite affronted that I never wanted one. Unsurprisingly as A. Not hungry as had a proper lunch and b. Don't like biscuits. They were baffled and put out by the whole thing.

[caughtalightsneeze]

I remember similar at school. I actually remember us sitting around the table seeing who would break first and take a bite of their lunch. That was usually me. Although sometimes I felt obliged to go along with everyone else and announce that my lunch looked disgusting/I wasn't hungry and throw the whole lot in the bin. 8 of us around a table going over the same thing day and daily for years (we had set seats to sit in, so couldn't even find friends with healthier attitudes towards food to sit with). Anyone who ate lunch was labeled greedy.

Yet weirdly the same girls didn't see eating chocolate at breaktime as greedy. It was only real food that was greedy.

We're all middle aged now and I have some of these girls on Facebook. Most seemed to grow out of it once the peer pressure subsided but one has a Facebook feed that makes me think she has never left it behind. Lots of filtered photos of artfully arranged plates of vegan food with about two mouthfuls eaten and the cutlery crossed to indicate that she couldn't eat a bite more. #vegan #stuffed #coukdnteatanotherbite etc etc. I feel desperately sad for her that she has almost certainly been hungry for over 30 years now. (She always complained of hunger at school and how it was mind over matter).

[caughtalightsneeze]

We're all middle aged now and I have some of these girls on Facebook Women now obviously! Was only referring to them as girls because we were girls when our lives we're so tightly entwined.

[DrDavidBanner]

@MadamBatty

To answer the question am I more senior than male graduate....I am his bosses, bosses, boss!!

I went into the office as a person was ill & to ensure that the grass got their equipment & all access for signing on from home.

I ordered sandwiches as there’s nothing open within a mile radius.

He knew I now had nothing to eat but didn’t care.

Oh I would have been strongly tempted to go Pretty Woman on him "Big mistake....huge" and let him know education continues long after uni