PET PEEVES Dinner at Friends or Restaurant!

[Cook In Southwest]

Isn't it simply wonderful when you get to enjoy a meal as grand as that? I guess we would all like to be able to cook like that at home, but we don't have a staff to help us, so food at home is simple by comparison.

Just last year I started making my own beef stock for the holiday meals, and what a difference that made to the recipes it found a place in! The stock took pretty much a whole day to make - first baking then simmering overnight then cooling and removing the fat. What busy cook today has that kind of time?

Then there is all the training that a pro has. Even if you read every cookbook published you would still be lacking compared to the pros who have both talent and training. Ah. . . talent - there it is the "secret ingredient."

It does give us a goal to strive for, however.

[Zurie]

Wonderful, that you made your own stock. And yes, such a difference from the imitation stuff we buy. I try to make fish and seafood stock after I'd filleted a fish, or peeled shrimps. But sometimes I'm too lazy.

Yes, such great meals fire us up: how to get my sauce or dressing to taste like that??? How to do this-or-that so perfectly?

Absolutely: we home cooks would need a Cordon Bleu diploma, and abve all -- kitchen staff!!! A sous chef at least!

(And we're hopelessly off-topic and it's all my fault!!)

[I'mPat]

Just had a talk with my girlfriend and she is rightly peeved off, her DH invited work colleagues over for dinner and well as she does do she contacted the wives to make sure there was no dietary issues or was there anything they really really hated and what did they really really like but in each case they told here anything would be fine - now she is a very good cook who has a home economics diploma and what happens when the guests turns up one declares her husband is celiac and turns up with a an extra guest totally unannounced who is vegan. She was not happy to say the least and I would have quite happily have strangled the women for her total inconsideration, she certainly had good reason to be totally peeved


Pat

[Ann Marie F]

Marie Nixon wrote:
,,, also think it is impolite to remove one person's plate while others are still eating.

I totally agree. I hate when that happens. If I'm the one still eating, I usually stop and let them take my plate because it's uncomfortable to be the only one eating. And it's annoying when they whisk my plate away the second I put the last bite in my mouth, I'm still holding the fork and others are still eating. Sometimes I say "please wait until we are all finished before you clear the table", but usually they're gone with the plate before I have a chance to say anything. So to prevent that I stop eating with some food still on the plate, but that doesn't work either. If they see I'm not currently chewing, even if my knife & fork aren't in the "I'm finished" position on the plate, they say "are you finished" while at the same time reaching their hand in front of me for the plate. I have to stop them and say no I'm not.

Also if I have wine or an alcoholic beverage, they want to take the glass away and ask if I want another before I've finished it.

Eating at the house of friends? No complaints - ever. I'm just happy that they like me enough to invite me.