Ask Amy:Hosts struggle turning home to gluten-free zone

[cereta]

Dear Amy: Every year my husband and I host a holiday get-together for several of our friends and neighbors. We provide the main dish, a couple of sides and drinks. We ask friends to fill in with other salads, sides and desserts.

This year, with little notice, my friend "Barb" reached out to me via text, saying, "This year, I will need you to prepare my food differently" -- due to her recent diagnosis of celiac disease.

She explained to me that "even a crumb of cross contamination" will result in her not feeling well. She instructed me to check all of my spices and ingredients, and to thoroughly clean all of my cooking and serving utensils before preparing food for her.

She even provided me a list of online resources I could use to learn more.

Amy, I was shocked speechless -- and my husband was livid.

I responded that I would check ingredients and try my best to accommodate. My husband said that if the disease was so dire, she would need to pack her own plate of food.

He said I should not reach out to our other guests and provide any instruction on Barb's behalf.

I was considering moving mountains for Barb when the final straw came: She asked us to thoroughly clean our grill grates, should there be any gluten left on them from when we last grilled.

Is our friend being ridiculous here, or are we being insensitive to her disease?

How far does a host couple need to go out of their way to accommodate a guest in this situation?
-- Gluten-free Hosts

Dear Hosts: You should not attempt to gauge whether "Barb's" disease is as serious as she indicates. You should simply assume that it is. I agree, however, that she is not communicating about her needs in a way designed to inspire such a Herculean effort on your part. In fact, her requirements seem quite overwhelming and are coming off as demands. She is also attempting to shift responsibility for her health from herself onto you. Don't take it on.

Instead of you communicating her needs to your other guests who are bringing food, you should suggest that she contact them. With such specific requirements, she should not trust anyone else to communicate her exact requirements.

You should assume that your best efforts might not be enough to completely decontaminate your kitchen to Barb's standards, and you should tell her so: "Hi, 'Barb,' I worry that I can't guarantee that all of the food and the kitchen area will be decontaminated the way you might need. It would definitely be safest for you to bring your own food this year. If you feel you also need to bring your own plates, silverware, etc., I assure you we won't be offended. And don't forget to bring a dish to share with the rest of the group. Looking forward!"

Comments

[kaberett]

oh boy. I mean, if anything Barb is underplaying how serious coeliac disease is -- like, exposure to ppm-level concentrations of gluten might not make her obviously, immediately ill but will cumulatively add up to massively increased risks of osteoporosis, cancer, & cardiac trouble, among other things. So the request to clean the grill plates is absolutely proportionate to the severity of the disease, but with my coeliac friends we just accept that I'm actually not going to be converting my entire kitchen to adequately gluten-free, so when I'm hosting I make sure to (i) get them sealed packets of coeliac-friendly food that they 100% get first dibs on, (ii) explain very clearly what I have and haven't done in terms of minimising gluten content of any prepared foods, and (iii) know what the local delivery places that are Coeliac UK-certified are so I can offer to buy them something in.

[kaberett]

like I think Barb could in fact have approached this better ("following this diagnosis I know it's dangerous to both my short-term and long-term health to consume any gluten at all, even in trace quantities. This means I won't be able to eat food prepared by other people unless conditions XYZ are met. How would you prefer to handle this for the upcoming event?") but also given it's a long-standing social engagement I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to assume people will want to continue hosting you...

[cereta]

Yeah, I think a lot of this comes down to wording. If Barb had stated her problem and asked what ideas the LW had to deal with it, I think the LW would have been keener to take reasonable steps. I mean, I honestly don't think I could guarantee that my kitchen was de-glutened no matter how much I cleaned, but I'd certainly be willing to buy some sealed gluten-free food and perhaps even a few utensils that were kept in plastic or washed with a new sponge and kept between new towels. But I'm pretty sure that if spouse were told he had to scour the grill, there would be issues.

[kaberett]

Which is of course a bit miserable given that Barb was plausibly trying to apply the technique of bright-and-breezy not-giving-people-a-chance-to-be-awful, without adjusting appropriately for size of ask...

[conuly]

As I've said up and down the Arcamax thread, I'm pretty sure that Barb is just adjusting to the new diagnosis. Presumably if she was always a huge drama queen, her friend would be expecting this, so my assumption is this is pretty OOC. Well, new diagnoses that are scary and require major lifestyle changes will cause people to get pretty intense for a while. Treat it like a death in the family and give your friend some leeway as she comes to terms with the new normal.

[conuly]

Yeah. Celiac is not something to screw around with.