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

[lunabee34]

I have celiac, and this person went about this issue in entirely the wrong way. I suspect that she may be really freaked out about a new diagnosis and not handling that well, which I totally get. Going gluten free is really life-changing and a huge deal and a big pain in the ass until you get the hang of it. She also may have already had bad experiences with people being unwilling to try to work with her diet at all. My paternal extended family is such an ass about gluten free; both my mom and I have celiac, and yet they refuse to even try at all to understand or accommodate in any way, and I can tell you right now that packing your food to eat at Christmas while everybody chows down on some awesome shit is very, very sad. It is so alienating how much you get left out of--the potluck at work, just blithely accepting dinner invitations to people's houses, even going out to eat means you have to choose a restaurant where you can get a gluten free meal. So I suspect that she is still in the anger portion of the grief of being diagnosed with this kind of disease.

What she should have done is tell them that she's diagnosed with this disease, ask them what they're going to make, and then offer some suggestions for ways they could make it okay for her to eat some if not all of what they're having while realizing that she's probably going to have to bring her own food. She could say, "Ooooh, do you mind not putting croutons on the salad and serving it in a glass bowl? I'll bring a dressing I know is gluten free." Etc.

I am so lucky that I have friends who invite me to their houses and serve gluten free meals to me and that when we host they bring gluten free side dishes. I would be lost without them. But I never demanded anything from them; they volunteered and took the effort to do so.