agonyaunt | It must be nice not to have any serious problems to worry about!

Entry tags:

food,
miss manners

It must be nice not to have any serious problems to worry about!

Dear Miss Manners: I’ve had just about enough of a certain action I see at parties: I feel it’s absolutely rude to decline a piece of the cake. Sorry to all who think “politely declining” is polite. Take a piece of the darn cake and throw it out later if you can’t eat it. If you’re full, dieting, diabetic or even allergic, just graciously accept it and the host will move on happily.

The cake is made with all the guests in mind, and that costs a lot of time and money. And if, like me, there’s no medical reason not to eat it, taste a piece for good luck. What is your professional opinion?

That “No, thank you” is a response that should be respected. Miss Manners suggests you calm down by ending your practice of monitoring what anyone — other than your own child — does or does not eat.

Link

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I mean, Miss Manners is obviously right, but LW is so obviously wrong... it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Does LW think that the host will somehow be less offended if they go to the kitchen after the party and find one or more slices of uneaten cake in the trash?

Also, whether or not the cake is expensive or time-consuming to bake, the thing about cake is that the recipe makes the same amount whether you're baking for one person to eat the whole thing or for sixteen people to each have a slice. The cost for the endeavour is the same no matter what.

Or cake, even!

I'll bet LW was taught, as I was, to Not. Waste. Food. Take what you can eat, but don't fill your plate and leave half uneaten.

LW's suggestion is the very opposite of not wasting food. And, as a cake-baker, I'd a whole lot rather my guest said a polite, "No, thank you." That leaves an extra piece for me tomorrow.

This isn't just wrong, it seems actually kooky! Where did they even get this idea???

And this is why Milton (red stapler guy) in Office Space never got a slice of cake.

So it's somehow better to come across uneaten slices of cakes surreptiously stashed behind the potted plants or the tasteful knick-knacks when you're cleaning up, but not to have them politely declined in the first place? I can't even.

I take a med that causes nausea so WOW this person's empathy is just not extensive, is it? Sometimes cake up close is a REALLY BAD PLAN.

But also, for my own birthday there is a cake that is a giant pain to make and does not make very much but I can nearly always eat and enjoy it. I would be so furious if my loved ones accepted pieces of this cake knowing they didn't want it, for the express purpose of destroying it, thereby making sure I could not have a second piece the next day, when I KNOW this cake will not exist more than once a year, MAYBE twice in a super-special year, due to all the fiddly steps it takes, and only has eight pieces to begin with. "It's only polite to destroy other people's possible pleasure in something if you're sure you're not going to take any pleasure in it yourself" suuuuure is a take.

If I don't want the cake and turn it down, then other people who do want the cake will have a chance for seconds! I don't see the downside here.

To say nothing of the farm workers’, truckers’, mill workers’, grocery workers’, and (unless your cake is vegan) cows’ and chickens’ efforts that were all for nothing if the cake doesn’t go to someone who’ll eat and enjoy it. Has quarantine taught us nothing about the supply chain and the interconnectedness of all things?

It wouldn’t surprise me if “behavior I have witnessed at parties” means that LW insistently shoves their own cake upon people, like it or not—-and no excuses about “I’m diabetic!” or “It’s Passover!”

Maybe the LW likes to give out slices of cake as a sort of gift bag to be taken home? That's a thing somewhere, right? It's the only way I can get "throw it out later" to not mean "discard your slice of cake in my trash can."

I didn't even realize I came from a sub-culture where this is relevant, but apparently, I do!

Basically: take some cake. Not a lot, necessarily, but some. Because you're celebrating with the person, so you have to be *part* of the celebration. Kind've like guest expectations in some other cultures.

The main problem with this is generally, people give out huge slabs of cake and I'm just not into the huge slabs.

And, I mean, I get having sad feelings if you prepare something that people don't particularly like. There was a cookie I used to make at Christmas that turned out not to be a favorite--not because it was done badly but because my family of my adult life are chocolate people and it's a strong Swedish gingerbread. Was it sad, the first year I said, oh, not enough people eat the pepparkakor, I shouldn't make those, they won't get eaten? Yeah, it was sad. Also the correct answers included "don't make the pepparkakor, process my sad feelings myself" or "find people who like pepparkakor, give them the pepparkakor," not "press the pepparkakor insistently upon people who have already established that they don't like them, complain about the manners of others when I am the one trying to force people into something that fulfills neither joy nor necessity."

Hmm, I think if that's the sub-cultural expectation, it's still much kinder to set it up so that there's more than one option. Such as "here is my cake, and also a bowl of strawberries, all this is part of the celebration so that people who are not able to have cake can take a strawberry!" Or "here is my cake, and also an array of beverages including a way to unobtrusively take water so that if you are dealing with nausea nobody will know that your raising of your glass to cheer the birthday person is water!"

Because my godson is never going to be able to take "some" of a cake with gluten, my cousin is never going to be able to take "some" of a cake with chocolate, etc., and if you're telling me that your subculture requires that I need to take "some" in order to be "celebrating with" a person, I'm probably going to just stay home where at least I won't be given the choice of "throw up on the birthday person's shoes or be deemed insufficiently celebratory."

Yet anothe problem solved by believing that No means No.

I was waiting to see how you ties Paradise Lost into this.

Is this a sub-culture where something like "no thanks, this cup of tea is all I want" wouldn't count as celebrating with the person?

I don't think the LW's cake was really "made with all the guests in mind," since they aren't even considering the possible effects of that cake on someone who doesn't want it. A host who thinks "no thank you" and "no thank you, I'm allergic" are rude would probably also think it was rude for a guest to ask about the ingredients, even if it was phrased as "that looks wonderful, but I have to ask, did you use eggs?"

If someone's idea of politeness means that guests would have to choose between wasting food and getting sick, I don't want to be on their guest list. What are the odds that they would look at the untouched slice of cake on someone's plate and pressure them to "at least try some."

I hope that this is a fake letter, because the columnist wanted to make the point that "no thank you" is a fine answer and shouldn't need defending.

Me! I love pepparkakor! (Also, yes, absolutely the way to deal with it. I took mental notes at Thanksgiving this year for what to make next year.)

Yeah, that was my first thought as well. I definitely wouldn't go as far as the LW, but there are situations where taking a piece of the cake is, like, a ritual action that means you accept a place in the group. If it's a small birthday party and the celebrant's partner is handing cake to everyone who sang, you maybe say "just a very small piece!" if you don't like cake, but you don't turn it down unless you literally can't even pick at the icing (and in that case, you grab some other party food you can eat so you're at least eating with everyone.) Part of celebrating with them is signalling that you like them enough to do something you find mildly unpleasant for them.

But even that doesn't apply to all cakes at all parties. If I'm just over at Aunt Mathilde's for Easter I will turn it down.

Surely you're part of the celebration when you show up and say celebratory words to the other person and/or sing a song?

There are some European-descended cultures that still do believe in the old fairy-story idea that accepting food from your host / offering food to your guest means accepting guestright. If you don't offer food to someone visiting or you don't accept a host's offer of food, you are rejecting guestright - you're saying I don't like or trust you enough to be treated as a member of the household, even temporarily. It would clearly look like rejection if you offered cake to all the guests but one; for people who were raised under that ethos, all the guests but one accepting food also seems like a rejection of hospitality.

(Figuring this out suddenly made a bunch of culture-clash stuff that had confused me make a lot more sense.)

I don't think most people would be able to articulate it like that - if they could at all, it would be under cover of the idea of "rudeness" like LW - but even if they can't there's still a definite feeling that if a food gift isn't shared then the person isn't really taking part in the hospitality. And birthday (or wedding or congratulations) cake is still one of those situations where the offering/accepting is formal enough that it super stands out.

So: no. In some cultures, saying celebratory words and singing a song does not mean the same thing as accepting the cake.

I volunteer as tribute! I love pepparkakor, yum.

Also the correct answers included "don't make the pepparkakor, process my sad feelings myself" or "find people who like pepparkakor, give them the pepparkakor," not "press the pepparkakor insistently upon people who have already established that they don't like them, complain about the manners of others when I am the one trying to force people into something that fulfills neither joy nor necessity."

Consider yet another option: you might post your pepparkakor recipe, to give interested parties far and wide an opportunity to enjoy it.

(And I’m imagining possible fannish contexts: Papa Daaé preparing a batch for a homesick Christine, or Pippi Longstocking throwing a pepparkakor party for her friends in Villa Villekula, or Peppermint Patty sampling it at José Peterson’s house.)

Is your cake proper Black Forest cake (by “proper” I mean “saturated with kirschwasser, torted exceedingly thin, and loaded with sour cherries, not the just-a-regular-chocolate-cake-with-cherries that grocery stores call Black Forest cake”) by any chance? I only make that once annually because it requires two days of effort, but I do usually make it for someone’s birthday because they love it.

It absolutely is not in any way! It is a hazelnut cake that involves toasting, skinning, and grinding the hazelnuts, and I have tried it with predone hazelnut flour and it is much worse that way.

Oh, you mean like this? (Make them with butter, not margarine, I wrote that recipe when we had no money.)

Exactly. If the hosts are incapable of prioritizing people’s medical needs over their cultural expectations that everyone should eat, then that’s not someone I’d want to spend time with. Like, I’m from a European culture that’s based around “food is love” and I will happily stuff people with food until they burst if that’s what they want, but I’d never force food on anyone for any reason.

I’m not even into hazelnuts but your description got me intrigued. Not that I NEED any more multi-day recipes. 😂

Cool cool that only medical reasons suffice not to force yourself to "taste a piece for good luck". You're vegan, you keep strict kosher, the cake contains not-cooked-off alcohol and you're observant-Muslim or sober? Fuck you, apparently. Sacrifice your principles or be shunned, shunned! The only acceptable moral principle in all the world is You Take The Piece Of Cake!

What a crock.

(I have never in my life heard of "consume this food forced upon you in order for ... someone ... to acquire luck". What a bizarre superstition to foist upon people just trying to exist around this LW.)

And who honestly believes that throwing the uneaten piece away won't also get you roundly criticized or mocked by such "charming" party monitors as the LW? I sure don't buy it. They'll just merrily move the goalposts until everyone they encounter is choking down a piece.

https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/03/hazelnut-brown-butter-cake/

Hazelnuts, and fresh-ground into the bargain!…I absolutely get it! Those are the active ingredient in an exotic (by the standards of Dayton, Ohio) delicacy of my youth that’s become elusive, possibly because of the product’s perishability.

Moritz Ice Cubes, manufactured in Germany, are smooth unctuous foil-wrapped blocks of blended cocoa, coconut oil, and hazel butter, managing to be at once richly decadent and childishly sticky (and as fragile as the name suggests; the melting point is well below body temperature. At least one distributor requests that you not order them when daytime temperatures in your area are over 70F/21C degrees, lest they melt in transit.)

I firmly believe more things in the US should be made with hazelnut. The amount that I want to go around eating hazelnut things when I visit my cousins in Sweden baffles them a bit, because...hazelnuts, of course, yes? obviously?

But at-will hazelnuts, not command hazelnuts. :)

At least we benighted Yanks have given Nutella its citizenship papers.

Dang, that looks delightful!

This idea could be really easily famed for shenanigans. If Everyone has to eat the cake and one person is allergic to peanuts…

Oh there's Celtic myths where they use that expectation to make people eat something that will activate a death curse!

I mean originally it was probably more a feature than a bug: If you go to Thorbjorn Thorlaksson's farm the week before Winternights and all he offers is skýr and you're lactose intolerant, then you politely say no thanks and you go somewhere else because now you know that is probably not a good place for you to guest for the winter. But it gets more complicated obviously once other obligations get mixed in.

Argh, plotbunny!

I cannot count the number of times I have attended gatherings-with-food and watched people eat because there was nothing for me. And I'm fine with that as long as I know in advance to plan to eat before/after. (Kosher folks can be hard to feed, depending on the type of gathering). So I guess I'm glad I'm not in your subgroup, or I'd feel extra bad (but still turn down the food I can't eat).

It's not like there's no allowance for that? Like if you know someone's coming who can't eat the cake, and you want to make sure they feel included, you figure out an alternative, which may or may not involve food, and everyone's fine with it. (Also, it's not required that you eat the cake! Only take a piece when offered. The symbol is more important than the waste.)

It only comes off wrong if you were *expecting* them to take some cake, and they turn down the cake, especially if they can't give you a good reason why they won't just take a piece of the cake and turn down all your alternate suggestions.

And, look, if someone says "she wouldn't take my food and she wouldn't explain why, she must not trust me" they're probably not *wrong* about the trust issues? Like the distrust may be *justified* - I don't want to explain my health issues to LW either, or accept guest right from her for that matter!! - but it has been successfully communicated.

ETA: I'll also add that it's not an issue with not taking food if you come into the party and say "My nausea's acting up again, you know how it is, so I'm going to have to stay away from the food tables even though it looks lovely". If that's a problem it's a problem with the host not knowing how to host, not with the guest. The culture-clash problems come up when the guest says "No thanks, I'm not fond of cake" and they think it means "I don't want to waste your nice cake" and the host thinks it means "Thou hast neither the wealth nor the honor to take my family into thy care, and I accept no debt from thee, nor even swear to refrain from violence within thy household".)

Edited 2023-12-06 14:54 (UTC)

I volunteer to help you with any excess pepparkakor problems you might have!

Local humanitarian solves crisis! :)

Oh there's Celtic myths where they use that expectation to make people eat something that will activate a death curse!

I was hoping someone would bring up Cuchulain, and how he got plotherded on the eve of battle into the crosshairs between two fatal geasa: never refuse an offer of food, and never eat dog meat.)

And proffered food has also historically been used as a litmus test: you’re not one of those icky Others with their superstitious taboos against this delicious food that everyone likes, riiight? (Which is why medieval and Renaissance Christian authorities would check up on Jews baptized into Christianity—-willingly or otherwise—-to make sure they were eating their pork, as a measure of their sincerity.)

The whole subject is so fraught, and so fundamental to religious and cultural identity, that a lot of Jews and Muslims won’t even eat plant-based mock pork: https://archive.ph/mEmew

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

It must be nice not to have any serious problems to worry about!

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

E

Re: E

Re: E

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject