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um what
[AAM comments from 2022 linked to this, and I am baffled at the answer]
Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. For this week’s Thanksgiving edition Dan Kois, a Slate writer and editor, will be filling in as Prudie. [link]
Dear Prudence,
My partner and I celebrate Thanksgiving with their family. Their aunt and uncle host and cook the meal, which they love to do. The issue is that their aunt and uncle are not clean. They pet their dog while cooking and don’t wash their hands. They drop food on the floor and put it back without telling anyone. They cough on the food. The dishes they use are “washed,” but still have food crusted on them. The list goes on.
It seems like they’ve gotten worse over the years. With COVID and the fact that guests have contracted norovirus multiple times in the past after the meal, I just can’t do it anymore. I’m totally grossed out at the idea of eating their food.
How do we deal with this? They won’t give up hosting—and it would still be a problem if they did anyway because they behave this way in other people’s homes. They do not handle criticism well and have a “whatever, it’s fine” attitude about cleaning, in general, so my casual attempts at mentioning food safety have gone nowhere. I don’t think they’ll change their habits no matter what we say, they’ve been like this forever! Thanksgiving is a big deal in my partner’s family and despite the lack of cleanliness, we love getting together with them. We love this aunt and uncle, we just don’t love eating with them. Is there any way to handle this without just saying goodbye to celebrating together?
—Dirty Little Secret
Dear Dirty,
I have scoured your letter, as thoroughly as you might scour a plate, for evidence that any of the other extended family members, the cousins, parents, and nieces, are as grossed out by the situation as you are. After all, they have, I presume, attended Aunt Grimy and Uncle Muck’s Thanksgiving dinner much longer than you have. Is your opinion shared by any of the other guests? For that matter, is it shared by your partner, who has also been attending Thanksgiving for quite some time? (Your letter employs the royal we quite cannily.)
Perhaps your partner’s beloved aunt and uncle are exhibiting truly dangerous food-prep faux pas you have not mentioned: using the turkey baster for nefarious purposes, or allowing the dog to stuff the turkey. But what you describe as “gross” seems to me totally normal home-chef behavior—a little messier than is perfect, but basically par for the course. You’re not going to get COVID from a little dog hair, and you’re just as likely to get norovirus from your toddler cousin as from the chef. The very structure of a Thanksgiving dinner—family arrives from near and far, each unit potentially bringing their local flus and COVID strains—makes the holiday home a petri dish of contagion, irrespective of how clean the dishes are. That’s the price we pay for seeing the people who are dear to us—the people who continue to love us even when we bring home a partner who walks straight into the kitchen and starts casually critiquing our cleanliness.
You have three options. You could stop going to Grimy and Muck’s. You could volunteer to take everyone out to a restaurant for Thanksgiving, after diligent research into the health grades of every nearby eatery. Or you could suck it up and deal with it. I recommend arriving early, rolling up your sleeves, and volunteering to wash the dishes to your satisfaction. Keep your comments to yourself.
—Prudie, sparklingly
Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. For this week’s Thanksgiving edition Dan Kois, a Slate writer and editor, will be filling in as Prudie. [link]
Dear Prudence,
My partner and I celebrate Thanksgiving with their family. Their aunt and uncle host and cook the meal, which they love to do. The issue is that their aunt and uncle are not clean. They pet their dog while cooking and don’t wash their hands. They drop food on the floor and put it back without telling anyone. They cough on the food. The dishes they use are “washed,” but still have food crusted on them. The list goes on.
It seems like they’ve gotten worse over the years. With COVID and the fact that guests have contracted norovirus multiple times in the past after the meal, I just can’t do it anymore. I’m totally grossed out at the idea of eating their food.
How do we deal with this? They won’t give up hosting—and it would still be a problem if they did anyway because they behave this way in other people’s homes. They do not handle criticism well and have a “whatever, it’s fine” attitude about cleaning, in general, so my casual attempts at mentioning food safety have gone nowhere. I don’t think they’ll change their habits no matter what we say, they’ve been like this forever! Thanksgiving is a big deal in my partner’s family and despite the lack of cleanliness, we love getting together with them. We love this aunt and uncle, we just don’t love eating with them. Is there any way to handle this without just saying goodbye to celebrating together?
—Dirty Little Secret
Dear Dirty,
I have scoured your letter, as thoroughly as you might scour a plate, for evidence that any of the other extended family members, the cousins, parents, and nieces, are as grossed out by the situation as you are. After all, they have, I presume, attended Aunt Grimy and Uncle Muck’s Thanksgiving dinner much longer than you have. Is your opinion shared by any of the other guests? For that matter, is it shared by your partner, who has also been attending Thanksgiving for quite some time? (Your letter employs the royal we quite cannily.)
Perhaps your partner’s beloved aunt and uncle are exhibiting truly dangerous food-prep faux pas you have not mentioned: using the turkey baster for nefarious purposes, or allowing the dog to stuff the turkey. But what you describe as “gross” seems to me totally normal home-chef behavior—a little messier than is perfect, but basically par for the course. You’re not going to get COVID from a little dog hair, and you’re just as likely to get norovirus from your toddler cousin as from the chef. The very structure of a Thanksgiving dinner—family arrives from near and far, each unit potentially bringing their local flus and COVID strains—makes the holiday home a petri dish of contagion, irrespective of how clean the dishes are. That’s the price we pay for seeing the people who are dear to us—the people who continue to love us even when we bring home a partner who walks straight into the kitchen and starts casually critiquing our cleanliness.
You have three options. You could stop going to Grimy and Muck’s. You could volunteer to take everyone out to a restaurant for Thanksgiving, after diligent research into the health grades of every nearby eatery. Or you could suck it up and deal with it. I recommend arriving early, rolling up your sleeves, and volunteering to wash the dishes to your satisfaction. Keep your comments to yourself.
—Prudie, sparklingly
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And I say that is someone who has a somewhat casually-clean kitchen… but it’s not UNSANITARY.
Not loving this advice!
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Still, whatever the case, those are terrible food handling practices!!
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(And that's what LW can see. I wonder what's happening when no one else is watching.)
Maybe LW can offer to take over hosting Thanksgiving next year, and phrase it as a way to return Aunt and Uncle's generosity for hosting for so many years. LW should talk to the other family members to see if they could also rotate hosting. And LW's husband could occupy Aunt and Uncle with something fun that they miss (cards, or movies, etc) so they're kept out of the kitchen.
It almost sounds like substitute!Prudie took this letter as a personal attack.
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Look, I’m not a naturally tidy person. But one place where you do not fuck around is the kitchen, because people can die if you fuck around. This isn’t about leaving clothes on the floor or clutter on the tables. This is about bacteria. Unwashed plates are fertile breeding grounds for all sorts of pathogens, some of which can be deadly. If they’re not careful about washing hands, they can be contaminating cooked foods (or foods served raw) with bacteria from uncooked pathogenic foods.
People don’t simultaneously come down with noro just after a meal; that’s food poisoning. (Noro takes some time to incubate, and incubation periods will be different from person to person. Some forms of food poisoning also take time, but others can hit real quick.) The family has been lucky so far that the poisonings have only caused temporary gastric distress, because food poisoning can and does kill people regularly. But that luck may well run out eventually. Stop eating there immediately.
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As a cook this advice nauseates me. LW, come to my house for Thanksgiving. I wash my dishes and my hands.
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Addressing the food safety & sanitation directly is a nonstarter, so I wonder if things getting worse recently is in reaction to LW's concerns, or if there's been a degradation in their abilities and hence standards slipping further?
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Then make going to that invite your yearly tradition.
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This Dan guy is not helping Slate out here at all, is he. He thought his only job was to write angry clickbait.
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"Researching the health grades of every restaurant nearby" is just insulting. If columnist can't say "I believe your level if hygiene is unusual and no-one will ever follow it" in a compassionate way, how can they give people advice on resolving interpersonal disputes?
And there are other approaches of you actually LOOK for them rather than dismissing the OP, eg arriving late to mingle, or asking "Can we do X as a favour to me", or not going but nagging the effort to see that family at another nearby time