You Don’t Discourage Hospitality

Dear Miss Manners: Over a period of 15 years, very close, very dear friends have invited me for drinks and dinner frequently. The evenings are always enjoyable, but with only two exceptions when they had house guests for several days, the menu has always been the same.

After drinks with no hors d’oeuvres, there is some form of pasta, usually accompanied by meatballs and Italian sausage. Never, ever a knife-and-fork dish of meat and fresh vegetables.

There are interesting pasta dishes that incorporate meat, vegetables, poultry or seafood, but these dishes are beyond their ability or imagination. I’m talking about spaghetti, lasagna and ravioli, the latter two I’m certain bought frozen in large pans.

I always reciprocate with hors d’oeuvres, a main course of poultry or roast, and at least three fresh vegetables. That should send a message, but it hasn’t worked.

Is there a subtle way to tell them their dinners are boring, somewhat like a 1950s black-and-white movie? Or should I go on accepting their hospitality and good company, and be grateful for an evening out in spite of dreading the meal itself?

Gentle Reader: All right, so you’re an imaginative cook and your friends are not. They can only manage to offer you the warmth of their hospitality and good company.

And you’re not giving out any stars for that.

Very few people do offer private hospitality these days, in part because picky guests have made the stakes so high they feel they cannot hope to please.

Miss Manners keeps trying to get across the idea that a friend’s house is not to be treated as a restaurant. You have to declare whether you are going to be there or not, you can’t drop or add people to the party, and you can’t order the food you want or complain about what is served.

All you can do is enjoy the company. But that is quite a lot. If the food is really unbearable, you can stuff yourself before you go and have all the more time to talk.

If you attempt to retrain your friends, you are unlikely to make interesting cooks of them. But you are very likely to discourage them from offering what they can - at least, to you.

Dear Miss Manners: I have a problem with my mom. Many times when I’m conversing with her, she will ask me a question and walk away before I can answer her.

It makes me soooooo mad! I want to express how mad I am, but I can’t think of the proper way to put it. Can you give me a solution to my problem?

Gentle Reader: Yes, but it will not include adding to the problem. As you seem to be aware, you cannot explode at your mother in reaction to her rudeness without your being targeted as the rude one.

And yet Miss Manners refuses to encourage the tedious habit of expressing anger by calmly asking, “Do you know how it makes me feel when you do that?”

She recommends lowering your voice as your mother walks away. Unlike shouting, this is officially inoffensive, although it may be just as annoying. It is also irresistible. Why people who don’t bother to listen to what is clearly being said to them are interested in what is beyond their hearing range, Miss Manners cannot say, but you will find that it is so.

Dear Miss Manners: We have friends in their mid-60s who will soon be married. Both have been married twice before. Can you advise on the protocol of gift-giving the third time around? Would a dinner invitation or other nonmaterial gesture be appropriate?

Gentle Reader: The rule is that wedding presents are not (or rather, should not be) expected for the second, much less the third, marriage.

Miss Manners used to hate to invoke this rule because it sounds so harsh. It was never meant to suggest that one couldn’t give a present if so moved. And it is polite to be so moved. She expected anyone who cared enough about a couple to attend their wedding to ignore the rule.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Judith Martin United Features Syndicate