'Dear Abbey, I Have a Question for Y'All'
A guest came to my house with containers for take-out!
With the monstrous turkey cooling on the counter next to me, I worked to extract the drippings out of a pot so as not to suck fat into my gravy pump. Across from me, waiting for a glass of wine, was one of our guests who came to “help.”
This guest is an acquaintance of ours from the community of Russians who have moved to Portugal since the war. My wife sees her at group lunches, and occasionally, her three kids play with our son, but the friendship is not much closer than that.
“My husband will bring containers for us to take meat home. I hope that is okay?” She said, causing me almost to drop my gravy pump.
My turkey was a record-breaking monster. It was the largest I had ever prepared. Coming in at 32 pounds, I struggled to carry home from the corner meat store. Twenty-nine guests were on their way, and I have to admit the request from someone who didn’t even offer my wife a cup of tea or coffee when she was invited over with my son to check out their hamsters created a minor irritation for me. It hung there until the guests started pouring in, and then I forgot about it.
The next day, I joked with my wife while carving the rest of the turkey and putting it in containers for freezing for future dinners, soup, and a lovely lunch of turkey salad.
“Good thing we didn’t give Svetlana any turkey last night.”
“Well, actually,” my wife began, “when they were getting ready to leave, she walked over to me with the container and asked to put turkey in it.”
My wife doesn’t carve whole birds well, and caught up with my guests and the wine, I had decided carving would be carried out the next day. My wife put a turkey leg and a wing in the container for her. More, she said, would only be ready during the weekend.
I have dinner parties a lot. I make tremendous amounts of food, sometimes three and four main dishes with sides for up to 30 people. I love cooking and love entertaining. No one ever leaves my house hungry, and even though money is tight, having lost my primary market, Russia — and Medium income — I can’t not entertain. It’s just something I do and my wife and son also love it.
Over the weekend, my house guest said I was being “cheap” by not wanting to share the turkey — my house guest, a close friend from St. Petersburg, always comes down on the wrong side of every argument. It is almost as if she has to choose the side of every issue that will anger people around her. I know her, so I just ignored the comment, but it made me think: Was I being cheap? Was I being inhospitable?
Svetlana made a lovely apple pie for me. We met them for beers earlier in the week; it was her birthday and we gave her a nice gift. Her family eats a tremendous amount when they come over, which is wonderful, and also because they don’t get home-cooked meals at home— it’s pizza and hot dogs all the time! Svetlana always marvels at how the kids eat so much at my place, and I wonder why she doesn’t get why. She wanted her kids to have a nice meal on Friday and so was determined to take meat home.
I would like to know. Was my reaction wrong — one I kept to myself as Svetlana had no idea how I felt about her request? At family gatherings, leftovers are always divided up, but that’s family. Both Svetlana and her husband work and make good money. I am barely working besides some projects here and there. It just didn’t feel right to me.
I would have reacted the same, but felt better a week later. Time heals all wounds, however slight
Dear Big Bird, I am not Abigail Van Buren or any of her relatives who maintain the column. However, I have enjoyed so many of the things you have written, I decided to comment on this one, as well. Your friend Svetlana's decision to bring her own containers was inappropriate, but whether it was a minor infraction or very rude depends on a couple of factors. If you have given her left-overs in similar previous occasions, then she might have thought she was doing a favor by not taking your containers. If this is the case, her actions were presumptuous but forgivable. However, if she has never received left-overs from you before, then she was rude and a poor guest. Perhaps it was somewhere in between and you might have to both fume and forgive. And perhaps not invite her back - that's the real decision facing you now. In any case, don't let one bad actor affect your love of entertaining - you are offering a lot of people the gifts of food and camaraderie. Bless you.