Eating with people who don't enjoy food

I’m not a fussy eater as I will eat most things but I haven’t got a big appetite.
Like everyone though I’ve got my favourites but I wouldn’t describe myself as a foodie.

I’m small so I get full quite quickly.
Over the last few years portion sizes in restaurants have got so large that I find it off putting.

It amazes me to be honest, just how much food some people can put away.
No wonder there’s an obesity crisis.

Biscuitmuncher

Astitchintime I was at a hotel type place miles from anywhere and it was catered. So there was no choice and a long taxi to civilisation

Sounds utterly horrific!

This thread has made me both cringe and laugh out loud!! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

We have two separate friends who simply don’t have a big enjoyment of food!

Both single women, one lives in the South of France, in a lovely village in a very nice villa with a pool, she’s lovely but the worst hostess ever and lives blinking miles from the nearest shop, she used to be an amazing cook and stuff all her guests full to bursting, now she’s only got ice cream and lollies in her freezer and roll mops and booze in her fridge!

We sneak food in and I offer to cook!

The other lady doesn’t eat much herself at all, but at least puts on a decent spread!

However she’s very very health conscious and very slim and makes us feel like little piggies! 🐖🐖🐷🐷🐽🐽

We conclude you’re either a “foodies, or you’re not!

We both definitely are!!

Biscuitmuncher

Just had a wonderful weekend with lovely people who really weren't food lovers. They had a spoonful of rice and chicken, bland as anything and were then stuffed at the end. I have spent all weekend famished

I love to cook but don't much care to eat more than a few spoons.

Good job we're all different.

I used to find cooking for the family tiring .
My kids love food ,are adventurous.and enjoy spicy food .
One doesn't like the smell of lamb and one can stand anything that reminds her of an animal -but I could cook a successful meal for them .
I'd make at least three different desserts to please them .
But my parents were super picky.
They liked bland food and were probably looking forward to the puddings .
Somehow with a large glass of wine - I'd muddle through .

As I get older I get bored with food quickly,but I really dislike going out with friends who pick through the menu ,exhaust the unfortunate server with questions ,demand things that aren't on the menu,pick their way through the meal and lecture everyone on their allergies,intolerances and illnesses.
This is usually accompanied by the declaration of weight loss .

In France ,one of my friends did such a performance.
The chef cane out of the kitchen and asked her never to return to his restaurant.
And worse,a distinguished elderly Chevalier came across to our table and said that if he saw her in the restaurant-he'd leave .

I’m no great cook but I enjoy proper food. I can’t abide people messing about with food.

I’m sorry op , I don’t understand how you were famished. Did you have the same portion size as your friends? Or was it that they’d finished before you , due to small portions ?

That wouldn't be a wonderful weekend for me I’m afraid.

I have one of those, who orders children’s portions and hardly eats that. I love my food (it shows😂) - so I really don’t like going out with her for a meal.

AGAA4

I took my son and his new girlfriend out for a meal. She ordered then didn't eat any of it. It was a very popular, always booked up restaurant, so a bit embarrassing sending back a whole plate of untouched food. I found out later that her diet consisted of several bottles of cola a day and a few bags of crisps.

Oh heavens, that would be embarrassing, handing back an untouched plate of food. That poor young lady clearly has a very bad eating disorder if she only eats coke and crisps, and will be in hospital before too long, seriously sick. Do you have any idea how she is now? I'm feeling quite worried about her. 😟

nanna8

What I find annoying is going to restaurants with people who order a meal and then just move it round their plates and leave half of it after complaining that something perfectly fine is ‘too tough’ or ‘too salty’ or whatever. Some seem to make a habit of this.

Dh’s aunt was like this. We used to take her for a pub lunch, but everything was too hot/too cold/too tough/too sloppy/they don’t know how to make pastry any more, you name it.
In the end we stopped taking her out - I’d take something very simple/basic I knew she liked, to cook at hers.

However she was very anti/suspicious of anything that wasn’t fresh meat/fish/veg, so given that she was always ‘starving!’ and I was expected to have it all ready within about 20 minutes, I used to decant M&S e.g. tinned minced beef or steak into a Tupperware, maybe add a few mushrooms, and pretend I’d cooked it.
She never twigged!

who remembers the dining scene from Tom Jones
with the naughty Albert Finney and Joyce Redman
going at it with soup, oysters chicken, wine, and the
fruit!?!

Tizliz

My Parkinson's means I have very little appetite, eat slowly and have trouble cutting up my meal. I dread going out but I can't insist my OH stays in so I have to cope. I hate to think other people think badly of me.

I'm sure they don't.
My friend ans i sometimes have lunch together, and we each concentrate on our own preferences, and eat what we want. Me: all of it
Her: some of it.

Dear Tizliz - eaying out with Parkinson's must be quite stressful. Eating out after a stroke is also difficult. My mother-in-law never really did more than a coffee out post-stroke and my husband's aunt with Parkinson's tended to have family over to her home.
She was fortunate in that her husband was a great cook and loved doing it.

I do know that people always try to be kind and helpful but it's really about how the individual with such conditions feels.

I'm sure Biscuitmuncher wouldn't be raising this if she thought her friends were struggling with a medical condition.
Please don't worry about people making judgements about small meals and bland food. I think really the point was more that Biscuitmuncher was hungry!

What I find annoying is going to restaurants with people who order a meal and then just move it round their plates and leave half of it after complaining that something perfectly fine is ‘too tough’ or ‘too salty’ or whatever. Some seem to make a habit of this.

My Parkinson's means I have very little appetite, eat slowly and have trouble cutting up my meal. I dread going out but I can't insist my OH stays in so I have to cope. I hate to think other people think badly of me.

I learned to eat fast at school meals if you didn't the other kids would pinch it, we were much more active than children today and needed our calories, school meals certainly provided that in the 1960s

I'm a feeder of folk and DH loves a full cupboard/fridge and agonises if we get ' dangerously low' on coleslaw. So always have a lot of food available.
These days I tend to let people help themselves if they want food. I have a lot of drop in traffic from family and just say help yourself if you want anything.
Ironically. out appetites have grown smaller but I still like a comprehensive stock of food. I was a war baby, which probably explains it.

It's the equivalent of going for a swim with someone who stands at the edge, wrapped in a towel, shivering and shaking, whilst saying "I'm fine, honestly!" as they turn blue.

Years ago, before so many people were vegan I had a sports student stay here. I knew he was vegetarian so based all the meals around cheese not realising that he didn’t eat cheese either. Can’t remember what I actually fed him on in the end.

I m with you all the way MisA don’t like cooking but love eating I love trying new things and can’t stand eating with pickers although of course it’s their choice so I don’t say anything ( except can I have your chips if you don’t want them 🤣🤣🤣.. not really)

When we visited my husband's family with 5 hungry children we used to have a secret stash of things in a "keep cool" in the boot of the car with cheese and snacks and bread rolls/sliced bread marmite and a box of fruit.

I think they just weren't able to remember cooking for so many. The food itself was always lovely- it was just the portions!

They would buy in extra cream, milk, fruit or whatever but still found it hard to realise that from 2 older people to 9 in total means more than doubling up!.

We always arrived with a cake and some sort of pudding ready to cook, a big 2 litre tub of soup etc and a lot of fruit and eggs "so they don't get wasted at home".

We always managed and they were very generous in other respects. They were aware that the children were often hungry but were disinclined to do treats in case it "spoiled their appetite"!


On the way home, for the journey they would insist on making sandwiches for us as we packed the car. The excitement of the children as we turned the corner and left the village and unfurled the sandwiches will live with me forever. ❤️

I loved my mother-in-law a lot and really miss her.

I suggest you fill your travel bag with easy to eat snacks and accept this is how they are and how they eat.
You had lovely company which is a treat in itself.

Just don't go for too long! You can always come back on here for a bit of a laugh. We found (kindly) sharing our "too small" baked potato or "tiny scones" or "no second slices" of fruit cake kept our spirits up for the duration- and the whole family enjoys looking back on it now.

I don't really enjoy cooking, but i sure as heck enjoy eating!
It's one of life's great pleasures, i think.

I live for food and cooking, I have a friend who is the opposite.
She has so many fads she is impossible.

When she last came to stay, I thought I had nailed it, I got her the green tea and filter coffee she likes, her breakfast is always something sweet with nuts so I sorted that, her lunch nothing and supper is basically charcuterie/smoked salmon with salad, no dressing or mayo and those awful sticks of cheese covered in ham from M&S, we don’t usually eat processed food but will make an exception for smoked salmon!

The nuts and cake I made were not right, for some reason she didn’t touch the salad but ate the new potatoes that previously she wouldn’t eat, she now doesn’t have green tea in the morning but previously boiled and cooled water, lukewarm with lemon!
Her milk now has to be lactose free.

I am sick of guessing her needs and quite honestly the whole food thing gets in the way of our friendship.
I am seriously concerned she is making herself ill as her diet is so poor, she somehow thins that if she eats nuts with cake it counteracts all the bad stuff, she eats very little veg, on the few occasions she eats bread it’s white sliced.

I wake up in the morning excited about the three meals I am going to prepare and eat, I love my bread making days and the eating up left over days, I love Wednesday our meal planner days and Thursday when I go food shopping.

I still get out the tasting menu from when we had our Aulis experience from L’Enclume and remember each course!

My friend thinks we are crazy, she even confessed to me that she doesn’t like watching people get stuck into food so now I feel self conscious when eating with her.

It’s a very deep rooted psychological problem I think and sadly she is never going to change.

I am now going to make some pate for lunch to smear on my homemade sourdough.
Supper is left over curry and I will make a lentil dhal to supplement it!!!!!!😛😛😛😛😛😛😛😛🎉