anyway you slice it we are thankful for you

#Anyway you slice it we are thankful for you free#

I truly enjoy planning and preparing, and am certainly not breaking the bank. “When my boyfriend and I host small dinner parties, our guests always ask, multiple times, what they can bring. But I encounter insistence and real pressure from some who believe that they MUST make a contribution. “I have never wanted guests to bring contributions because (1) they are guests (2) I REALLY enjoy having a dinner party and (3) it increases complexity if I have to accommodate someone else’s dishes in my menu. Here is a sampling of many such complaints:

Guests who insist on bringing something drive them crazy. Some who fancy themselves hosts not only appreciate this, but exploit it by not waiting for offers, but assigning the catering to people they have the nerve to call their guests.īut people who actually like to entertain complain to Miss Manners that they hate it.

#Anyway you slice it we are thankful for you free#

Counting it as less work, they forget that they are obliged to work off the debt and will never be free to visit others without pots sloshing away on their laps. Now guests entering a gala dinner party look as if they are in the express line at the grocery store, each carrying one item. Nothing wrong with those, as long as everyone understands the deal. And certainly not dinner.īut here the custom got mixed up with the jolly American tradition of cooperative meals - picnics, covered-dish suppers, family reunions and improvised parties by students. The European idea from which it evolved has to do with bringing flowers or chocolates - never wine, which carries the insulting implication that something decent to drink is needed because the host’s wine is likely to be inferior. The notion that a guest should not arrive at a dinner party “empty-handed” caught on in America only comparatively recently. If she were not terminally polite, she would reply, “Do you apply that principle to all aspects of your social life - that No means Yes?” No, and she is not all that charmed, either. Is it better to honor their request, or to bring something small anyway? And if I should bring it anyway (never arrive empty-handed), do you have any suggestions?” One might suppose that Miss Manners would be charmed by the generosity of the Gentle Reader who writes, “I hate it when someone says, ‘Don’t bring anything’ to a get-together.