Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I canNOT stand a picky eater. His attitude will have a negative effect on your love of food and cooking, and might (ohGod) produce picky offspring as well. Life is to be enjoyed in full - to me, especially if you love cooking and eating and have an adventurous outlook on it. Damn right you need someone to fight with over the last piece of cheesecake. Keep looking - somewhere out there is your soulmate who will give you joy in your life.

it sounds as if the problem is as much how his pickiness presents itself Vs the actual fact of the pickiness.
you need to negotiate how he goes about tasting and reacting. instead of filling his plate hiding the uneaten, he should take a bite only, then only take more of what he will actually eat. He also must accept that if he rejects what's for dinner, he makes his own substitute.

You, OTOH, have to deal with adjusting your daily cooking to reflect some of his opinions. Cooking can be fun, but the day in day out feeding of your partner & family isn't so much about the fun for you as about the fact that people need to eat. Plus, if he rejects your food in favor or cornflakes or PBJ for days on end, you can't be hurt.

if you someday are having kids, he needs to have learned to reject in a low-key fashion so as not to 'teach' his pickiness to them. I won't go so far as to expect him to sometimes noticeable eat something he is known to dislike, to model polite behaviour. But it would be handy.

PS I was in a relationship in which we had very different food cultures. our inability to appreciate each others standards was but one of many problems. But 3 times a day one or both of of us being annoyed or mad or disappointed sure didn't help. If you cant fine some way to enjoy meals together, some compromises, then hang it up now.

Ok, do you guys have big families? I mean big families. This stuff makes sense if you have foil lids you can't stack in the refrigerator. The no serving spoons is obnoxious and hard to deal with when you got 20 kids bumrushing the fruit salad. And if you've got two turkeys and a ham in the oven there is no way Aunt Julie gets to put her uncooked casserole in oven. My mom is the oldest of seven with spouses, I have 12 cousins, so we had friends, SO's, inlaws relatives, and great relations.
When I was little it was insane . There wasn't enough room for the people let alone the food. You got assignments, specific assignments about was to be brought and how. They always wanted to make sure everybody could have some of everything. They made a special bowl of potato salad cause an uncle was "alergic".
So I'm pretty sure they got phone calls that went a lot like that letter. So I wouldn't bash her. I may print out the letter so I can use it for the next family gatering and use it like a blueprint.

LOLOLOLOLOOOOOOOLLL--I just read through the old TALK comment thread and the "Boo-KAAAY residence" cracked. me. UP. Yeah, I love me some smart-assed peeps.

The writer would have a field day at my house. I've been known to run out of serving spoons, so chances are on Thanksgiving and Christmas, you'll find a rubber scraper in the sweet potatoes and a wooden spatula in the mashed potatoes.

You and your food are more than welcome in my house, even if you make cookies with margarine, top desserts with Cool Whip and your lidless casseroles are covered in foil. I'm not Martha.

We all have our food preferences. I don't like fruit mixed with foods that are supposed to be savory, savory stuff with raisins, or chocolate mixed with fruit (though separately, I love them both). Other than that, I'll eat anything at least once, maybe twice (I believe it second chances for everyone and everything). I think the thing that bothers you the most is that he doesn't share your passion for food and he doesn't want to even try. The point is: can you live with this? or will it be a thorn in your side that digs deeper with time? If you can't make peace with yourself on this, then walk away. If you can deal with it and have it not affect your dignity and self-worth, then I don't see that it's a real problem.

walk to the back and go downstairs here: http://www.niagarabar.com/

there's a small basement with a thatched bamboo bar where you can catch guys playing weird hula-fusion ukelele rock. or at least that's what happened when i was there.

I have to wonder if this person started out this way, or if decades of family Thanksgivings have driven her to this.

I think the thing that was most disturbing about the letter, if you follow the link from AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com back to the letter contributor, is that the letter is supposedly real. The author of this letter is walking around somewhere. And she's planning this year's Thanksgiving. Right. Now.

LOL!

Ok, I do potluck some holiday meals, since I'm poor, but the furthest I go is to make it clear what I'm contributing, and request that people give others some idea of what they're planning on bringing so we won't get everyone bringing the same thing. I don't give people assignments, bringing stuff is optional, and I try to make enough stuff so that in the unlikely event that nobody brings anything, we'll still have a decent meal.

Geez! "Bring four pounds of green beans. Not three, four. Five you shall not bring, nor shalt thou bring two, but four pounds of green beans shalt thou bring..." And besides the excessively detailed instructions, there's the snide remarks thrown in there for good measure. I mean really, Lisa, you're a grown up now, can you at least handle a veggie platter? And June, your blue serving dish is ugly, use "regulation size" casserole dishes for your 15 lbs of mashed potatoes!

If the invitation sets the tone for the event... can you imagine???

OMG! No frickin' way.

Life is too short. I'd just politely bow out. You know, so as not to ruin the day for the host. ;)

that's hilarious!

gotta say, though, crazy as this sounds, i often feel like the writer, i just never have the guts to write such a letter so just I bitch mentally.

maybe I can send this link around as a joke, hoping my guests would get it, and will pay attention to what I tell them and not improvise...

Joe Swifka, who used to create tiki drinks at the now defunct Elettaria, is working at Flatiron Lounge serving tiki drinks on the weekends, I believe. You might want to call to double-check his hours.