Help! I'm Tired of Cooking for My Friends

Eddie hears from a reader who's tired of being asked to help cook for her friends' dinner parties. Is their a way to squeeze out of these kitchen-time demands?

Writing in the Globe and Mail, David Eddie hears from a reader who's tired of being asked to help cook for her friends' dinner parties. The reader writes:

My husband and I enjoy entertaining. When our friends ask if they can bring something, we always say ‘No, just bring your appetite.’ We're happy to supply the food and drink. The problem is that when we're invited to our friends' homes for dinner, and I ask if I can bring something, we are always asked to bring a salad, a dessert or something else very specific. I end up preparing food whether I'm the host or the guest. For the record, I always bring some kind of gift for the hosts anyway. But I resent cooking for someone else's gathering when I never ask anyone to bring anything to my place. I'd love to just be a guest once in a while. Is there any way to raise this without hurting anyone's feelings?

Is there a way to escape from these kitchen-time demands?  Eddie responds:

I have noticed that the etiquette and protocol of what to bring to dinner parties varies across different subsets of our overall culture.

If my wife Pam and I are going to her parents' house, for example, or to the fabulous mansion of my friend Linda, society doyenne, we bring flowers.

To bring Linda wine would seem too collegiate, even vaguely gauche. Her manservant (okay, she doesn't really have a manservant – let's say her “husband”) would gaze in puzzlement at the proffered bottle before shrugging and whisking it off to the “subpar” section of their cellar.

But to most other occasions, bringing a bottle of wine is perfectly appropriate. It's an unstated/assumed courtesy.

I know a lot of people awkwardly ask, “What should I bring?” But the answer is almost always either an equally awkward “Nothing, just yourselves” or “Well, if you have a bottle of wine around …”

But that whole “what-should-I-bring-oh-just-yourselves” exchange strikes me as uncomfortable, unnecessary, mostly mendacious and basically just best dispensed with.

Especially in your case, since everyone keeps asking you for appetizers and salads and so forth. So that, sister, is my advice to you: Stop asking.

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