“
They sat around the dining table looking innocuous as they awaited my chilled
avocado soup. The mango-cilantro salsa made a colorful garnish. But when I
brought it out to the table, Todd, the painter, said he was allergic to mangoes,
and Carlos from Guadalajara hated cilantro. How could a Mexican hate cilantro,
I thought as I spooned out the garnish from Carlos’s bowl. Margo, the
macrobiotic, wouldn’t eat avocado since it wasn’t native to the Northeast, and
Robert, the banker on the Pritikin diet, was banned from eating it because it was
high in fat.
Things got progressively worse. Niloufer, the daughter of a Turkish diplomat,
took one look at my dolma and said, “That doesn’t look like the ones my
grandmother made.” Reza, the Iranian consultant, announced that he wouldn’t
eat Turkish food, since his ancestors were murdered by Turks. Todd, I
discovered, was allergic not only to mangoes but also to cabbage. He was the
only one in the group who touched my umeboshi-cranberry sauce, which the
entire group pronounced inedible. Olivia, my fashionable Italian friend, stated
that she “simply couldn’t” eat the pine nuts that I had liberally included in my
dolma stuffing, and spent the entire meal scratching her plate to spot and discard
the offenders.
With each dish, I had to recite its ingredients in excruciating detail and answer
questions—had I used stone-ground flour? Was the produce organic (it wasn’t)?
—all of which determined who would deign to eat my delicacies.
”
”