I (28M) was raised by my parents to always smile and stomach it when I’m a guest in someone’s house and they serve food that I didn’t enjoy. I’ve carried this into adulthood because I think it’s just eatpolite. If I really don’t like a meal I’m served, I’ll just eat a little bit of it and maybe grab food on the way home. But recently I was in a store and found little tiny bottles of the spice Tajin, which I love. They were 50 cents so I got like 12 of them and now when I have a bad meal I just wait for attention to be away from me and pop a dose of tajin in and that masks whatever flavor I don’t like.
Recently I was at a family gathering and my aunt served this weird concoction of chicken sausage, peppers, and onions in a cream sauce on plain white rice. It tasted both bland and weird. So when attention was away I dosed it with the tajin. But my food had bits in it and looked red so my family noticed and I had to come clean and explain. My aunt was very offended and asked if I just hated her cooking. I said no. She has made great food. I just didn’t like this meal. She asked why I didn’t say anything and I told her I was raised to just smile a bear it when I had a meal I didn’t enjoy as a guest, the tajin was just my way of helping me do that. This made her more upset and start an argument with my parents. So now the whole family is annoyed with me.
YTA and you should go back to your original plan of just getting food after
Sorry YTA. I would also be offended if a guest brought their own spices.
> I was raised to just smile a bear it
But that’s not what you did. You tried to doctor up the food you didn’t like and got caught.
soft YTA
I personally feel that adding things like salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, hot sauce, etc is fine as long as you are polite, so I suppose I can extend that concept to Tajin for the sake of this post.
But I’m going to vote YTA becuase of what you *said*, not what you *did*. “I told her I was raised to just smile a bear it when I had a meal I didn’t enjoy as a guest”. That was rude. You could have said, “I just love spicy food and I found these cute mini packs at the store. It’s like powered hot sauce, do you want to try one?” or really any variation on that that implies you enjoy her meal, you’ve just got a thing for heat like many people do.
Instead you told her that you hate her cooking so much you have to *bear* it. That’s fucking rude and clearly not inline with how you were raised and the values you proclaim to have, even if her cooking is ass.
Okay, I was leaning to a soft NAH, but your proposed alternate response hit the nail squarely on the head. OP really could have prevaricated a bit and saved the drama. I plan on keeping this in mind the next time I run into a similar situation.
The social awkwardness I most frequently run into is that I’m almost fatally allergic to anything that comes out of the water, so I need to be extra careful when a host serves seafood. A couple were incredibly insulted that I put not wanting to go to the ER ahead of eating what they prepared (even though they’ve known about my allergy for years).
Hilarious!
Ok, so here is the thing!
You need to look at the *central* message of the “polite” behaviour you were taught – and that is not causing offence to the person who is providing you food (amongst other things).
You failed! You absolutely embarrassed and caused offence to your aunt!
You need another trick up your sleeve. The cover of this one has been blow wide open!
YTA – the system of being polite is a fine and delicate balance of manners. Next time just apply a greater level of polite plausible deniability and polite compliments.
YTA. Bringing your own spice is rude. It screams that you were prepared for not liking the host’s food. You must not have gotten the lesson in etiquette your parents were trying to teach.
YTA. It’s socially acceptable to add spices to a meal if the host provides those spices. That’s why people put salt and pepper shakers on the dinner table.
However, it’s rude to bring your own spices. And your attempts to justify your actions only made it worse.
N t a for adding seasoning but YTA for how you explained this. I can’t think of a worse way to phrase it than what boils down to “if I have to bear eating your food without complaining I need to add spices”. Seriously how hard is it to just say “I really like spicy food so I bring this everywhere so nobody feels obligated to make food spicier for my sake”???
AH is a bit strong, but it’s rude to bring your own ingredients to a meal unless they are serving something you can’t eat or categorically don’t eat (e.g., meat). And, even then, you talk about it in advance with the host. So I’ll say NAH but you handled it poorly.
My sister and I brought bottles of hot sauce to every event on my moms side because most of the food was so bland. We didn’t sneak it we just said I like food spicy if anyone asked. Just don’t make it a big deal and most people won’t care.
NTA. I mean, you really stepped in it with the way you explained yourself, and I’m not surprised they were hurt and insulted. But plenty of people carry around hot sauce, for example. You should have just said “Yeah I’ve been adding tajin to EVERYTHING recently – I can’t get enough!” But I get that hindsight is 20/20.
YTA. You dump spice on her food and then tell her it’s the only way you can eat it (excuse me, “bear it”) and you’re surprised she gets hostile?
NTA for carrying the Tajin, soft YTA for how you framed it. “Emergency spices” implies the food was so bad you needed rescuing. If you’d just said “oh I put Tajin on everything, I’m kind of addicted” nobody would have blinked. People add hot sauce and ketchup to stuff all the time and nobody calls it an emergency.