Suspect?

When you're having company or taking a dish to a potluck, you need to look at ingredient lists with heightened awareness. In tendering an invitation, you must always ask whether there are foods your guest doesn't eat. The problem is that people grow so accustomed to their food restrictions that they forget. They forget that other people cheerfully eat foods that would send them into shock or at the least would migrate to a thin band around the edge of their plate disguised under a lettuce leaf and a napkin. People do not think their own food restrictions are odd.

Let me give you an example. The first time my daughter, Margaret's, friend Martha came to spend the night we had orecchiette with broccoli raab and bacon. Martha's eyes widened as she viewed the serving in her pasta dish, but she grasped her spoon valiantly and soldiered through the entire serving and a second. I thought it was the broccoli raab that initially spooked her. Only the next day, when Martha's mom came to pick her up, did I learn that Martha's family were vegetarians.

Another example. Several years ago I invited a couple to our house for the first time and asked them if there was anything they didn't or shouldn't eat. No, they ate everything, they said. Not squeamish, no dietary restrictions, no problems. Well, except, said the wife, except fro sweet potatoes, but nobody would serve guests sweet potatoes, would they? Yuck. I don't know whether they don't like sweet potatoes or sweet potatoes make them deathly ill, but rejecting sweet potatoes was a new one on me.

I eat everything. I have no medical restrictions, I enjoy almost every food I've ever tasted, and I'm always eager to try a new food or yto give one I haven't liked in the past another chance. If you're like me, the world of foodstuffs is like some beautiful open meadow in sunshine; but for other people it's a minefield. Here are some kinds of ingredients to watch out for.