Star Ratings

My nephew Christopher has an idea for whoever publishes the "Red Book." If you're Beachy, you know about the Red Book. It has another name--something like Directory of Amish Mennonite Churches. Each entry has basic information about the church, followed by a listing of each family and individual in the church.

Christopher proposes that a hospitality rating be added--five stars for the most hospitable, and lower ratings as needed.

As a preacher's kid, he gets to visit more different churches than some 16-year-olds do. He gives Weavertown five stars. I didn't hear the rest of his mental list.

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I usually assume that people aren't that interested in meeting me, and I'm not as diligent as I ought to be about making it a point to welcome every stranger or distantly located friend that visits our church. So I feel a bit of guilt when I think about my own personal hospitality rating.

I've been rebuked though, a number of times, when someone from our church brings a guest who "wants to meet you." Guests should not have to search out individuals they want to meet.

I'm also in favor of having a designated host family for each Sunday, but I hear that some people are afraid that if we did that, people would stop extending spontaneous invitations. I suspect that those who object are the chronically organized. Having forewarning would be a good way to get some of us who are in a different camp into the game.

Adults are apparently very friendly in some churches where the children are not. Instruction may be lacking, but I suspect that one of the surest cures for those habits would be to make it a point for families to visit other churches occasionally, and let their children experience first-hand the feeling of being an outsider to the established local peer groups.

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Recently, after church I was visiting with a friend when her husband came and asked if it was OK to invite a guest home for Sunday dinner. She hesitated just a bit when he calmly added, "You have to say yes."

She was more gracious about that ultimatum than I might have been.

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My brother Ronald's family joined us for a 4:00 meal on Saturday, following a brunch elsewhere. They were a fun bunch to cook for. Every one of their six children cheerfully consumed Asian-style stir-fried broccoli and baked sweet potatoes and sliced kohlrabi without dip--all without dessert to tempt them to eat their vegetables (Brenda's suggestion).

I violated one of my own rules: don't try a new recipe when you're cooking for company. The new recipe was biriyani, a dish from Bangladesh. Before Ellis and Lynita returned there, they had left us a package of "fine rice" along with a recipe for biriyani. I had scanned the recipe and saw that the only spice I did not already have in my cupboard was whole cardamom. So after Hiromi searched for it unsuccessfully at WalMart and a customer there suggested he go to the neat bulk food store at Pleasantview (Duh. Why didn't we think of that first?) we got that into our pantry. Then we were all set for a suitable occasion to try out the biriyani. Ronald and Brenda's family provided the excuse.

I didn't know how to handle all the inedible spices in the dish: cinnamon sticks, whole cloves, bay leaves, peppercorns, a portion of a whole nutmeg, and cardamom. I called Joel to ask how it's done. His memory was vague, but he told me that you're fairly intimately involved with your food when you eat it Bangladeshi style (meaning you eat it with your hands), so you can easily steer around the inedibles.. I couldn't quite visualize expecting that of our guests, so I searched for and found in the tea towel drawer a small cloth bag with a drawstring. The spices went into the bag and got tossed into the kettle of rice and chicken. The ground fresh ginger and garlic and salt got direct access to the rice-chicken mixture. The food was marvelous, and every bit of the rice was exclaimed over and disappeared--2.2 pounds of rice and 3 lbs. of chicken (a little more than the recipe called for), which cooked up to a 6 quart kettle full. The last bits went home with Hilda for her and Joel to eat for supper. (Linda and she happened to be here at the same time, working on the Center history project, and I offered them food also.)

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In a household where most of us have never met a vegetable we didn't like, I'm used to cooking differently than some people who think corn is a vegetable and not a grain, and anything green, orange or red is something you have to choke down because it's good for you.

Cooking "normal" food for company sometimes looks like a chore (especially dessert), and, I confess, serving up perfectly good healthful food to people who have no tolerance for it is a real de-motivator for the next time. I'm always really blessed when people are willing to try our strange food.

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Others appreciate children who eat vegetables too. Ruth told me recently that they served broccoli in the meal they prepared for the Nolt family who visited in the community for a week while the father had meetings at Cedar Crest. The cook was gratified at how every one of the children seemed to enjoy the meal.

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Not all picky-eater children have picky-eater parents, but I suspect that all picky-eater parents have picky-eater children. (The English language needs a simple word for "shneekich.") Discriminating taste buds might have their roots in DNA, but some eating habits are learned behaviors, and are certainly worthy of a parent's self-discipline and child training efforts. Kudos to parents who already know and apply this.

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How did "Star Ratings" for hospitality end up in a mini-lecture about being "shneekich?" You decide.