While Emily still has some good ideas, things have changed.  In the digital age we now live in, we try to jam as many things as humanly possible into our days.  We cram our days so full, in-fact, that adding one more thing can be like setting a small pebble on top of a mountain.

When that small thing is a short-notice guest it’s enough to send most into a overwhelming tailspin.

Technology though, while a time-sucking enabler, can also be a savior in this instance.

We recently had short-notice house guests with an open-ended departure date.  Having about 24 hours notice of their arrival I did the usual things one does– forget to verify the sheets on their bed were clean, tidy the house… a.k.a. hide things in closets, and go online to garner ideas for what we could eat the next few days.

And then something cool happened.  My guests arrived with printed recipes and ideas for dinners (and some stuff from their freezers since they were evacuating).  Seems like a small gesture, but it was kinda awesome.

It was awesome because I didn’t have to guess, as their host, what they liked or wanted to eat.  That was a nice weight lifted off my shoulders since we have diverging pallets.

It’s a neat idea in today’s times as well, sharing the load of meal ideas with the host, as how we approach our time in the kitchen has changed significantly.  In earlier days the household construct was such that the female of the household was expected to know how to cook, and would naturally take on this load reaching from a stockpile of already-practiced recipes.

However times have changed, and in a lot of ways for the better.  Now anyone in the household can get into the kitchen and excel, and for households where neither partner enjoys that neither one is forced to.  But if you’re in that latter category, or the first category but are short on time, what do you do?  It’s becoming clear our societal expectations of hosting haven’t changed with the times.

Maybe they should.  Perhaps dinner at someone’s house should be a dialogue between the two parties instead of an expectation chucked on the hosts’ shoulders as in the past.  How cool would that be?  And stress relieving for everyone.

I know at first this seems odd… and we all want to be in control of our gracious hosting, but this really is a neat concept.  What if visiting people, staying for longer amounts of time (read:not just coming over for dinner but hey that would work too), brought dinner ideas?

What if this morphed into the new norm?  It’s certainly better than bringing flowers or useless, store-bought, stale desserts that everyone just pretends to like.  Lemme know what you like!  Lemme know what we can cook and how we can do this together!

I’ve found these days a lot of people are self conscious about not cooking, especially if they find out you frequently do.  In order for this to work we’ve got to let that go as hosts, and as hostees bring food and recipe ideas into other people’s homes at the appropriate skill level.

I love that it starts a real dialogue. And balances out skill levels.  If you’re hosting someone who cooks more than you chances are they enjoy doing it and would probably love to jump into the kitchen and help, as long as you’re open to that.

Yes of course this can backfire, but it’s a better start then where we are now– which saddles both parties with responsibilities they don’t want (a bunch of work and pretending to like the result).

As Emily says, “Manners are the sensitive awareness of the feelings of others.”  Perhaps starting this dialogue between host and hostee is the updated way to have good manners in the electronic age, where we acknowledge times have changed but still find a way to come together to break bread without all the stress.

**btw for our recent guests that may be reading this, yes the sheets were clean.  I was joking 😉