This year, Husband and I put our collective foot down and declared that we were not going to travel, no, not a step, for Thanksgiving or Christmas. Consequently, we’re hosting Thanksgiving this year, and my parents are visiting. Husband has done holidays before, including wildly successful, perfectly timed Thanksgiving dinners, so I’m not worried about that. What concerns me is the inevitable Great Food Showdown between Husband, who likes to prepare interesting food, and Parents, who are interested only in food that they’ve been eating for years.

Husband has very little truck with fussy eaters. He will claim to reserve his contempt for those who refuse to try certain foods, but believe me, he’s pretty hard on people with limited palates. Husband himself dislikes only green olives and cole slaw and doesn’t understand why everyone else can’t be equally reasonable. He equates refusal to eat widely with a provincial attitude, although we have at least four friends who have traveled extensively — three of whom who have lived for years abroad — who have long lists of what they won’t eat. (Sample verboten foods: Pasta. Any vegetable but potatoes. Any fish but salmon.)

Husband is actually fine with all of these people, because although they eat very little, they are accustomed to being served meals they can’t eat, and they make do. What drives him nuts are people who panic whenever they see an unfamiliar dish in front of them. People who take the presence of an ethnic ingredient on their plates as a personal affront. People like my family.

I grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch Country, a region not known for its ethnic variety or exotic food. Chicken pot pie, meatloaf, and fried cauliflower were the daily specials. My parents are Italian so there were good red-sauce-type dishes, but no Thai food, no Indian, no Mexican. My friend’s family took me out for Chinese once when I was twelve, an experience etched indelibly on my memory; I didn’t have it again until I was an adult.

Hence, we’ve had the Great Fois Gras incident of ‘Ninety-Nine, which they’re still talking about on the Orpheum circuit, and the Cold Curry Soup Disaster of ‘Ought Four, which was short-lived but intense. Actually, any kind of soup is problematic, because my father doesn’t eat soup, because it reminds him of the horrible leftover concoction his mother used to serve them toward the end of the week when funds were getting low, and so he just sits there through the soup course while everyone asks, “Do you want some soup? Are you sure?”

So, menu planning? A minefield. I’ve already persuaded Husband that if he serves goose instead of turkey, we’ll pretty much have to cancel the holiday. He’s still cogitating over the dessert, though. How does the “Missing Pumpkin Pie Fiasco of Ought Five” sound?