Do you eat before going to the home of another person for dinner? Do you think this was rude?

Just because a person chooses to eat before going somewhere else for dinner does not mean he/she does not like the hostess's cooking. Maybe he missed lunch and ate late or there was something he loved at home.

During the holidays, people often juggle several different invitations and most include food of some sort. I had a friend who had a hangup about eating in front of people. In all the years I knew him, he would drink coffee or soda with you but never ever ate a bite with other people around.

Your mom is setting herself up for disappoint over and over if she agonizes over whether some guy ate her food. Who cares? Most people ate and I am sure they enjoyed the people they care about during the gathering.

And if your mom is not a chef, then you should try to help her out.

I would eat before going to another person's home for dinner if I thought there would not be enough to go around or if I knew the dinner was hard for me to only eat a little bit of for my diet.

I don't believe lying is a better approach, however softening the truth makes it possible to avoid hurt feelings. I don't know the reasons he ate before. Perhaps he didn't get the communication that dinner was being served. Perhaps he just got hungry and decided to take care of his need (which I cannot ever blame someone for doing. Life is too short to deprive ourselves of needs such as food just to avoid hurting people with fragile egos) Perhaps he had a late lunch and didn't realize it would fill him up. I really wouldn't read too much into it. Perhaps his personal bio-rthym is accostomed to eating earlier than your mother had planned dinner for. Perhaps his wife accepted the dinner invitation and he came along just to be polite. Who knows?

Perhaps if this pattern coninues your mother will not invite them to dinner, just the two of them or go out of her way to make things he will enjoy. I can say that etiquette would probably advise that he doesn't accept dinner invitations if he truly does not enjoy her cooking. If it was an isolated incidence there could be other reasons. But no, I would not accept dinner invitations if I really didn't like the person's cooking and just eat before. That is setting myself up for trouble and it's an inconvienience to the host who has planned ahead for an extra serving. I would wait to see if it happens consistently before getting super offended.

He shouldn't have told your mother that he ate beforehand but your mom shouldn't take it personally. She can't control his behavior and really will never be able to understand his reasoning. If she is going to be friends with him, she shouldn't get upset at things like this. Maybe he forgot about the party when he ate, maybe he attended another holiday party first. As a hostess it is proper etiquette for her to accept that he didn't eat at her party and not make a big deal of it. It'll only cause her stress and that's not good for anyone! In the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter where he ate. He cared enough to come to the party and that is all that should matter.

If your invited for dinner.

Then the purpose of going there is to have dinner.

If you dont want to eact there. Then dont go. It can not get any simpler than that.

Furthermore. Even if the person is a bad cook. You can still drown any food in sauce, to fix the taste a bit.

Alot better than offending the host.

Often times, people on diets will eat something healthy (and filling) before going to a party or get together, to prevent themselves from over-eating on food that they know they shouldn't have. Maybe it's something along these lines.

I wouldn't feel insulted. I have many friends that do things like that not because they don't like the food. It's because the food doesn't like them. There are people that have food allergies to a wide variety of things spices, meat, and they can't really eat them, otherwise they'd be in pain, and spend most of the time in the washroom. Don't feel bad maybe he doesn't feel comfortable telling his medical history to people and he thinks it's better to eat before he goes over.

I always eat before I go to my future daughter-in-laws place for dinner. It's either that or tell her what a rotten cook she is. The woman can burn water but she's a looker.

I really don't think this is wrong until the person discovers that you had lied to them or something.