My sister-in-law called at lunchtime to let me know that they were planning on coming to visit us tonight. She said they wanted to celebrate the New Year with us. Sister-in-law lives ten minutes away from us. I then decided that I cooked three salads, added more hot and opened pickles. They didn’t warn me about anything beforehand, so I couldn’t even imagine that we were going to have guests over. We had planned to celebrate the New Year with family.
My sister-in-law and her family came over around 10 pm. Of course they didn’t bring anything to the table, but they gave me a set of towels and wrote three hundred rubles in red marker on the package. I thanked my relatives for the gift, and in return I gave them an artificial tree that had pebbles instead of leaves. The gift wasn’t expensive, but since we weren’t getting ready for the guests, I couldn’t find anything else. My sister-in-law then turned to her spouse and quietly, but so that I could hear, said: “Well, what the hell do I need this vacuum cleaner for?”
This statement immediately put me in a bit of a bad mood. We sat down at the table. I was well aware that the table was far from luxurious, but I had very limited financial resources. My eldest son was in college on a contract, and my second son was just finishing school and the next year he would have to go to college. My sister-in-law’s daughter and our youngest son go to the same school in parallel classes.
When I served the pilaf and manti, my sister-in-law’s eyes flashed with displeasure. I thought to myself that if they didn’t like it, they should have stayed home and eaten their culinary masterpieces. My in-laws picked at the pilaf with a fork and then informed me that pilaf should only be made with lamb, but I cooked it with chicken and manty with pork, and if I had added smoked chicken to the olive, it would have been much tastier.
One of the salads I made was squid and red fish: layer upon layer of eggs, red fish, crab sticks, squid and cheese. I decided to decorate the salad, with artificial red caviar. I can honestly say that the salad looked very pretty. When sister-in-law’s daughter took the salad in her mouth, then instantly spit it all out into the napkin with the words, oh, this is a fake, yuck! And then began to resent, they say, how is it possible to eat?
After that my son could not keep silent and said:
– And kirieseshki and chips, on the breaks you eat completely natural?
My husband was fed up with this whole circus and told his family:
– What’s going on? Are you all unhappy? Everything is wrong, you have not said a kind word all night? In your family such a word as respect is not in honor, I see?
My sister-in-law jumped out and took her whole family with her. She was so angry she could barely contain herself, and then she hissed:
– I’m grateful for your hospitality, all your meals are such crap…
When my sister-in-law’s spouse was getting dressed, he guiltily asked that we not hold a grudge against them, because his wife is what she is, but after all, she’s not a bad person in general. Anyway, he felt uncomfortable and apologized.
My spouse and I sat down at the table, and there was a very unpleasant aftertaste. And then my son said:
– “Mommy, give me some of that salad, I’m not even going to say ‘yuck’…
We all laughed amicably, the mood immediately improved, and with mood and appetite returned. I must say at once that despite the fact that the table was very modest, everything turned out very tasty, and this salad, we now call nothing less than “ew bullshit”!
