Buffets are not alwasy a picky eater's friend

I wrote a post a while back about how buffets can sometimes be a picky eater's best friend, and I stand by that. Sometimes buffets are great because they allow you to pick and choose what you put on your plate and no one really thinks twice about what you are eating.

However that relies on there being things that you can eat, which usually for me there are. However I was at a party last night where they had quite a fancy buffet. I honestly didn't even know what half the stuff was.

I was able to find a giant plate of sausage rolls and figured I would just grab a handful of those which I did. I ate one and it was actually really nice, I bit into my second and panic set in. This was not a sausage roll but one of those cheese and onion ones that pretend to be sausage rolls. Someone had mixed them into one plate and there was no obvious way to tell them apart.

I had to spit the thing out. The toilets were miles away and I knew I would be sick on the way if I tried to make it there so I just had to grab a napkin and try to get it out of my mouth as quickly and discreetly as possible. I then just had to deal with the taste left behind.

Thankfully on the rare occasion I go out involving alcohol my usual drink of choice is spiced rum which has a strong flavour that will mask just about anything. I had just been to the bar so had a full drink sitting, after drinking the whole thing, going to the bar to get another and drinking half of that too I finally felt safe that I wasn't going to throw up.

It's experiences like this that make me really upset about my problems with food, not just because I was left with nothing to eat the whole night but because I look like a total weirdo being the only one that's not eating, plus I was sitting with a plate of sausage rolls (or things that were pretending to be sausage rolls anyway) but not eating anything.

I have known the people I was with for over twenty years, but to be honest I don't think they know how fussy I am. We have been out to eat before but because I hide my picky eating well by ordering plain foods and not making an issue of it, most people don't realise how bad the problem is.

I do not expect people to cater for me at parties, and I have never once asked for anything special to be made for me other than if I am provided a menu in advance for a wedding or something where I can write on it something like 'no salad please'. However I can't be the only person in the world who doesn't like those stupid cheese and onion pretending to be sausage rolls, why on earth someone would put them on the same plate without some way to tell them apart is beyond me. I mean what if someone couldn't eat cheese because of an allergy or lactose intolerance?

I guess its just one of many problems not faced by normal eaters and the person who put them on the same plate had no idea that they would cause me such distress. I mean when you think about it, who gets sick from simply having onion in their mouth? It sounds ridiculous even to me.