Practicing good table manners

My mother always admonished her five children to “eat what is put before you, especially when you are company. Don’t make any complaints.”
She stuck with the ordinary, standard dishes, thoroughly tested and well liked and only served milk or water for beverages. (I know that is going to be hard for a southerner, brought up on ice tea to understand, but my father owned a dairy farm and he believed in his product.)
When I was 16, we moved to southern Utah. The neighbors invited us over for supper. We all dressed up, were given our parental warnings to ‘be polite’ and went next door.
The woman had laid out a gracious table of food, lovely dishes, placemats and huge glasses of iced tea. As a family, we had never had tea, hot or cold.
We did not know the advantages of lemon or sugar sitting in their exquisite bowls – but we knew our manners. We all drank our glasses of iced tea and kindly said, “Thank you for the meal.”
When I finally reached the bottom of that glass of tea, I was so relieved, I was ready to ask for a glass of ice water. But that gracious woman came around and filled my glass up all the way to the top, again.
I really do not remember anything else we had at that meal, but boy do I remember my first encounter with plain iced tea.
As I remember my first encounter with my the husband-to-be’s family one Sunday afternoon, His three brothers, sister and their spouses were there.
His mom had prepared a feat for our eating pleasure around the kitchen table. I don’t remember the meal, but I do remember the dessert.
She had made her first key lime pie. She said she followed the recipe closely, except “When I make lemon pie the recipe calls for me to grate a bit of rind into the filling. So I decided to do the same with this lime pie recipe.”
My guy was the first to taste his mom’s pie. He chewed, grimaced, swallowed and gasped, “Don’t eat it, it’s awful.”
We all looked at him in shocked surprise. No one took his advice. Everyone took a piece of the key lime pie. One by one we plunged our forks through the meringue, into the filling and cut the crust, carried it to our mouths and began chewing. It had a marvelous whipped meringue, lovely rich filling and flaky crust.
I relaxed as I tasted that filling. I love a good lemon pie. I wondered what his problem was until I tasted one of the bitter, bitter bits of grated lime skin liberally sprinkled throughout the tangy filling.
Like something out of the Twilight Zone, we all grimaced in unison as we each finished up our pieces of pie, almost liking each bite until we got yet another one of those pieces of lime rind. Everyone said “It’s awful.” Everyone ate their whole piece of pie.
Must have been love at first bite for us. We came from kindred backgrounds with a cardinal rule: “Eat what is put before you.” But at his house, with his folks, while we ate the stuff, we could jokingly complain the whole time.