People, take stock! We are becoming a nation of eating eccentrics!

I would bet that these days, for the 294,338,341 Americans (confirmed here), there are 294,338,341 ways to cook dinner right and an infinite number of ways of doing it wrong.

In the last 24 hours (I promise, no blog exaggeration here) I have had the following exchanges with readers and friends, through email, phone and otherwise:
Responses to my question – “can’t talk now, but do you want to have dinner sometime?”:

- oh yes, but keep it informal; formal dinner parties scare us away (you know who you are!);
- oh yes, but we don’t do more than 1 or so per week otherwise we get cranky (you know who you are!);
- oh yes, so long as it’s not in restaurants; haven’t you read Kitchen Confidential (you know who you are!)?
- oh yes, but not in any week where I have work deadlines, for chrissake… (and you especially know who you are!)

I have to add these to my lists of vegans, pescatarians, vegetarians, Atkinsians, lactose-intolerants, and all sorts of food-dislikes -- ohh, it's all swimming, swimming... I know I have stored this information somewhere… yes, I'm sure of it...

But where? Where did I put all these, collected over the years food fears and fancies?

Eureka! Capitalism is rubbing off and onto my once-socialist-Eastern European shoulders! I have discovered an entrepreneurial opportunity and niche! This is how it will work:

I will collect and store your food profile for a flat fee. You can update your own profile anytime. If you get invited to someone’s house I will send them YOUR profile, to warn your future host of your peculiarities and preferences. Or, if you yourself are having a dinner party, you can, for a fee of course, request profiles on potential candidates for the evening. That way, if you really want to cook fish and serve it on Aunt Cristabelle’s gold-plated china or left-over-from-Labor-Day-picnic-paper plates, you can check first if your potential guest will be repulsed before you invite her or him.

I will add this bit of nostalgia to my “It is different now” Monday post. Because I remember the days (these may have been back in Poland) when a dinner suggestion was a gift, a source of delight, and whatever the hosts did was fantabulous and the evening was never long enough, and if it glittered with silver –that was great, and if it was on folding chairs –who cares, and if it was take out –hell, so what?

I WANT THOSE DAYS BACK! In the absence of which, I’m setting up my newly created and hereby copyrighted (maybe not in the eyes of the law but in the eyes of blogdom) “Polack’s Profiles.” Catchy name, huh?