Help! When Your Guests Suddenly Ask for a Soft Drink
Adeline loves food, lots of it and often, both at home and out. Usually, that goes well, but sometimes it doesn’t. In the series Sunday Roast, she shares her observations. This time: those guests who suddenly ask for a soft drink.
When I have friends or family over for a cozy evening, I shop as if I’m running a restaurant. A box of white wine, a box of red, a crate of beer, some special varieties for the true pilsner enthusiast, an aperitif, mountains of lime, lemon and mint to liven up the water. Not a centimeter more of the XXL snack board should be visible and, for the record, it already has a diameter of at least fifty centimeters all by itself. Around it, I add another ring of filled bowls, because imagine if the board weren’t enough.
Bruschetta – in case of emergency
I also make a big pot of soup, because you know as well as I do that drinks can quickly turn into a sluggish evening where you need something salty to go with them. There’s some bread in the freezer, so in case of emergency I can always make bruschetta. And I hide something sweet in the drawer, in case we go so far that we end up having coffee and tea.
So far, everything is under control and there’s far too much of it. Although I always gain respect for my guests, because as soon as they realize the food is endless, they turn into seriously substantial eaters. But one order always sends me into a bit of a panic: “I’ll have a soft drink.”
A stray bottle
Who even drinks a soft drink these days? As in: soda. As in: lemonade. With a bit of luck, I have a stray bottle of sparkling water in the fridge, but I don’t think that falls under the category of soft drinks. The worst part is that lemonade does cross my mind when I’m putting together my shopping list, but when it comes to a designated driver, I always opt for alcohol-free beer or something else with zero percent alcohol. Because who drinks soft drinks?
A soft drink, a soft drink…
The worst part is that I pretend there might possibly be a bottle of soda in my fridge. Which is never the case, because I do the shopping myself. I then make my way rather feebly to the fridge door, repeat the order (“a soft drink, a soft drink…”), say I’ll just check, open the door and discover that, of course, there’s no bottle of lemonade in there. Which everyone at the table already knows. Then I suggest they have some water with lemon, lime and mint, because I do have that.
A soft-drink-free adult
In the distant past (when I was in my early twenties), I thought it was strange that people didn’t have soft drinks at home. But now I’ve apparently turned into a soft-drink-free adult myself. I have wine, I have beer, I have spirits, I have water, I have coffee, I have tea. But soda? No. And even though my table is filled from one end to the other with wine and food, I routinely feel like a terrible hostess because I don’t have that fucking soft drink in the house. Now you might think: just buy a bottle for when someone asks for a soft drink. But that’s not how it works. Because if I bring a soft drink into the house, I’ll drink it myself. That also immediately answers the question of who the hell still drinks soft drinks these days.
Also read:
- We need to talk about people who bite ice creams
- When your waiter turns out to be a bender
- When you have to wait 100 years for a glass of wine
