I'm thinking arsenic laced sweet treat from Sis......

A lot of teachers and schools now forbid home-baked treats. For instance, if a parent wants to celebrate their child's birthday, they must bring in cupcakes from a grocery store or bakery. There are good reasons behind that. For one, you don't know the conditions under which something was made. You also don't know about the ingredients, some of which might cause allergic reactions.

To me, this is one of the most important reasons to avoid anonymously given treats: there is a growing movement among those who sell or use essential oils to put such oils into their main dishes, sides, and (especially) baked foods. These oils are highly concentrated and were never meant for ingestion. They have caused reactions, sometimes severe, in certain people. The oils can be highly toxic to pets as well.

Utah is known as the MLM capital, and companies such as Young Living, DoTerra, Scentsy, It Works!, and Melaleuca are popular home businesses there, especially among Mormon housewives trying to bring in some extra cash. All of those companies sell essential oils, and there are many more as well. There are a lot of false claims that are spread among purveyors of the oils. The MLM companies officially frown on this, but the purveyors get away with a lot. Anything that ails you, mental or physical, they think they can cure. Hence putting their oils into foods, even donated foods, thinking that they are doing good.

Patronize homeopathy MLMs. At least you you know you are just buying water. :)

I don't have a problem with it. I trust the people in my neighborhood.

No. Never. Much of the time I don't even eat things from people who aren't anonymous.

It's hard enough thinking about how a bunch of teens made your food at a fast food place.
A pest control guy told me about roaches crawling all over food in the kitchen of a buffet restaurant once.
I think I've probably eaten things from restaurants worse than my neighbor's kid snot and cat hair concoctions.

As someone who cooked in a hotel restaurant for several years, trust me, you don't want to know. Even restaurants that pass their periodic health inspections are not as clean as you might think. And they use food that is on the brink of spoiling because profit margins for food are so thin (at my restaurant, the old food went into the daily specials.)

I always tell people, if you really want to know, ask if *all* of the cooks in the restaurant are eligible for sick days. If not, they are definitely working sick. I once was quite certain that I had the flu, and my chef (being very short-handed, because the illness had struck the staff hard,) told me to finish my shift.

The restaurant employed the age-old trick of keeping my hours just under full-time so they didn't have to pay for sick days or other benefits.

Gosh, you bring back memories of my mother's nursing home! Nurses were punished if they called in sick due to flu and colds. One nurse was coughing all over my mother while complaining that if she went home sick she would suffer at the hands of the Director of Nursing because they were chronically short staffed.

And we wonder why the majority of Covid deaths are in nursing homes. Covid and all sanitation protocols are NOT for the safety of the patients but rather the safety of the staff. I was told this regularly. It almost came to blows once when my mother asked a care giver to wash her hands and the care giver refused.

Frankly, I'd rather die in a ditch than in a nursing home.

Thanks, summer.

I really hope the people who are working hard to feed, teach and serve us can get better benefits soon.

I worked in restaurant. As far as spreading germs, it's almost as bad as working in a hospital. Like Summer wrote, employees go to work sick because they don't have sick pay or their manager pressures them to, and guests also go out to eat when sick, coughing all over everyone. Servers go from table to table spreading sickness. I was frequently sick when I worked in a restaurant. It just took one sick server or guest to spread it around.

Girl, toss that crap. If it is something you want, make your own. I wouldn't put it past your sister to make you a Minny Pie.

Exactly what I was thinking Susan!

Absolutely not! True story. Our LDS next door neighbors sold their house and went to Russia for 2 years as a mission president. They were the best LDS neighbors we ever had. The LDS guy and his wife that bought their house bought it to flip it 2 months before the housing market bubble burst. They had no intention of living there for more than a few months. They had no furniture other than a bed and a couch. One day the guy rings my doorbell to ask if I can help him unload two pick up trucks full of furniture that he picked up from the D.I. I helped him move that crap into hi home. His wife asked if I needed anything. She noticed that my wife's car wasn't in the driveway for a day. I told her that she took my daughter to SoCal to visit her mom and go to Magic Mountain. I'm a good cook. I was going to a BBQ that evening at a friends home. I made shrimp scampi and fried shrimp.
About 90 minutes after I moved their furniture, my doorbell rang. There was at least 15 young mormons (20's) on my porch. They brought me dinner because they had heard that my wife was gone and they wanted to make sure I had something for dinner (like I couldn't cook or go to a restaurant.) They brought a casserole that looked like Alpo in a can, some chocolate chip cookies and a can of Western Family green beans. They invited me to church. I was speechless and caught off guard. I thanked them and said goodbye. I wouldn't eat that crap o a dare. I finished up my shrimp and left. The next day, I brought their dinner over to my neighbor. I told him, "Dennis, I'm a good neighbor and I'll help you if needed. You can borrow tools or whatever else you may need. But, that won't happen if you keep sending church people to my house". He apologized and said his wife called those people without his knowledge. It never happened again and his wife never spoke to me again.
They lasted 13 months. They listed their house since they moved in. They bought high and the market collapsed. They had no buyers and bailed on their mortgage and left. They left their DI furniture and just left. But, I learned to never accept food from LDS neighbors.

Dang! I knew the market was overheated when the going rate for condos in my community far exceeded the ability of the usual buyers to pay. There is only so much money you are going to eke out of a teacher, government worker, flight attendant, or retiree. I was excited to see the dizzying heights that prices were reaching, but the housing market collapsed soon after.

Yes whenever they are offered
which is seldom

No, since I don't know how clean the kitchen was that it was cooked in. Having a food handler's certification makes you even more paranoid about food safety. Also, my TBM ex had a tree nut allergy, with coconut actually being life threatening to him. There were times when I had to throw out cookies the RS left because they had walnuts and coconut in them.

Obviously, we haven't eaten any of the Mormon love-bomb treats, because, well, have they heard there's a PANDEMIC? They still brought treats throughout the holidays. Most didn't wear masks. A few of the treats were handed directly to the kids, who tore into them and started eating, before we could stop them. I'm amazed that we didn't get covid.

Even before that, I would just throw away the goodies.
--I saw several of the families in their kitchens, fixing that food, with their kids--yeah, "kid snot and cat hair concoctions"!
--I have celiac disease, so gluten makes me very sick.
--I don't know about the other kids in the neighborhood, but my kids tend to get cavities.
--Sugar makes us hyperactive, and then throws us down into feeling sluggish. Feeling sluggish is awful, so we eat more sugar to bring us back up again, and thus begins the endless sugar-cycle.
--My metabolism is different from my neighbors', in that sugar makes me gain weight. Go figure.

We quit the cult just before Christmas, and I threw out all my old Mormon pioneer recipes. We had holiday treats like bacon, sausage, nuts, cheeses, crackers, popcorn, fresh fruit, ice cream, 8 hours sleep (no seminary and church overtime), skiing, skating, snow-shoeing, etc. There were no meetings, no primary with sick feverish little kids crawling into my lap, no music rehearsals, no singing in the Christmas choir with sick people, no Christmas potluck with picked-over casseroles. It was the first Christmas in years, that my kids and I didn't get sick!

Anyway...the answer is no, we don't eat passed-around food items.

Even in normal times, we avoid self-serve buffets. Yes to barbecues and picnics in the summer, where you hold out your plate and someone puts meat on it. Yes to more formal dinners with plates served up by adults in the kitchen and brought to the table, while the kids are sitting there, waiting.

One neighbor brought a small bag of popped popcorn (the bishop's family), another brought a note pad for lists. I don't mind the hand soap pumps that I get every year. One neighbor always gives something thoughtful like this year was a cute stuffed troll that I let my daughter have, BUT all my neighbors beg for my fudge. They mention it when they drop off their gifts. I wasn't going to make fudge this year. I don't take it to anyone who doesn't ask for it and I've known them all for 30 years plus. I gave them all the recipe (easy) last year and they still didn't make their own.

My neighbors who I like the best brought stuff purchased from the store that they didn't prepare (even though she is a great cook).

I don't understand why they even have these neighbor gifts. I'd PREFER not to. Oh, I took some fudge to the last bishop's house as they always ask, and they had a few boxes on the doorstep, so I just set it down on the boxes. Come to find out THEY HAD COVID. Glad I didn't knock.

Don't we all have enough to do at Christmas to not have to deal with this.

Ick and no no no no no

Only received a few and it immediately went in the trash! Hope they didn’t waste too much time and money making it.

NOPE.

If it's left, without an interaction, it's No Good.

Man. I'm not even down with potlucks. I drink the soda.

told you to blow the bridge from sis. I had to relocate to an unknown address. Do I know they are narcissist psychopaths like Ted bundy? Yes I do.

27 years as chef and executive chef in hoteLs and restaraunts and I tell you D O N ' T



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/03/2021 04:39PM by thedesertrat1.

Yummy!

I hate the concept of the Zion curtain because I want to see what's going in my drinks; what makes you think I would eat something that someone I don't know left on my doorstop?

Add in a pandemic and my experience as a restaurant janitor and there is NO WAY I'm eating love bomb payloads.