reynardo | I have this habit of feeding people.

People who come to our house tend to leave with full stomachs. I've described it as an overdeveloped hospitality gland, but it's also the Mum in me coming out.

Someone once called me the softest touch he's ever known.

The regular

shinyshinyelves players always get a full meal, ranging from curries-and-rice to roast-pig-and-multiple-veg. People staying over occasionally get subjected to the full Sunday Breakfast routine, which involved pancakes, REAL A grade dark maple syrup (imported very specially by jazzmasterson and harliquinn), bacon, tomatoes, mushrooms, eggs, fresh fruit salad at the side, real coffee, juice, and whatever else I can think of. And people walking through the front door are likely to be assaulted with the questions "How are you? Have you eaten?"

The only people who got away recently without being fully fed were

usekh (came down with food poisoning while visiting someone else, and had to be just nursed for a couple of days instead) and the lovely

seedy_girl and

thorfinn, who were off to Yum Cha and needed the stomachs empty. You have no idea how hard it was to let them go in that state.

And sometimes the poor people I live with and the extended family and the visitors have to put up with the ultimate, the terrible the Mum's Guilt Meal. This has three stages:

1) The Guilt Trip.

"Oh My Goodness you poor people - working so hard and me never home and I must cook a proper home cooked meal for you because you're obviously all starving!"

Cue some enormous hunk of meat, a pile of vegetables big enough to feed a family of four for a week, gravy, and all the trimmings. Cooked, crackled, gravied, stirred.

2) The Serving.

Large plates. Larger servings. More on top. "Is that enough? You can always have seconds. Here - this is a nice bit."

But the family know the trick.

3) The end result

You see, they know they don't have to eat it all. It's to make me feel better, not them. So I don't have a problem with people eating only a fraction. At least I know I offered the food.

And besides, I can make Thai curries with the leftovers.