Playing Chicken with Food

Friday night our new CFO had a gathering at his house for all management in Jakarta. My wife and I attended and were having a good time mingling with my coworkers and their spouses. Whenever I am invited to such an event, I make a point to inform my host or hostess of my food allergies. I never want to be the drama of the party (that's my sister's job...oooh, burn!), so I do my best to avoid anything that is even suspect. Often, this means eating like a vegan.

As usual, we did the song and dance routine of visiting each dish and understanding what is in it. This was a catered event, so we had to ask the vendor what was in the dish. They didn't really speak English. So, we had some of our Indonesian colleagues do the asking. As expected, the soup was off limits, as was the salmon and other seafood entrees. That left me with salad and pasta.

The lasagna was delicious. I wanted to try some of the other pasta dishes - macaroni, stromboli, etc. I confirmed with the server one last time what the dishes were, what was in them, and even confirmed "vegetarian"? Then I sat down to eat. When I ate their "macaroni", I swallowed some meat, and that surprised me. I dug through the cheese and noodles some more to see if I could find more meat. When I did, it looked like chicken. I was hoping it was cheese, so I had my wife taste it. Nope, it was chicken. I ate more chicken on Friday night - about the size of an almond - than I've eaten combined in the last 7 years.

Having had one of these allergy emergencies before, I know the routine and come prepared. Our hostess also had the requisite Benadryl, so I took 100mg and stayed as long as I could to enjoy the party. When I felt the drowsiness of Benadryl kick in, we left.

Two lingering thoughts after this episode:

1) I never did feel a reaction to the chicken. Usually I feel it within minutes. So, either it wasn't really chicken, I'm not allergic to chicken anymore (at least the kind here that aren't full of supplements), or I responded fast enough with the medicine to avoid any reaction. I didn't have the lingering effects the next day I normally do, so I'm really baffled by this.

2) From now on, I need to talk to the cook. I don't think the people serving the food had any idea what was in it. They knew the name, and they knew how to use a spoon, but not much else.