Dear Prudence,
We have friendly new neighbors from a Gulf country who moved next door to us in London. When they moved in, I introduced myself to their 20-something son—the only one in the house who speaks English—and he told me he was going to bring us a meal. I politely told him that this sounded lovely, but we couldn’t accept food from them because we can only eat food cooked in a kosher kitchen, but he didn’t seem to understand (or really listen—he was too excited).
Lo and behold, a couple of days later, he turns up on our doorstep with a huge and delicious-looking platter of fish and seafood that we definitely couldn’t eat. I reiterated how lovely it was, but that we can’t eat food that is not kosher, and after arguing with me a bit, he told me he couldn’t possibly bring it home because his mother would be very upset. I realized this was probably true and so, to keep the peace with our lovely new neighbors, I accepted the platter, gave the food to a colleague at work, sent the next-door neighbors a plate of home-baked cookies, and assumed that was the end of it. Not at all!
Two days later, they sent over a platter of incredible-looking (and very expensive-looking) lamb—again, I gave the food away and didn’t reciprocate, thinking that would put an end to the food exchange. Nope. A couple of days after that, they sent over another plate of the most non-kosher looking seafood I’ve ever seen … and now I’m extremely worried that the wave of food we can’t really accept (and which frankly is quite stressful to have in my kosher house) is going to keep on coming and I have no idea how to stop it. I feel strongly that I can’t reiterate that we are kosher or do more to explain that, because they will realize that we haven’t eaten any of the food, and I really don’t want to offend them. I’m worried that there are cultural sensitivities I may inadvertently breach. How do I end this while keeping good neighborly relations?