If you can't be nice, be vague.

Yifru Hailu is one of our best friends in New Haven. Having emigrated from Ethiopia in the mid-1970s, Yifru joined the Church two years ago after committing the fatal miscalculation of renting his basement apartment to Latter-day Saint newlyweds, Greg and Vanessa Munden. I was blessed to be present and participate in a minimal degree while Yifru was being taught the lessons by the missionaries. We have been good friends ever since. Julia and Eli light up when Yifru enters the chapel each Sunday, running to him for a weekly ritual of hugs and high-fives.
Yifru, as it happens, is a magnificent chef. It has been our privilege on many occasions, at Yifru’s enthusiastic urging, to stuff ourselves to the hilt with his dazzling Ethiopian cuisine. We usually go home with several large Tupperware containers filled with sumptuous leftovers. Yifru is a special master of making vegetables. Only an artist can make green beans edible; Yifru makes them delectable.

Several months ago, however, we tried to serve some leftover Yifru vegetables to Eli at dinnertime. She declined. As we repeatedly urged her to try the vegetables she refused with mounting emphasis. Why wouldn’t she try them, we plaintively wondered? “Because,” she cried, “they are moley! I don’t like moley vegetables.” What does “moley” mean, we wondered? But Eli thought the term was self-evident, and no explanation was forthcoming.

Thereafter, Eli has made it a habit of accosting Yifru in the chapel and, her eyes aglow and her face lit up by the most ebullient of smiles, bumptiously burbling, “You gave us moley vegetables!” Yifru tries never to let his perplexity dampen her enthusiasm. He simply exchanges her smile, looks at me in confusion, and nods understandingly as I shrug my shoulders.

Needless to say, it is no small embarrassment to have one’s daughter trotting about accusing a master chef of having served up “moley vegetables.” So when Yifru invited us over last Friday for one last shared meal before our departure for Germany, I took Eli aside beforehand for a prophylactic sermon on the essentials of culinary etiquette.

“Eli,” I solemnly began, “you know how you sometimes go up to Yifru and tell him that he made us ‘moley vegetables’? Will you not do that? Yifru is one of the best cooks I know, and it is very kind of him to cook for us, and it might hurt his feelings if you say that his vegetables are moley.”

“Yes!” Eli roared, embracing the paternal invitation. “I will not tell Yifru that he makes moley vegetables. I will say, ‘Yifru, your vegetables are bad!’”