I should have added that it's been a very long time since she and her mother have "graced" my dinner table.

I have talked with her about this, but that was many years ago when I had no spine. The talk came out weak and without conviction on my part to get through to her how annoying this was. She was always so generous in other ways that I felt I should overlook this one fault. My mom said, "if you kick every stone that gets in your way you won't have any shoes left." That said, I learned to "try" to overlook this major annoyance and work around it. My friend doesn't know how to cook. The work of entertaining me would've fallen mostly on her elderly mother's shoulders.