The picking at food thing reminds me of a woman my mother once knew. They were both members of a local women's group that met weekly to work on crafts and share a potluck lunch. During my summers off as an undergrad, I often attended with Mom, as I knew all of the ladies (neighbors) and, for the most part, enjoyed their company. One woman, who wasn't really good at crafts but did enjoy getting together with the other ladies for fellowship, would always give herself the task of setting out the food, preparing drinks, etc. She had a bad habit, however, of "doctoring" food other people brought. More than once, we'd go to the table to find the bowl of fresh cantaloupe from our garden that Mom had brought as her contribution, blackened with pepper before anyone had a chance to take any. The reason? Lucy "liked it that way." Or if Mom took a fresh-baked cobbler (the kind that's more like a pie than a cobbler - crust on both top and bottom and lots of juicy, fruity goodness in the middle), we'd find it all stirred up and the top crust soggy from being mixed into the filling because Lucy "liked it that way." Mom eventually just read Lucy the riot act about it and gave her to understand that she was free to doctor up whatever she brought in any way she liked but that not everyone (Mom, for instance) likes their cantaloupe peppered or their cobbler all mixed up before getting a serving of it. Lucy did get a bit defensive about it, but several others besides me backed Mom up on it, and Lucy stopped messing with the food.