Woman criticizes stepdaughter's cooking; says, 'the smell bothers me.' AITA?
When this woman is annoyed with her stepdaughter, she asks Reddit:
'AITA for telling my stepdaughter that she needs to freeze her food or cook for everybody?'
My stepdaughter [17] has very different food tastes than us. Her mom’s new husband is of another culture (and her mom and therefore my stepdaughter are partly of that culture themselves).
So she cooks a lot from that culture as taught by her stepfather and his family, and even when she’s not cooking food that’s directly that culture’s cuisine, she does a lot of strong flavors and spices. It's a bit strange for us.
She does a lot of general experimenting too. Our kids are younger and my husband is a bit of a picky eater, so we trend a lot more bland foods to be honest. None of us are really foodies. We’re also vegetarian, she and her mom’s family are not.
She was getting frustrated with food at our house when she visits so my husband (without asking me first) said she could cook meals for herself as often as she wanted. Which sounds reasonable but she’s in there a lot.
It’s bad enough at other times in the day but for dinners she likes to do all these intricate complicated meals and ends up monopolizing the kitchen.
We have an apartment with a galley-style kitchen so it’s really not meant for more than one person to be in there at once, even making a cup of coffee while someone else is cooking is tight.
I'll be honest the smell of the cooking meat as well as the strong spices really bothers me too because it wafts through the apartment.
I finally said, look either you need to cook for everybody (and make it vegetarian and reduce the spices a bit), or you need to make your meals earlier in the day + freeze them because I can’t make dinner or clean up or get the kids snacks or make myself coffee if you’re in there without both of us being in each other’s ways.
She got upset and then my husband got mad at me for trying to make her make dinner for us which wasn’t what I said. AITA?
Let's find out.
gullibleslide1978 writes:
Yeah. I’m vegetarian food and I can only imagine how awful it must taste if someone is describing their own food that way. Unless you’re eating raw veg all the time you should be using a healthy amount of seasoning.
Lots of vegetarian food lives or dies on whether or not it is well seasoned. Not voting on this one way or another, but it sounds like OP isn’t a great cook.
Also, the way OP talks about other cultures makes them sound low-key like there is some racial element that OP is covering up here. It’s odd.
bellabugeye writes:
YTA. In your own words you did tell her to make dinner for everyone, and dictated how that meal has to be made.
I get that you're frustrated about the inconvenience and it's not unreasonable for you to work out how best for you both to use the kitchen, but how you went about it makes you the AH.
Also, the way you are talking about 'her culture' is very sketchy and makes it seem like there's a lot more under the surface than her using the kitchen more than you'd like.
A galley kitchen is inconvenient, but I promise you that it's not impossible for two people to work in a galley kitchen at the same time. It's certainly big enough for you to make coffee or grab your kids a snack while she's in there.
What it sounds like to me is that you don't like all that 'ethnic' food she makes and you're looking for an excuse to make her stop.
scatchlove writes:
Yes and you have no problem sayin they are Indian right ?
That’s the issue here OP is using this common malady occurring often in ppl not accustomed to heavy spice and the natural response to that to cover up some issue with the culture the food is related too if not they would have just said “
SD mom is remarried to a guy from x place and no disrespect to him or the culture or people from there this is solely about my SD not working with me to manage a small space” You see this issue?
I was raised vegetarian and now eat fIsh a few times a year chicken same and no red meat at all the smell is disgusting to me but in my house sharing space if my kid wants red meat I make it ya feel me? OP is entitled! And definitely TA.