Man accesses GF of making 'Frankenstein' meals; she calls him 'closed minded.'

When this man is annoyed with his girlfriend, he asks Reddit:

'AITA for saying my girlfriend thinks she knows better than culinary professionals and expressing my disapproval?'

I (26M) live with my girlfriend (27F) of four years, and we try to split all grocery shopping and cooking duties equally.

We both like cooking well enough and pay for subscriptions to several recipe websites (epicurious, nytimes) and consider it an investment because sometimes there's really creative stuff there.

Especially since we've had to cut back on food spending recently and eating out often isn't viable, it's nice to have some decent options if we're feeling in the mood for something better than usual. (I make it sound like we're snobs but we eat box macaroni like once a week).

Because we work different hours, even though we're both WFH we almost never cook together, so I didn't find out until recently that she makes tweaks to basically every recipe she cooks.

I had a suspicion for a while that she did this because I would use the same recipe to make something she did previously, and it would turn out noticeably different, but I brushed it off as her having more experience than me.

But last week I had vet's day off on a day she always had off, and we decided to cook together because the chance to do it doesn't come up often.

I like to have the recipe on my tablet, and while I was prepping stuff I kept noticing how she'd do things out of order or make substitutions for no reason and barely even glanced at the recipe.

It got to the point I was concerned she was going off the rails, so I would try to gently point out when she'd do things like put in red pepper when the recipe doesn't call for it or twice the salt.

She dismissed it saying that we both prefer spicier food or that the recipe didn't call for enough salt to make it taste good because they were trying to make it look healthier for the nutrition section (???).

It's not like I think her food tastes bad/too salty but I genuinely don't understand what the point of the recipe is or paying for the subs is if she's going to just make stuff up, and there's always a chance she's going to ruin it and waste food if she changes something.

I got annoyed and said that the recipe was written with what it has for a reason, and she said she knows what we like (like I don't?), so I said she didn't know better than the professional chefs who make the recipes we use (& neither do I obviously).

She got really offended and said i always 'did this' and when I asked what 'this' was she said I also got mad at her once because she'd make all the bits left over after cooking into weird Frankenstein meals.

I barely remembered this until she brought up that time she made parm grilled cheese and I wouldn't even eat it (she mixed tomato paste, parm, & a bit of mayo to make a cheese filling because it was all we had.

Yeah I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole even though she claimed it tasted good).

She called me 'stiff' and closed minded so I said i didn't get why she couldn't follow directions, even kids can follow a recipe, and it's been almost a week and we're both still sore about it. She started crying too. AITA?

Let's find out.

malligatormouth writes:

Omg,I literally use recipe sites for ideas, I don't think I've ever followed a recipe without tweaking it, and everyone raves about my cooking, it's called instincts and the best cooks have them naturally.

OP YTA she's better at this, learn from her so you can become better, don't expect her to shrink so you can feel better about yourself.

terraysylva writes:

My hubby worked out the perfect recipe for a gluten free cheesecake. He measures everything out perfectly. And it is the best cheesecake I've ever had. (Yes, including ones with gluten. I'm not celiac)

And I'm certain that is the only time he ever follows a recipe exactly. I only followed recipes perfectly when I was learning and easily screwed things up.

I'm also baffled at paying for recipes. Like... I never, ever run out of free recipes. There's at least 20 recipes for anything I wanna make with a quick Google search. And I often can substitute a gluten free option easy.

And recipes don't account for personal taste. I triple the garlic in any recipe, basically. I use low sodium options, because two people I care for have high blood pressure.

Food is best when personalized. That's the best part of making it yourself, you make it how you enjoy it best.

OP, YTA.

Response from OP:

throwaway1243127 writes:

I don't have the ability to turn off my discomfort over it, even though multiple people have pointed out it has no reasonable basis. Most of the time I'm working when she's cooking or vice versa, and we chat from over the counter (our 'office' is in the space where a dining room table would go normally).

If she wants my help I wouldn't refuse, I just feel like I should stay out of her way? Maybe the more mature thing would be to just get over it as best I can, though.