To get irritated by DH's forays into the kitchen to "cook"

[MattDillonsPants]

He occasionally gets an urge to cook...which is fine of course. It's not MY kitchen though I cook most of the meals at home.

So he wanted to make some tomato sauce which could be used for pizza bases and or as a base for soups or pastas. SO he spent a long time chopping ridiculous quantities of tomatoes and cooking them down with herbs in a MASSIVE catering sized pot.

Finished it...I tasted it and it almost took my head off because he'd put loads of fresh chiilis in it.

Whatever. WHY he did this is beyond me because we have two children who can't eat the enormous amount of sauce he's made....that was yesterday...it's 3.00pm here in Australia so I just decided to begin to make tonight's tea...meatballs.

I chop up some onions...look for the garlic...can't find it...ask DH where it is...he says, "Oh. The garlic. I used it all yesterday"

He used two whole bulbs of garlic and never bothered to replace them or tell me where they've gone!

I am tired so probably more irritable than usual. He's now gone to get more...but I'm so annoyed. These self indulgent experimental cooking adventures are wasteful and silly.

And how can I de-chilli an ocean of sauce please? Not milk or cream as DH doesn't eat dairy.

[Qwebec]

YABVU
Diplomacy is not my strong point so I won't elabotrate, maybe someone else with better skills can explain. But I have a solution for the sauce

For the spice part, I'm sure you to made mistakes while cooking. I'm quite a good cook and so is DP and we once did exaclty the same thing as your DP while cooking together, the chili did not seem so hot but once it had cooked it was hadly edible.
Uses cream. Pour it over the individual plates and skip you DP's plate. Alternatively freeze it in small batches and use it to add flavor to regular sauce.

[MattDillonsPants]

Am I really BU to be irritated by this? Really? It's not the mistake but the using up of all the garlic....and all the tomatoes. If it were me doing that sauce, I'd have left a couple of garlic pieces and a couple of tomatoes...and thanks for cream suggestion but as I said in OP, can't use dairy. DH doesn't eat it.

[MattDillonsPants]

Even DH can't eat it as it is...it's too hot.

[cherrytree63]

I don't think you're bu, if you are then I am too as my OH does similar.
He's actually quite a good cook, but does have occasional moments of madness with the chillies or garlic. And a tendency to cook far too much of everything.
For instance, there's a chicken that he cooked last Sunday, (I'm veggie, my daughter was away last weekend and won't eat "old" food as she has dreadful IBS), he made one meal for himself. It sat in the fridge all week until I moaned. So last night he boiled it down for stock. From past experience he'll put all the fresh veg in it, so no veg for anyone else, either only he will eat it or he won't fancy it and it will end up in the bin.
Also in my fridge is the week old two pints of gravy, containing all the onions we had (6 large, so none left for my cooking the next day) plus the mug I meat juices.
Luckily he's too lazy to use fresh garlic, but I gave up buying the dried stuff because he put loads in everything (he once bought a really big bag of it, and decided to decant it into a PEPPER pot, I sprinkled it onto my cheese on toast thinking it was white pepper ).
I have to hide the Worcester sauce from him because his "splash" equals a half bottle.
And never tells me when we've run out of stuff.
Grrrrr

[BoxofSnails]

YANBU
My DH sometimes does things like this, although my main frustration becomes that I then can't cook the tea because the oven is in use for 5 hours or he's using EVERY work surface in the kitchen (and every pan too). He's pretty good at going and getting what we've run out of - or I've forgotten, to be fair.

Could you mix the sauce 50/50 with passage to dilute it??

[MattDillonsPants]

Cherry YES about the massive pots of stock using all the veg in the house! He won't consider that the veg was meant to last! He'll just make something daft with it that won't be useful because he won't use it!

Snails oh my Gosh yes to the messy kitchen that he leaves!

I've suggested the pasata to DH and he's going to have a go.x Thanks!

[ArmchairTraveller]

YANBU, we have adult children and they went through a learning curve when it came to cooking.
From 'If you use the last of something either write it on the shopping list or replace it' to 'Cooking isn't finished until the washing up is done' to 'If your cooking is going to take hours, you need to book our tiny kitchen in advance and not grumble if people make coffee around you'
Buying a recipe book helps.

[MattDillonsPants]

Armchair the thing is that he can cook when he sets out to make a normal meal....but it tends to be his soups, curries, stocks and sauces which go wrong....when he tries to cook in bulk. Or jam making...chutneys...they never work out!

He can make beautiful vegan salads and once a lovely set of vegetarian pasties...

[Sadmother]

Using all the garlic and tomatoes really is no big deal. You sound quite pathetic and ridiculous. I can't imagine why this is even worthy of a post......?

[ArmchairTraveller]

So he's half way there then! What does he do about the failures?
He needs to apply more logic to his experiments and taste as he goes.

[ArmchairTraveller]

'Using all the garlic and tomatoes really is no big deal. You sound quite pathetic and ridiculous. I can't imagine why this is even worthy of a post......?'

Your children have never done that to you, sadmother?
Mine have, but the local shops are open past 10pm and they get hurled out into the snow and fog, despite the howling of wolves.

[MattDillonsPants]

Sad then why are you on it? Wasting your time on my sad post? Bugger off and post on a more worthy one.

We live in rural Australia. If I need garlic then it takes two hours to get it!

[Sadmother]

Oh no. Hardly 'whatever' then.

[ArmchairTraveller]

It's a bit thoughtless to use up all of an ingredient in a shared house and so the next person along can't do what they were planning on. OH and I shared a house as students, then a flat together, so we worked out a lot of blips along the way.
Including the fury I start the day with if we've run out of milk and I can't have tea.
Smaller batches, then upping the quantities when he's gott he recipe right.

[Sadmother]

But even though it takes two hours to get garlic, he did go and replace it

[MattDillonsPants]

Sad well I didn't have to go for it...so yes, whatever.

[Sadmother]

So why are you so bothered by him using all the garlic? Does it really matter?

[ArmchairTraveller]

Because it's not a one-off? The urge to make huge quantities of food that no one can eat and uses up core ingredients that OP was going to use in a standard family meal?
The lack of consideration?
These are conversations I've had with both of my children at different times, and they have taken my complains on board and done something about it.
Why are you so negative, Sadmother?
We have much bigger problems going on in our lives too, doesn't stop me grumbling when there's no garlic left and there's ha;f an experiment in the bin.

[JapanNextYear]

Not quite the same but have managed to get through to adult Dss to leave enough milk for tea in the morning and not to use up all the bread for mammoth bacon sandwiches at 4am and leave none for breakfast. The big shout that followed these finally got through.

Still doesn't think to say when he's used the last of something, leaves his dishes and will eat the whole pack of whatever he wants. Grrrrr.

[Eeeek686]

sadmother how very rude....

Op my OH does this do often I just expect it now. He's a chef so his cooking is pretty good and I shouldn't grumble as although i do all the cooking for me and the DCs in the week, on his two nights off he does do all the cooking using every pan in the house and leaving a mountain of washing up for which i either plan for in the weekly shop or he goes out specially for, but on the occasions that he gets an unexpected shift off mid week he just uses whatever's in the fridge as though it's some kind of 'ready steady cook' challenge..... and totally Yes to the garlic (& other herbs/spices I don't regularly check levels of) - just write it down if you use it! Grr!

[ArmchairTraveller]

It's about living together as harmoniously as possible, I'm looking around my sitting room right now and I can see ongoing projects that would give many MNetters an attack of the vapours. But we know that different things are important to different people, so we compromise. And in an Aspie household ( 3 + me) seeing someone else's point isn't a strength!

[Whatamuckingfuddle]

I don't understand why people post just to be antagonistic? It's an Internet forum, you aren't 'winning'

[elevenweekstogo]

fwiw I found the thread fairly lighthearted and definitely AIBU-worthy until the serious garlic police arrived.

My husband was given a Nigel Slater recipe book for Christmas. I'm only just recovering. His aim is never to feed and satisfy the family of starving people in the house but to excite, to create, to tantalise the tastebuds, to master the ingredients and produce a sublime piece to enthrall those lucky enough to eat it. The kitchen surfaces? All of them, every knife, chopping board, grater, zester, you name it....

TBH - we both enjoy cooking so I'm just jealous that he gets to "cook" while every day of the week I need to efficiently "cater".

It's not so bad, he's got a heart of gold, it's all good intent. So in conclusion YABU but I'll join you in the grumpy corner

[ArmchairTraveller]

Could be worse, he might have received Darling Heston's oevres and then you'd be dealing with liquid nitrogen and garlic ice cream.

[FrannySalinger]

My husband follows recipes religiously. So if the recipe calls for six shallots and we have seven shallots, he'll use six. It makes me unreasonably annoyed. USE THE LAST SHALLOT. He'll constantly leave a minute amount of rosemary in a jar or black pepper in a pot and not bother saying anything as he hasn't technically used the last of it but there's not enough left to do anything with. But if the recipe didn't call for the last quarter teaspoon of an ingredient then there's no way it will use it. And god forbid there isn't quite enough of something! If he's cooking I'll hear from the kitchen (amidst banging saucepans and huffy stomping) 'great. guess I can't make that then'. When I sweetly ask what the problem is, it'll be something like we only have 225g of arborio rice and he needed 250g, IT WILL STILL WORK FFS JUST USE WHAT WE HAVE YOU ARE NOT HESTON FUCKING BLUMENTHAL.