No confidence in the kitchen

[Idontmind94]

Hi all

After some advice please!

I live with dh and 2 young dc's. When it's just us I have no problems cooking/prepping/chopping. However as soon as we have guests I lose confidence in myself when people are standing in the kitchen watching and I usually say "no i'm good, you go sit!"

Same thing if we go over to MIL's for Christmas for instance, or a birthday, I dread her asking me to give her a hand in the kitchen out of fear i'm going to do it wrong! Sounds silly but it stems from when she lived with us for awhile and would stand there and make comments such as "why are you chopping the onions so small? Why are you not adding x,y,z to it? That's not going to taste good". A year of that kind of knocked my confidence and now I dread being in anyone's kitchen helping them, or them helping me.

During get togethers, i'd much rather clear up/do dishes etc rather than be in the kitchen and help but it probably comes across as unhelpful. How do I overcome this?

Can you relate or is it just me? Lol

I hate people being in the kitchen talking to me because I can't focus on two things at the same time and I'm normally a bit stressed about entertaining anyway so I get really overwhelmed.

My DH knows to come and tell my MIL to leave me in peace so I can get on.

When visiting the in-laws, can you get DH to tell his MIL that he'll help instead so you can relax?

I'm am a chef. I hate it when friends and family help in the kitchen. I just give them a drink and tell them to (politely) fuck off 😉 It's a different kind of pressure, that doesn't really leave. I tend to do a lot of the prep in advance. When visiting, I offer to help prep but find that people typically do not expect much help in the kitchen, it's harder to give instructions sometimes than to just do it yourself. If someone has hosted I always do the washing up regardless of whether I helped cook or not. I think that's just polite.

If you don't feel comfortable then tell people that. 😊 They are trying to take pressure off you not add to it!

Is there a cooking course you can take locally? You might enjoy it and also it might boost your confidence!

Thank you all for the replies 😀 really good idea about the cooking class actually. Glad i'm not the only one that doesn't like to be bothered while i'm cooking and there's nothing wrong with that🤣 thanks once again!

I'm not surprised your confidence is shaken when your MIL was so rude to you in the past. I think most people feel a bit self-conscious when somebody is watching them cook, you're not unusual in that.

I am a confident cook and I hate anyone being in the kitchen with me! One of my friends, bless her, always wants to watch me cook as she’s not so confident and says she always learns stuff watching me. I begrudgingly let her but it really annoys me 😆

Came expecting to give tips but honestly I'm not surprised you lost confidence, your MIL was unbelievably rude.

I think your best option is to practice some polite ways of telling people they can fuck off or cook themselves.