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.

Oh that's exactly how DD cooks!

Sounds fucking annoying. Tell him to find a solution for the inedible chilli sauce. And when he fails to do so tell him to dispose of it. Maybe then he will actually learn from his mistakes.

Would joint meal planning/shopping help - that way you could factor in both the necessary ingredients and how to use the batch food. Having a board/list to write things that run out tends to work well for us.

I would jus t bin the sauce and move on. Don't risk 'polluting' further vats of slightly less chilli sauce - which you still cannot get anyone to eat.

Sounds no biggie to me either to be honest....!

Oh give him a break.

I made an almost inedible jambalaya this week because I added too much hot paprika and chilli powder and I've been cooking from scratch for almost 3 decades now. It happens to the best of us. Fortunately my husband was prepared to gasp his way through a plate of it, so that we didn't waste it and he hardly moaned at all.

I would freeze the sauce and use it bit by bit in other meals. That way no food is wasted.

Wouldn't irritate you that it's happened before and will happen again?
OP is exasperated, not furious.

I once created a chili so spicy that the effect while it was simmering on the job was like mustard gas.

had to evacuate my family from the house.

my own DP's biggest culinary failing is an inability to clean up, which in our tiny kitchen must be done before and after the preparation of even a sandwich.

You should make him eat it all (with a tea spoon) like Bruno and the chocolate cake in Matilda. You can dress up like Miss Trunchball too if you like.

How many times have you asked him to make, say, ten times less in quantity in his experiments. A large catering sized pot would produce a mad amount even if it were the most delicious sauce in the world.

If you can't see why this is annoying, you are incredibly lucky. you are obviously not sensitised to

• being expected to provide everything necessary for the house, which other people get to use,
• they are able to just play with necessary things on a whim and you are still expected to replace them - without even being told that they have been gone (to satisfy someones urge to play)
• you have to produce utiltarian food and never get to play yourself
• you are held respsonsible for everyone's likes and dislikes so producing the chilli sauce in a meal context will elicit howls of outrage - directed at you - not at the dick who made it, he is clearly allowed to play, you are the worker here
• you are responsible for household economy so the wasted ingredients are boring a hole in your brain looking for a solution, not his

I'd give him a break if it was a one off, but it sounds like it isn't. I'd be extremely annoyed if this kind of thing happened again and again in spite of previous chats/serious talks/epic rows! Even more so if I lived an hour's drive from the nearest shop. OP, YANBU at all.

Re the sauce - if it's very highly reduced, it might keep in sterilised jars, or what about freezing it in ice cube trays, if you have any empty ones lying around? You could then use s spoonful/cube as a kind of relish or to add to an ordinary tomato sauce.

You and he need to meal plan together. He knows what the food is then meant to last for and you can get forewarning of any plans he has. It sounds like he's willing but you're not working together so it's becoming a battle. Start talking about it. DH and I do this so we know the courgettes are for 3 diff meals or we're short on eggs so don't use them except for meal X but use as many tomatoes as you want etc.

Alternatively to the making him eat it all you could freeze it into single portions and every time the family eat something with pasta sauce (like tonight's meatballs) his portion gets his sauce.

This sounds familiar, except my DHs forte is burning things and overheating and destroying my brand new non stick pan

How about using coconut milk to dilute the chilli in the tomato sauce... Then maybe freezing it in small portions for when the whole family aren't eating together?

It annoys me when he makes something, doesn't clean up and then spends the whole meal raving about how delicious it is, but wouldn't say anything near as effusive about my cooking, even though I do it day in day out. The dc don't think his is particularly better than mine and too spicy for them. I can't eat it anyway as contains ingredients which have hospitalised me, so I am not too sure who the audience is for his trumpet blowing is.

YY to only being able to use stuff in a recipe, although he will add extra chilli and pepper, but doesn't taste before adding more. Oh and he will go and buy the ingredients for a meal, forgetting that he only used half the pot of chilli last week and so we end up with lots of duplication. He is the only person I know capable of going shopping, spending £80 and still not having a single coherent meal which can be cooked from the purchases, unless cheese board counts as a meal. He does have other redeeming features!

You preface your post by saying it's not MY kitchen and then summarise the many ways your husband broke YOUR (unwritten?) kitchen rules. Whilst I can see that might be irritating, it does sound unreasonable.

Not exactly the same, but my DH doesn't often cook (definitely does his share of everything overall though) and when he does he seems to think he is on a cooking show and needs to chop everything first and put it into bowls, or spends 20 minute running garlic onto steaks. It drives me mad when he says he will go and get dinner on and 30 minutes later the oven isn't even on.

Sad you are rude. I would be irritated with the OP's DH too

Franny yes! My DH follows a recipe religiously too even but doesn't cook that often. So let's say he is boiling an egg (unfortunately using a pan you could fit 40 eggs in). He sets the timer and if it goes off whilst he is not in the kitchen, he drops everything literally and runs, It's like he's doing the 2 minute mile, pushing past anyone in the way to get to the pan. As if 10 extra seconds to get there will make any difference. 'Tis very annoyin

OP
I'm completely on your side
That kind of lack of cooperation with Providing food for the family would drive me nuts
My biggest objection is to do with Waste
What he has made is in edible
What about the children ? Did he not include Them in his meal plans
Also the irony of you making meatballs the same day ....when a base tomato sauce is needed
What's IS So Difficult about adding Chilli for example TO TATSE
So add slowly until desired effect
In all honesty IF it was me I would just ban him from BULK COOKING
Normal cooking FINE
Until he finds a recipie that can be mulitiplied

Using all the garlic . Also inconsiderate

Why has he gone out to get garlic for the meatballs? Presumably you have all the other ingredients except garlic. Why not just use the sauce over the meatballs and dilute it down with passata or tomatoes that you have in if its only garlic he needs?
I agree this is quite annoying but as he's gone to replace the ingredients, assuming you have not financial difficulties which makes the waste of money stressful, then I don't see the problem.

YANBU

He destroys the kitchen, makes large pots of inedible food and uses up all the ingredients, not on.

It's not the making mistakes that is unreasonable, I've made some horrific dishes when learning new recipes . It's making vast quantities of something that no-one will eat, using all the ingredients when you're on a tight budget, and the annoyance of starting a meal then reaching fir an ingredient that you know you've recently bought and it's all gone.
Like when I was making my veg soup last Monday, got the carrots and celery softened, then went to get the onions but they were all in Sunday's gravy (would you like some gravy with your onions).

XH never did something like this, because he had such a poor palate that he never ate anything spicy in his whole life, but when he took the notion to cook, he used every bloody pot and pan in the house! What really got my goat was that he would then say 'I cooked so you clean up.' Yeah and when I cooked every other day, I also did the cleaning up!

I am still not sure now why I remained married to him for as long as I did. You have my sympathies, although I have no clue what you could do with the sauce.