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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Horrified watching my aunt prepare today's lunch...

351 replies

user1477282676 · 02/01/2017 09:35

Just checking that I'm not being super sensitive! Was at MIL's today for lunch...Aunt was in charge of potatoes which were to be boiled and covered in garlic, butter and herbs.

Lovely.

Except...not.

I had to watch her as she put the butter etc in and using a selection of utensils, repeatedly lick them after she'd stirred the potatoes...and then plunge them into the potatoes again....good stir....back into the butter dish...more licking...back into the potatoes...then back into the butter...another good lick.

Boak.

She then, coughed into the pot for good measure.

Shock

This is a bit lighthearted by the way....she's not in her dotage or anything...60 years old and perfectly together...she knew I was sititng there watching.

I had been looking forward to a nice spud! I had to refuse them and eat meat and salad!

What gets INTO some people?

OP posts:
queenie53 · 04/01/2017 00:33

Easy answer, two spoons, dip one into food then drop a bit on to the other tasting spoon. One only goes in pot, one only goes in mouth.

Galdos · 04/01/2017 07:48

Just think: some of the food you eat will have had sex, licked its arse, been shat on by someone ... This is about perception. For the fastidious (and ideally all restaurants should be fastidious) queenie's solution is the best and obvious one.

I seem to recall Gordon Ramsey on TV using his finger to sample dishes ...?

SirChenjin · 04/01/2017 08:09

I also recall Gordon Ramsay bollocking someone who dropped a bit of food on the floor, immediately picked it up and threw it in the boiling oil on the grounds that the heat would kill the bacteria. GR wasn't having any of that in a restaurant under his charge.

Lulu49 · 04/01/2017 08:38

I do this when I'm cooking for me and my kids!

Driger13 · 04/01/2017 10:21

I'll admit to doing this when I'm cooking for my OH and my kids, after all, I think it's fairly hard to avoid that saliva and what not when I live in the same household as them and share pretty much everything inside the house with them.

However, I don't do this with anyone outside my family and if I did see someone doing it, it'd make me feel sick. Not from a hygiene, 'oh look dirty germs! Ewww!' sort of approach, but because I hate (and I really cannot emphasise that word enough) saliva. I can handle any other bodily fluid and I have a very strong stomach for things but saliva makes me retch. Thankfully, I'm usually away with the fairies too often to think beyond what may be in or on what goes into my mouth unless I've actually seen it be prepared, otherwise I'd probably never eat thinking about people's saliva being in my food!

dora38 · 04/01/2017 12:29

Oh seriously. People are obsessed with flipping germs. My parents in law in particular and by default now my husband and his brothers too. Drives me mental. The part that cracks me up is that they are always sick, probably as a consequence of having no immune system properly built up.Shoes have to be taken off at the door, won't mind the grandkids if they have a sniffle ( they 3 doors away from us ).We have had to take time off work while they sit home , 30 seconds away. New laundry must be pre washed before using. The list goes on. On the flip side my aunt and uncle and cousins were manky people, had a filthy house , cooked in a most worrying manner and they both lived past 80 in great health and their kids never missed a day of school EVER. Such healthy an robust people to this day. So I take a lot of this rubbish with a pinch of salt and while I keep a clean house , within reason , I don't sweat the small stuff. Nobody will die from an aunt licking a spoon. But apparently research is now telling us that over cleaning and use of chemicals can be quite harmful long term. Imagine !

dora38 · 04/01/2017 12:30

A bit on the sensitive side you are.

OldmumofKent · 04/01/2017 12:59

Simple solution learnt at school: use a wooden spoon to stir the food. If you need to test use this spoon to drizzle on to a teaspoon and taste from that. Keep the spoons separate and there is no need to wash either spoon between tastings, unless you want to rinse the teaspoon. Never put the spoon licked back in the pot, but the wooden spoon has never touched the tongue! Simple and effective, anything else is just yuck!

BrieAndChilli · 04/01/2017 13:16

I died to work in an icream factory in school holidays, we had gloves for touching the food but we free to breathe/cough all over it. We also packed the boxes with bare hands so anything on our hands would then go onto the wrapper that you touch when you eat them.
I imagine most food is similar so everything you touch has most probably got germs on.

HelpTheTigers · 04/01/2017 17:02

it's definitely a bit yucky but not as bad as something that I saw years ago when at the house of my ex's late aunt. I reckon that using a teatowel to wipe up the worms that the dog had just produced by scraping it's behind along the carpet was infinitely worse. ExFIL used to refuse to eat anything that she had made and would only have something that others had brought or prepared. I wonder why!!

GlomOfNit · 05/01/2017 09:37

Am beginning to think that society today is becoming obsessed with non-issues of 'contamination'. I meet loads of people who would never, ever buy a homemade cake off a cake stall or eat homemade treats given to teachers, because 'you can't tell where they've been'. FFS. Humans have coped with home cooking and the odd bit of licking the spoon for millennia but if we wrap ourselves up in cotton wool now, our immune systems are really going to suffer!

I lick fingers or spoons occasionally when cooking. I may sometimes do this when cooking for non-family members. I don't if I have a cold. Nobody has died.

Original poster
user1477282676 · 05/01/2017 09:49

Glom...well given I'm 44 and have always been this way inclined, I don't think it's anything to do with "today's society".

Why don't you just be less gross and wipe your hands on a cloth and use a separate spoon for tasting?

OP posts:
Jaysis · 05/01/2017 14:32

I'm not one bit afraid of germs. I love nothing better than DC coming in filthy from a day playing in the garden, because I think it's great for their immune system. I even have a toilet brush Grin

But I think that digging your licked fingers into another person's cooked dinner or licking their cutlery is just a bit gross. Some people's saliva really stinks and especially if they are a smoker.

One that makes my stomach churn a bit is a certain relative coughs open mouthed onto the table without even attempting to turn their head to the side or cover their mouth. Right onto their plates or into the face of their dinner companion. They have poor dental hygiene too and have chesty phlegmy coughs. I noticed recently that their sibling does it too, much to my dismay eating at a lovely restaurant with them.

coffeetasteslikeshit · 06/01/2017 08:05

Bit gross but wouldn't bother me enough not to eat the potatoes. We all know it goes on and there's no harm, but seeing it happen is maybe a step too far for some.

DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen · 06/01/2017 08:10

I have more issues with food being left out too long after cooking and being refrigerated also leftovers not being reheated properly

INeedNewShoes · 06/01/2017 08:13

Completely with you Dame

On boxing day at my aunt's house I insisted that the rest of the turkey was carved off the carcass so that it could go in the fridge!

My parents were still eating the turkey on day 5. I'd lost my nerve after day 3.

DameDiazepamTheDramaQueen · 06/01/2017 08:40

I hear you! How we dodged food poisoning over Xmas is a minor miracle! Hmm

SOboredofcleaning · 04/12/2020 06:23

I would have told her to stop it!!

VainAbigail · 04/12/2020 06:56

🚨🧟‍♀️ ZOMBIE THREAD 🧟 🚨

Oneliner · 04/12/2020 06:56

Super spreader event

RinderTinderNotRinderGrinder · 04/12/2020 07:07

WHY HAVE YOU RESURRECTED THIS?!

Leave the zombies to cough on food pre-pandemic.

WhataFarce76 · 04/12/2020 07:19

One Christmas I was really looking forward to the after dinner cheeseboard. It was all set out looking lovely with cheese knives etc so no need to really touch the cheeses. MIL proceeded to pick up every cheese with bare hands and hold them while cutting. She has really long fingernails too, and it completely grossed me out so much that I didn't eat any of the cheeses. I was so gutted.
Agree with everyone who thinks spoon licking and double dipping is disgusting, there's no need for it.

Mamanyt · 04/12/2020 07:31

I suggest to many of you that you begin to grow your own food and butcher your own meat. Are you all aware that there are gvt standards in food processing plants for how much insect parts, rat hair/dropping are allowed in processed foods?

LightasaBreeze · 04/12/2020 07:35

Zombie thread
Zombie thread
Zombie thread

VestaTilley · 04/12/2020 07:45

WTAF?! Is she thick?? Why would anyone do that?!

I’d have said something - probably angrily! - to her. And told everyone not to eat them.