AIBU to have finally snapped?

[ChilliWillies]

Strap yourself in, this will be long. I’ve also name changed as what I’ll write is so identifying if you know me.
DH is a fussy eater. He claims he isn’t and that I’m the ‘weird’ one as I eat almost anything. DS6 is also going through a phase of saying he ‘hates’ the food I’ve made. For the record, I’m a good cook and am often complimented on my food.
I have managed to expand DH’s very limited palate over a lot of years so we can have less boring food, but any new recipe is met with suspicion. I can almost accept this, but what is CANNOT handle is that he changes his fucking mind! Something I made last week that he really enjoyed, this week ‘tastes awful’. I never know if he will like something that week or not. He also has form for getting annoyed about how food is served - I served curry and rice in big pasta bowls once and he made a big performance of tipping it all out onto a plate before he would eat it. I am the only cook - he can cook, but gets ridiculously stressed by it and also takes 3 hours to make anything.
Last night, I put dinner on the table, DS said ‘yuck, I hate this’ (he doesn’t, he loved it last week, getting this behaviour from his dad 😡) and left the table. DH poked at it dubiously, tried a bit and said ‘this is really bad’. It was some Sicilian Lamb Stew, leftover from the week before, that I’d frozen and then defrosted yesterday, served over a jacket potato. I explained he had liked it last time, and he said ‘what, with a jacket potato?’ I explained last time I’d served it with mashed potato and he literally said ‘oh that will be it then, you shouldn’t serve it with a jacket potato’!!!! 😡🙄. As if that would change the taste of the stew completely.
So, I actually lost it, stormed out, went to the shop and bought crappy white sliced bread, (he will moan if I buy unsliced bread, or anything with healthy seeds and grains in it) cheap ham, burgers, chicken nuggets and chips. When I got hone, I told him that’s what they were getting from now on, I give up.
He clearly didn’t believe me, because when I made lunch just now I made them plain ham sandwiches and made myself a new chicken story fry with peanut noodles recipe I’d been wanting to try. He’s got the right hump and is now not speaking to me.
So, we’ll done for getting this far. AIBU for subjecting to them to ham sandwiches and beige food for at least two weeks until they realise how good they had it?

I still can't understand why you're making him the sandwiches? You've bought ham and bread, leave him to fix his own meals. You're teaching him nothing.

How utterly joyless! I would be telling him not asking him to make his own uninteresting meals!

There is a world of difference between lamb stew and mashed potato and lamb stew and jacket potato!

Let the ungrateful shits starve

The child is 6. People are so weirdly angry about this stranger-on-the-internet's eating arrangements! Guess lockdown is getting to us all :)

Ive had the odd comment from DH, we can't all like everything, sometimes I do something and don't like it, but this level would absolutely P me off, he would have been making his lunch for a long time!

Why are you cooking for someone who doesn't like your food, who does not even have the manners to be politics about the food you have cooked?

Not even remotely unreasonable!

I wouldn't start cooking for him again until he apologised fully and stopped behaving like a spoilt brat.

Your DS can't be allowed to copy this behaviour - it's bad enough when they do it off their own bat (DS2 is a bit fussy) but when they're copying an adult in their life, then it's much harder to deal with because they think "well Dad can do it, why can't I?".
I would make sure that you and DS eat at a different time from your husband for a while, until he sorts himself out, so that DS can be encouraged to eat properly.

Your biggest issue here is that he's turning your DS into an erratic, fussy, ungrateful eater. That would make me so angry. I'd be telling them that if he doesn't like the food, that's fine. But to constantly complain and be inconsistent is setting a really bad example for the DC and you are not going to put up with it anymore.

I'd also be tempted to start eating with just you and DC and he can sort his own food out. And feel free to say things like, "Daddy doesn't like as much variety as we do." or "Daddy's food is a bit boring so we're going to eat this yummy different food instead."

Agree with this totally.

You’ve married a child. Stop pandering to him. Cook what you want if he doesn’t like it he can make himself something

yabu to still be making them lunch... if it was me they'd not only be making it themselves, but buying their beige food themselves too.

@ItsAllComingBackToMeNow

Your biggest issue here is that he's turning your DS into an erratic, fussy, ungrateful eater. That would make me so angry. I'd be telling them that if he doesn't like the food, that's fine. But to constantly complain and be inconsistent is setting a really bad example for the DC and you are not going to put up with it anymore.

I'd also be tempted to start eating with just you and DC and he can sort his own food out. And feel free to say things like, "Daddy doesn't like as much variety as we do." or "Daddy's food is a bit boring so we're going to eat this yummy different food instead."

Agree with this totally.

This 100%

OP I think I would talk to him seriously about this and tell him that he is not to pull this shit in front of your son. Then I would tell him each day what you are making for dinner and that if he doesn't fancy it, he can sort something else out for himself.

Is DH's family also like this when it comes to food?

My dh is not overly fussy but dislikes vegetables which dislike he passed to our children and now our grandchildren. It makes me so mad. I also hate it when he makes helpful "suggestions" for the meal I have cooked, God it makes me fume. Last week I did chicken in sauce and as he started to eat it, he told me it would have been better if I had added mushrooms. I had.

He also suggested that the vegetable curry would be better with chicken. Right, well then it wouldn't be veg curry would it?

He is just annoying, but your dh is a whole other level. It is like he is using food to put you down and hurt you. He is unreasonable and unkind. He is passing his bad manners onto your child. I never cook two meals. You take it or leave it. I also hate it when my grandchildren shovel it down and dash off but there you go.

I hope he isn't so horrible to you in other aspects of your life.

yanbu. I would be furious at this bloody nonsense. And your 6yo needs consequences too.

I live with a vegetarian and she use to be very fussy.
She doesn’t like anything that reminds her of meat not even a bean burger. And to that she won’t eat rice soya mince or pasta. Thankfully I have managed to expand what she eats a little bit but it can be hard work.

As so many others have said, just stop cooking for him. Why are you bringing these males food? Surely they are capable of making their own?

Just stop. Stop complaining (justifiably I know) about your ungrateful husband but continuing to cook for and feed him.

I also dont understand why its taking him 3 hours to cook anything when it takes 30 mins at the most to cook anything beige at 180 degrees in a fan oven - nuggets, chips, etc.

Ok, just seen DS is 6, I thought you just had a large family
Ok cook for DS. Let Dh sort himself out. Or he can cook for all of you.

Stop cooking anything for your husband. Stop serving him food. He is an adult and not your problem. Let him sort his own food or let him ask you if you would cook for him again on the basis that he will behave like a polite, functioning adult if you do. No one has to eat what they don't like but neither do they need to be so bloody aggressive and critical to you about the food they don't like.

Call your 6 year old for dinner and tell him you don't want any comments other than thank you. When mine were younger and fussier I put bread and fruit on the table with every meal so at least something was eaten but I certainly didn't tolerate anyone giving out about my perfectly nice food.

If my 6 year old said "yuck I don't like this" and left the table we'd be having words. Manners matter with family too (although given how your dh behaves, no wonder your ds is rude to you).

I would genuinely leave my husband if he behaved in this way.

YANBU. Stick to your guns!

It is like he is using food to put you down and hurt you.

yes this struck me too.

"Darling, do you want some dinner?"

"What are my choices?"

"Yes or bloody No"

Very easily resolved. You cook for yourself and DH cooks for him and DS. You have done 6 years of cooking for DS so your DH can do the next 6.

I would have given up on this farce a loooong time ago. He needs to make his own meals. My DH started to complain about some of the meals I made. It lasted a week and I said if he moaned just once more, he would be cooking his own. He stopped moaning, and I still cook the food. I guess there’s still some stuff I make which he dislikes, but the difference is he now keeps his thoughts to himself.

It would be one thing to surreptitiously leave a part of a meal he wasn’t too keen on. Quite another to loudly announce he doesn’t like it. No wonder your DS thinks it’s ok to criticise food when it is put in front of him. It sounds like your husband perhaps comes from a background of fussy eating - what are his DPs or DSibs like? You need to make it really clear to him that he is modelling behaviour for your DS and he is currently modelling really bad manners!