Who is BU? Me for throwing food out or him for insisting I don't

[Whatthe4]

As I went to take the kids dinner bits out of the freezer I realised they were defrosted, checked the plug and somebody had turned it off by mistake.

I've no idea how long it was switched off but it has to be more than 24 hours. The ice creams had melted, sausages defrosted as were the chicken dippers and OH's couple of boxes of fish. Fortunately we hadn't just done a big shop and only had a few bits in there as we're going on holiday.

I don't have time to cook and refreeze everything so after taking out the bits I am cooking today I put the remnants in the bin. A few sausages, a handful or so of chicken dippers left in the bottom of the bag, the melted ice cream, a couple of handfuls or two of soggy chips. Next to nothing in the grand scheme of things. I don't make a habit of throwing out food.

DP was irritated by this and is huffing and puffing about wasting it. I told him you can't refreeze meat without cooking it. He insists you can and that the freezer would have only been off for a few hours.

I pointed out that the freezer has a 24 hour back up and as the food was defrosted there's no way it has only been off for a few hours.

He doesnt like being told he has something wrong, ever. I caught him about to cook out of date smelly chicken before from the fridge.

He grumbles on about how he doesn't want me to throw his fish away. Thats fine. If he wants it he can risk it but I wasn't taking any chances with the kids sausages and chicken etc.

He's still in a bad mood and I think he's being ridiculous.

Who, if any of us, is being unreasonable?

Oh god no, it needs to all go. You can't risk it with defrosted meats. I once accidentally gave my poor mum awful food poisoning this way. I had left sausages out to defrost and 'someone' (ex H) popped them back in the freezer not realising they'd already been thawed. At a later date, not realising they were the same ones I re-thawed and cooked them for my mum. She was so, so poorly from it. It was only later me and ex H realised what must have happened. I don't think she's forgiven me or ex H to this day!

I used to work in a frozen gateau factory and we would remove the cakes from the freezers numerous times to fill with cream, decorate at various stages and for packing.

The OP is talking about meat and poultry, though. I think that's quite different.

This is what my gut tells me yes.

I dont think he does it intentionally and if I did I would have got shot of him long ago. I don't know how to say this without sounding awful but he isn't the most intelligent man. He has lots of great qualities but communication and handling critism well definitely don't make the list.

The same applies to meat. It can safely be refrozen as long as it’s not had chance to warm up.
Meat and cream are both high risk foods, so it’s not quite different.

Without sounding awful, don’t you find that a lot of men are similar? They tend not to be as empathetic as women, which makes them worse at communicating. Not because they’re incapable, it’s because of how they’re conditioned etc. And many of us can be thin skinned and take things personally from time to time.

Maybe he’s just had a long day, he’s grumpy, knows it was his fault, knows he’s being slated on mumsnet, knows he’s being petulant so he’s stomped off to cool down 🤷‍♀️

Shake it off, chuck out the offending items, enjoy the evening and wait for him to apologise and make it up to you. As long as his behaviour isn’t actually designed to make you give in, pander, compromise your boundaries - then it’s prob not intentional x

This is a very balanced and fair post, thank you. You're right.

I don't see any purposeful malice in anything he has ever said or done, he isn't unkind, just rubbish at communicating and handling criticism. The latter I do believe stems from some shit stuff from childhood.

He is his own worst critic and when he knows he has fucked up in some way, he gets really down on himself about it and annoyed. Sometimes that does come across as him being an arse but his annoyance is almost always directed inwardly.