Slightly miffed at In-Laws buying us food.

[Christmasbeach]

MIL has always bought DP and his brother food since they both moved out. BIL stopped MIL years ago (apart from when she offers him steak/high end meat) but DP still accepts the occasional bag when she's insistent. DP does try to reject these bags but sometimes she'll sneak them into his back seat etc.

I joke with DP that she's playing ready steady cook with us as it's always bizarre items that she's found a good deal on. Usually it's a bag of biscuits/cakes/bread/microwavable rice/crisps with the occasional newly released burgers/seasoned meat. I've always found it slightly bizarre that two men in their thirties are treated like uni students but i've heard that other mums do the same. A lot of the bag of food is cupboard things that DP usually just takes to work for a free home if he's not interested in and if we're given meat he'll have it for lunch.

Now the bit i'm feeling a bit miffed at, if not slightly offended, is that since we've announced that we're pregnant she's been sending food for us both. By that we've received a lot more meat/things for meals but it's all asda essentials. Asda essential sausages, chicken thighs (the original packaging was damaged therefore she put them in a freezer bag for us), wafer ham, ready made mash potato etc.

She quite often makes digs that i'm too much of a health freak (because i've ordered pasta/vegetarian meals out) and 'she ate everything while pregnant'. She knows that I do care what goes into my body, I'm not a huge meat eater and I enjoy cooking. We really do not need hand outs as we're both on good salaries and buying us all this Asda Essentials has only came about after we've announced we're pregnant.

It's also very inconvenient too as we meal plan/do the weekly shop therefore we're either left eating a meal we don't particularly want to eat or unfortunately it goes to waste. I have tried being polite to MIL that either we don't have room in our fridge/freezer or we're not going straight home/there isn't any need as we do our own shops.

MIL has now made a comment to DP that i'm not appreciative. AIBU that as a pregnant professional I'm not exactly jumping for joy at the lowest end chicken thighs in a non labelled freezer bag that needed to be eaten that day?

Your DH needs to be very firm with her like his brother was, and tell his mother that you do not want the food and that you will not be taking it. She can then do what she wants with it and hopefully stop buying it.

I know it is hard to hurt someone's feelings and sometimes it's easier to just put up and shut up but she won't stop unless he makes it clear that you don't want it.

I wouldn't want the hassle of taking it to a food bank. Just leave it behind every single time.

My MIL was like this. I eventually really grasped that it was coming from a place of love. Feeding people was how she showed love.

I do appreciate that this presents you with a practical challenge: how to stop the gifts or redirect them without having to spend huge amounts of time doing so. Good luck with that! But always remember she loves you and there are worse problems to have.

If you don’t want it but appreciate others might can you offer it on a local FB group as surplus ?

FGS only on Mumsnet would we turn against a Mum who loves her son and wife so much that she’s trying to help them in the way she’s always done.
But because it’s cheaper stuff and not what the OP wants in her middle class organic world, she comes on here to be told she is not being unreasonable.

What happened to manners, to respect, to just being nice!!

The chicken in the damaged package wasn’t ideal but it’s not going to poison anyone.

Agree with this! Perfect answer without seeming rude or ungrateful

Is "Give it to a foodbank" the new "cancel the cheque ".
I know where the donation points are for dry food goods at my supermarket, but I'd have no idea where to start to donate fridge items.

Besides the OP taking time out of her busy day to donate items she didn't ask for doesn't address the root cause of not needing them in the first place.

OP is there anything you do actually need from Asda? Perhaps you can set MIL on displacement shopping so rather than buying things you don't want she buys what you need - assuming of course that her purchases come from a good place in her heart, rather than a desire to dictate how much meat her DS gets to eat.

I agree that it comes from a place of love .. and your MIL has included you which from some of the stories I read on her is something to be grateful for

Do you have any idea how daft that response makes you seem?

And I work in a food bank....

My MIL used to do this. It drove me mad because of the waste. She would bring us a massive bag of end of aisle yellow sticker stuff all on its best before date when we already had food in the fridge. I tried to tell her kindly, I asked DH to tell her kindly that it wouldn't get eaten because we had already done a shop. But she just kept bringing bags of stuff we didn't want. I know that sounds horribly ungrateful which why it was hard to tell her we didn't want it. She was a child in the war and grew up in quite extreme poverty so I didn't want to seem like a spoilt middle class brat. When I realised she wasn't going to stop bringing "a bit of shopping for you", I managed to get her to switch to things like cleaning products or catfood that weren't just on the verge of going off and were genuinely useful. It's done through kindness and a desire to help and probably when she was a young mum she would have appreciated it.

Sorry, just seen a comment saying you're coming across as snobbish and that's absolutely not the case at all. I don't eat cheap meat either, my dh has tried tricking me to see if it's psychological or not but I always know when the meat is cheap. The mince/chicken etc is a horrible texture when it's low end. You're 100% NOT being unreasonable. I also meal plan too and it'd be annoying as hell to have to try to accommodate 'eat on the day' random offerings.

Doesn't matter if others would be grateful for it, there's people starving worldwide but that doesn't mean you can't enjoy good quality food. It shouldn't be put on you to find another home for it, mil needs to stop causing the issue.

Easier said than done but keep firmly declining saying yous have enough in/no space etc. Your DH ideally needs to be the one to tell her he's a competent adult with a competent partner and as much as it's appreciated (the thought), it's not necessary.

I think your DH needs to say something, maybe along the lines of you have specific dietary needs and you meal plan carefully and while you are super touched that she's thinking of you, you like to buy your own food to your specific tastes / dietary requirements, you prefer to do your own food shopping and the food will not be used, and you would prefer she gave it to a food bank or something so as not to waste it.

Or say if she's super keen to give food offer to give her a list of the things you actually will eat to avoid future waste? Cupboard staples you can save to use when you need them. She will likely reject buying them.

Or finally, start making up bags of food for her back - things she wouldn't normally eat! she might get an understanding of why you aren't keen. Or just give the food she gives to you back to her in a "gesture of kindness".

“Ah, we won’t use it, but thanks for the thought.”

Said with your arms outstretched handing the stuff straight back to her. And if she won’t take it you put the bag down on the floor next to her. “There you go.”

my inlaws did this to us so many times as and when they saw “bargains which I couldn’t leave”, and this was what we had to say in the end. Be blunt if they don’t take a polite hint. It wasn’t always food. Think packs of undies for 4 year olds when our sons were not even 2 and still in nappies “oh I know they’re not the right age but I thought you could put them away for when they are.”

They turned up on the doorstep with a cot when I was pregnant. Really nice thought but I wouldn’t necessarily have bought that colour so then we were forced to buy furniture to match it and for the next few years I was irritated by that furniture every time I went in the room because it wasn’t what I would have chosen. But because it was a nice thought and they were excited for us we didn’t want to ask them to take it back.

they have wasted so much food over the years because they buy “whoops” stuff from Asda and then put it in the freezer for themselves (they have 2!) and then forget they have it, and it just spoils after a few years.

the worst food one was them turning up to our child’s birthday party with a big birthday cake. I had already arranged a (smaller) birthday cake of course so while it was a nice gesture it went to waste really. I know it’s just cake but it pissed me off because it felt like they were trying to take over or assert their way of doing things on us, or get the “attention” if I was going to swap the cakes and tell everyone that the bigger one was one that the inlaws had just brought round.

it still happens now and again. Most recently was one tin of fence paint in a very specific colour. They don’t have a fence so god knows why they bought it. They tried to foist it on all their adult kids who do have a fence but of course no-one, including us, wanted it because you need more than one tin to do a whole fence in a garden and the colour was far too specific anyway. We are all aged around 50 and want to choose our own goddamn fence colours!

they are lovely people but sometimes have been a bit overbearing with stuff like that. Nothing else really, just material things/“bargains”.

I don’t want to be a knob but it just sounds like she’s being caring. Maybe this is her way of showing love. She obviously wants to help.

Maybe you work in a foodbank but you clearly don’t understand why people use it.

Slyly dumping food in your son’s car when you’ve been told no is not an entirely benevolent action. If she loves her son she can bloody well listen to him, not use him as an excuse to dump the stuff she buys but doesn’t like.

Yes and there are children starving all over the world but that doesn't change the OP situation does it?

not really shaming though is it, when she’s just pointing out it’s of lower quality than what they already buy? Unsealed meat isn’t exactly safe even in the best of times let alone when you’re pregnant.

I’m pregnant and I’ve budgeted to buy higher quality food over the next few months, but that doesn’t mean I look down on people who can’t afford to it just didn’t want to at all.

"Don't be offended. She's just being a mama bear."

🤢 was your hubby preggers too?

The problem here is you’ve tried to tell her and she isn’t listening. It’s nothing to do with being snobbish. My mum often brings random bits of shopping for me but it’s all stuff she knows I will use in brands etc I use and it’s usually that she’s found it on offer. Useful things like toilet rolls, washing powders tea bags etc and I love it but if I told her I would rather she didn’t she would respect that.
You really need your husband/partner to get firm with her or it will get so much worse when the baby comes and you start getting random nappies or lotions etc to use x

First World bitch problems love.

Give it to a Foodbank :)

@Chicca1970

read the thread!!

you cannot give fresh meat to a food bank

And make sure you eat up your dinner. Think of the starving in Africa.

She’s doing something kind; she thinks she’s helping and you’re being ungrateful. If you don’t want it take it to a good bank. My mum does this time to time I can see how happy she looks when she’s bought something she really likes.

It is food that the OP doesn’t need or want, and it will go to waste. All she wants is for her MIL to stop giving her things that she doesn’t need, doesn’t want, and will be thrown away. What on earth is she being unreasonable about?

Yep would annoy me too. OP doesn’t need to grateful, she’s not asked for it, doesn’t want it. I’m sure she would be grateful if she was bought food items that she enjoyed, but that’s not the case here, I’d be the exact same.