To be annoyed that DH has just spent £25 on dinner?

[SnappyHorse]

We’ve just had our usual Saturday night ‘what shall we have for dinner’ conversation. Me not wanting to cook because I cook every night because I’m home earlier than DH, and DC’s wanting takeaway fish and chip which costs £30 every time. We compromised on fish and chips from the Co-Op round the corner which I can just chuck in the oven.

DH said he’d nip out. He’s just come back from M&S having spent £25 on Gastro fish and chips. I’m sure they’ll taste lovely, but I’m annoyed that he’s spent £25 on 1 dinner. We haven’t really got £25 to spend on 1 dinner and if he was going to spend that, why didn’t he just get takeaway?

Slightly light hearted, but I am annoyed with him.

This is so mumsnet. 🤣🤣🤣

In some relationships man cooking night =takeaway. It's pathetic. I sympathise. And getting something YOU can just chuck in the oven is no solution.

And so not fish and chips!

Costs us just over £30 for a chippy tea and that’s with only the 2 of us out of 4 having a small fish each. Used to be £20 18 months ago!

In some relationships man cooking night =takeaway. It's pathetic. I sympathise. And getting something YOU can just chuck in the oven is no solution.

Or woman, I can’t stand cooking, husband does all the cooking and if he is out or away I’ll order takeaway.

Are they not on the £12 dine in, so he would have got 2 sides and 2 starters/desserts as well? Sounds like a bargain to me 😍

I think that’s pretty ok for M&S and for 4 people to be honest. We often get the 3 pasta trays for £8 as a midweek meal for 2. Expensive but always delicious and no cooking which was the point of the purchase. Our local Greek takeaway has closed and the alternative now costs average £35 for two adults and one 6 year old. It’s a once a week treat

We hadn’t been to the local chippy for ages but I fancied some chips after a shit day and it was £7 for two portions. I nearly died. The kebab shop now charges £5 for a large chips.

My parents live by the sea up north and a massive portion of chips there, big enough for two is about 2-3 quid.

He got meals with starters and desserts, hardly comparable to buying a box of breaded fish from the co op and a bag of frozen chips.
The starters can easily be bulked out to make another meal if you can’t justify £25 for 1 dinner.
It sounds like you would have been fine if he had spent it on a takeaway though so it doesn’t seem entirely about the cost.

I’m a chef and hate cooking now , I live off my slow cooker

I think £25 or even £30 is perfectly normal for fish&chips for 4 people, so yes YABU thinking that is too much for a meal where 4 eat an adult portion each. But indeed you might expect your husband to run the errand you'll had agreed on, so there YANBU.

It’s £25… everyone ate and I’m sure it’s delicious. No it’s not what you would have done. But is it bad?

He probably thought he was doing a nice thing, getting the meal deals etc, he doesn't sound too bad to me, let him off this time

@Papyrophile

she didn't want to cook from scratch,
she cooks every other bloody night.

she wanted peoples thoughts on what her DH did, not patronising cooking instructions.

DH & teen kids need to take their turns at cooking.

Because he spend money on fish and chips?!
Maybe he thinks they can afford it, God forbid a grown adult spends some of their earned money on anything more than gruel and water.

Unfortunately it's pretty standard now. I live in a small village in Northern Ireland and it's £8 for fish and chips from the chippy and it's £17 at my local restaurant.

This sounds like the exact sort of thing my husband would do. And I would likely be sat in a bit of a huff too. He probably thought he was doing well, bless him.

The bod standard man did spend Saturday painting the child's bedroom and in one of her updates OP admitted they could afford the £25 which included deserts and someone who seems to know think it included starters as well.

I think bog standard man got this one right and the OP needs to stop being quite so bossy.

A lot more that at my local one on Deliveroo.

It was £10 for fish and chips about ten years ago, where I live.

Leaving aside variations in cost of chippies and random suggestions to make something else entirely (“on fish and chip night, I make a mackerel salad!”), this isn’t about a £25 single meal, it’s the mental load chore split. He might do the dog walking and laundry, but neither require too much thinking: you just walk the dog every day and do laundry, dry it, put it away: 9,000 times a week, yes, but it’s not as thinky as meal
planning, food shopping and budgeting, cooking. I bet OP also clears out the fridge of gone-off salad, Tupperwares leftovers, thinks about WFH lunches and inventories the cupboards so they don’t run out of stuff. It’s relentless and thankless, and would be miles easier if their budget and waistlines could stretch to “just buy M&S meal deals” every night. But if DH spends the £25 on Saturday night’s dinner, for which I think OP still did the thinking, that removes it as an option for her.

OP, I’d look at swapping chores: laundry a bit easier for you as you WFH more (I think, cba to scroll back), meal planning and food shopping can be DH’s job, they can all be done at a distance. Cooking can be taken in turns between all four of you.

Wouldn’t have been £10 in Co-op. It’s expensive. Aldi maybe but not Co-op!

We often order the pensioners cod and chips.£6.50 per person and more than enough

@Samlewis96 We often order the pensioners cod and chips.£6.50 per person and more than enough

Which still amounts to even more than the OP’s DH spent!

I say just relax and enjoy the meal. Yes it would have been cheaper to go to Co-op but it doesn't sound like it's a regular thing and it's nice to have a little treat now and then. M&S food usually tastes better anyway in my opinion.

We are in Sussex and £30 is F’n’C for two.