To stop cooking for my husband

[beguilingeyes]

We have been married for ten years. I do pretty much all of the cooking. My husband is getting more and more picky.
He won't eat tomatoes, basil, coriander, salads, most sauces.
We've been having Gousto boxes for years now, but most of the recipes I can't pick because of forbidden ingredients and lately he won't eat a lot of dressings/mayonnaise either. Last night was a pork and apple burger with a cranberry mayonnaise and parsnip relish. It was delicious.
I had to put the mayo/relish on the side be cause he won't touch them. So he ends up with just a dry burger and then complains that it's boring. Also he takes forever to come to the table and then complains that the food is cold.
AIBU to stop cooking for him? He would probably live on pie and chips for ever. By pandering to him not only does he have a boring diet, it means I can't have nice food either. I can't remember the last time I had pesto.
Separate meals now.

Sod him. Cook what you want for yourself. He can do what he likes.

Cook what you'd like for you, give him beans on toast - every night.

Good for you.

I moved out after just one remark when I was about 22. My DF has always had a dig at DMs cooking so there was no way I was putting up with someone like him.

Taking forever to come to the table and then complaining that the food is cold is out of line. Also complaining that the food is boring is out of line.
However I don't understand why you can't have nice food because your husband won't eat it.
My husband does all the cooking ( I can't cook) and we both have completely different tastes in food.
Quite often my husband will cook two different meals for us because he would rather that we both eat it and enjoy it rather than cooking something one of us doesn't enjoy.
The days when he cooks 2 different meals takes him no longer than the days when he cooks just the one meal.
We both always enjoy dinner and we never argue about food.

My Dh is fussy like this but to be fair to him he does like plain meat, potatoes and veg with a bit of bisto, so he doesn't complain the food is boring. He started doing his own meals most of the time when I started working shifts and he seems quite happy doing it. We got an airfryer and he happily tells me the precise times he has worked out for everything (14 mins for porkchops, 17 mins for oven chips etc). In winter he has some kind of plain meat like a chop or chicken portion, some cooked potatoes, frozen mixed veg and bisto, in summer meat, oven chips and a large salad with a teaspoon of coleslaw to liven it up! He does vary the meat, but if he gets a good bargain on a large pack of chops he will eat them every day.
It's boring but he seems happy and I do something different for myself in the evening.

To be fair, I have had gusto just for me before when my husband cut out carbs! And I either just cooked half the ingredients at a time or I just cooked the whole thing and put one portion in tupperware for the next day. Made the box stretch, I got to choose things only I like and I only had to cook half the week 👌🏻

And YANBU, if he has so many restrictions he can sort himself out.

Another vote for just stop catering for him. My husband is very fussy and in strange ways too. He also eats at unusual times (think cooking up a big pan of pasta with fennel and sausage and chilli for breakfast). I cook for myself and the kids and if he fancies some (and if there's enough, sometimes there isn't) he eats with us. If he doesn't like what we're having he sits with us and chats or might have a little bit of what we're having (roasties for eg) or have something he made earlier. It wasn't worth the hassle coming up with alternatives for him when half the time he wouldn't even be hungry.

Years ago my DD decided that every meal had to have a ' Name'. ( That would appear in a cookery book etc) it could not be a impromptu dish created randomly with your own additions / ingredients , she felt no fear in telling me every day while I slaved away over the stove.
One evening she asked ( as I handed her the dinner). " Is it a ' creation ?????????' ( I'm sorry but she really did end up ' wearing it')

@Vonesk I'm curious now about your creations! Are we talking making a pasta sauce to use up that random carrot, pepper and tomato in the fridge or do you make fish and strawberry lasagne?

Who are the 2% who think OP is U?

The only question is why it took 10 years!

You wouldn't pander to a child like that so why a husband. Make a meal plan for week, let him choose some, you choose some. Cook them. Take it or leave it.

This sounds lovely, but unfortunately it doesn’t work for all.
I have the opposite problem:
In addition to being super picky,
DH always comes in the kitchen and mansplains to me how I should be doing things.
Literally whenever I cook, which is becoming less and less because he’s taking all the joy out of it.
In his defence, he does cook then but

1. he’d be going mad if I micromanaged his cooking the way he does mine, and
2. the way he cooks Always leaves a battlefield in the kitchen, which then becomes my “job” to sort out as he’s already done his share of household chores by cooking. He takes this to the extreme by simply standing up from the table and leaving his plate, glasses, cutlery right in the table, which drives me absolutely mad.

By contrast, if I cook, everything is already put away by the time dinner is served, so the only washing up remaining to do is the plates.

I wish a simple “I wont cook for 2 weeks” had done the job, but it actually backfired. Niw I have to tidy up a battlefield (how can you use thus many pans, plates AND the kitchen counter gor one meal?) after each meal he makes.