Food portions and how to laugh this off??

[PenisPortions]

Help me dear mners, my dh is gaslighting me into accepting his penis portions and I need your stories of similar craziness to help me laugh it off..!

In laws came round, we had two large steaks for dinner. MIL wasn't keen on steak so we made her a stuffed pepper and sides so she was catered for and happy. FIL wanted half of one of the steaks, fine. Dh asked what I thought about that and I said yes fine we'll just share the rest. Dh looked confused for a bit and I said I think it's enough between the two of us to share the remainder.

FIL cooked the sides, DH bbqed the steaks (i was in with the baby), and I come out to see three plates of food. Two have half a steak on them and the third has a whole steak, which dh had claimed as his plate.

I was like ummm are you not splitting it? He said yes I did, and I kind of laughed in disbelief saying no you've given yourself twice the amount of food as me! He got really defensive, said this was what we agreed (not true), and got cross. I told him I was going to even things out, so cut off some of his, and he was so grumpy about it, saying he'd said he wanted a full one and I agreed to that. No "I'm sorry I misunderstood and under catered for you, let's split it like grown ups".

It is such a stupid little thing but keeps playing on my mind, what on earth was that?! Please tell me stories of similar imbalances that your partners have tried to get away with to help me put it into perspective.

Might be missing the point here, but fillet steaks aren’t usually very big, not something I’d ever consider sharing and definitely needing to be cooked to preference.

I thought this was going to be about your husband having a really small penis, or a very big one!

Mumsnet is weird.

Steak is gross and makes people bizarrely greedy and selfish. The mother in law is the winner here.

It was both of your faults for undercatering. If they were normal pre-cut fillet steaks (rather than giant steaks you cut yourself from a whole fillet) then they wouldn’t have been large and half a steak would no way have equalled a portion. Steak freezes perfectly so you should have served something else which was enough for all four.

If you really had nothing else you could use/buy instead of serving mini steak portions, perhaps you shouldn’t have invited them for lunch. If you still wanted to do it anyway, then they would have stretched a lot further if you had cut them into tiny pieces and used them to flavour a pasta sauce (bulked out with peppers/mushrooms) or similar.

Sorry OP, I can’t give you one. My DH would never do this. Does your DH have form for being this selfish?

PS I am slightly horrified at barbecuing fillet steak. I hope he knew what he was doing.

Or just have proportionately more food?
I would suggest that people generally should have mainly veg and carb rather than just men.

This was greed rather than penis portions.

Half a piece of steak is enough meat, we all eat way over what we should! As for him taking extra, he was rude. Men do need more though so I wouldn't have had extra, I would have given it to my husband.

The expression 'penis portions' makes me cringe . Now a pp has said 'vagina portions' 😱

Just saying . Carry on with the thread !!

He's being greedy and selfish.
Considering you, as a woman, have a much higher iron requirement that him (we need nearly double) you should have had the larger portion of red meat anyway.

I think we could apply the tinned fish test.
If the OP would happily have wolfed down a couple of tins of mackrel once home, then she needed protein. If not, then it is about manner.
There are plenty of people who have cravings or greed and call it hunger, but sneer at tinned fish and wait until it is steak or sweeties.

A breastfeeding new mother has more need of the iron in the steak than her husband, and the extra energy required by the breastfeeding probably means that their daily caloric requirements are fairly similar at the moment. I hope you enjoy a side of anaemia with your martyrdom.

How does a 25% higher calorie requirement translate to an entitlement to 100% more of the prime component to the meal?

In any case OP is breastfeeding so she needed more anyway.

Most men are bigger than women and burn more calories hence why they need more food. There's a reason why the recommended calorie intake for men and women is different. It's also why women can't drink as much alcohol safely.

Mind you DH would never take more than half of the steak. He always serves me as much as him and then he ends up finishing my plate. The only women I've known who insist on eating and drinking like men are all overweight and unhealthy.

If you're breastfeeding just tell the plonker that you need the extra calories but really he shouldn't need telling.

It doesn’t really seem like something to argue about 🤷‍♀️

You really don't need that many additional calories when you are breastfeeding - but you do feel hungry. I piled on the pounds with my first for that reason, I'd learned my lesson for subsequent children. My DH needs more food than me, that is a fact - he is a big man, I am a petite woman. I don't know if that is the same for the OP, so perhaps her husband was being unreasonable, but really, the whole set up sounds silly. I'd always want to make sure my guests had enough food, I'm not going to starve because of one meal and I would never have a silly squabble about portions in front of guests. That is unreasonable.

I'm MORE horrified that the lamb chops WEREN'T barbecued. Mmmmm lamb chops....

Perhaps so, but our relationship to food is messed up.
There is a psuedo-moral element to it, so that someone taking more of the food, particularly the fatty food, is seen as declaring themselves more deserving.

Sorry can’t think of any examples to share as my DH is very kind. We share the “high quality expensive protein” equally (be that steak, chicken whatever) but he does eat heaps more carbs than I do as he’s much taller and has more muscle mass and needs about 500 calories more than me a day.

Yep sorry - my DH would have given me the whole steak and I would have given him some back.

You have a selfish twat DH not a penis portion problem :(

You make no sense. The penis portion comment is not appropriate here, your dh plated the same amount for you and fil, who I assume has a penis. Therefore, your dh is plain greedy. I don’t have anything to share bc my husband wouldn’t do this. He’s a feeder not a weasel.

I'd be bloody arguing if my husband not only didn't bother cooking the lamb chops, but then went on to take double the amount of meat he'd cooked for himself. I remember the hunger when breastfeeding, and I'd have probably just taken his plate tbh.

Feed him like a 2 year old because that's how he's behaving

Surely men do need more food though given they're generally bigger etc, so do have a higher calorie intake per day?

If I ate like my DH, i'd definitely put on weight whereas he maintains his weight?!

Depends on the individual man and the individual woman. If the OP's dh were serving dinner and if it were the norm for the OP to eat a significantly less than him, it would be perfectly fine for him to serve her the smaller amount she'd be expecting. That was clearly not the case here though, was it? It had been discussed. The dh deliberately misunderstood because he wanted, and thought he merited, more of the steak than she did. You might be happy for your dh to decide your portion size for you, based on what the average man and woman might need. I wouldn't be.

I agree with this.

It's perfectly reasonable for the OP to have wanted the steak divided fairly. Her husband should have done the fair thing. But... dividing one and a half steaks fairly gives you two unsatisfactory portions.

A steak is a steak. They come in different sizes. They are complete in themselves. They are seared around the edges so the centre in very different to the edge.

"Three quarters of a steak" is not a serving. It's leftovers. It's infantilising. It's not proper. Buy your dad a small steak. Problem solved.