To get a teensy bit annoyed at visiting relative’s ever changing dietary restrictions?

[Koulibiak]

Okay some ground rules: this is light hearted. Not a LTB thread. All of us will keep on trying to get along as best we can. But…

Recently we’ve been hosting a relative of DH with lots of dietary restrictions, which she informed us of prior to coming to stay with us (for two weeks). Specifically, no sour foods, no spicy foods, and no tomatoes. For religious/cultural reasons she also doesn’t eat pork or beef.

To be clear, I asked and she specifically said she couldn’t have anything containing citrus, vinegar, yogurt, sour cream, or tamarind. Also no tomatoes or anything hot (chillies).

Now I’ve got to say, I’m a very decent cook. But I have been finding the whole sour/spicy/tomatoes thing rather hard to accommodate. This rules out lots of Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Middle Eastern, Italian, Mexican, Persian etc recipes. I had to spend hours prior to her coming, going through my recipes and making changes so I would make things she could eat.

Then towards the end of her stay, she told me she was fine with “a bit” of lemon, a bit of tomatoes, a bit of chilli. I’m sorry what? I’ve been working my ass off accommodating her for two weeks, making all our food bland, and all of a sudden she’s fine with spices and yogurt and lemon juice? She even asked me to cook prawns with lemon and chilli powder on her last meal. Also ate dal (as a side dish) which I warned had dried chillies in, and had seconds.

I just think it’s a bit thoughtless to invent dietary restrictions you don’t actually have. It’s been stressful for me and I haven’t been able to serve them the best dishes I can make, as everything had to be made bland, and it now seems it was all pointless anyway.

In order to avoid drip feed accusations: DH doesn’t cook. At all. As in, can’t turn the hob on. So any suggestions that I should let DH cook for his relative are pointless. And no, he’s not going to change, as he was rubbish at it and found it very stressful when he cooked (years ago), whereas I’m good at it and it makes me happy to feed people.

I’m just a bit frazzled after two weeks of hosting, and I need a whinge. ☺️

AIBU to think making up blanket food restrictions is not on, when you’re actually fine with the foods?

Oh and yes the relative is MIL. But please let’s not make this a MIL thread 🙏

Just had a friend visit who said no chocolate she didn't want for example pain au chocolate so I got her crossaints. The first thing she said when she sat down to breakfast was 'Do you have any Nutella?'
People are just nuts

@CrunchyCarrot i think her being cold in the UK is more a consequence of the fact she lives in a place that regularly gets 40+ temperatures and is over 30C for about 10 months of the year. But she has a whole host of medical diagnoses, so hypothyroidism may well be one of them.

@ohtowinthelottery ha ha, DH also claims he doesn’t like garlic or mustard, but I ignore him and we go through vast amounts, without him even noticing it. Really what he means is he doesn’t like garlic bread, or mustard in a sandwich. Not as a cooking ingredient. Likewise horseradish, he won’t have it as a condiment with steak, but is fine with it in smoked mackerel pâté.

Plain rice. Plain naan. Dhal with the bare minimum of spices.

Sounds like my DH. Quickly learned to stop telling him what he was eating as the list of things he didn’t eat was so long!

DM made us traipse around town to meet her requirements one visit, turning everywhere down till I was ready to eat her! That evening when I’d cooked her a ‘dairy free, oil free, something else free’ meal, she helped herself to some of ours that had cheese sprinkled in and left us short.

some people are just rude! 🤣

I wish you lived near me , OP. You sound really kind ( and a good cook).

Has MIL seen a doctor about her health, though?. Because if she is a pleasant person, and not just winding you up, it sounds as if she has problems with her digestion but she doesn’t know what is causing it. So she ‘blames’ things she has eaten when she has an upset , but they might not be the cause, so if she does have them, the next time she doesn’t have the reaction. I haven’t explained that very well but I expect you can understand what I mean.

She is obviously frail ( can’t lift heavy pans, stopped cooking), but the odd food behaviour and the feeling cold would bear proper investigation.

I completely understand this frustration.

It does sound like your MIL might have some general stomach issues and is scared, so tells you the most restrictive versio of her diet in advance as a pre-emptive measure, but then, over time, starts to feel a bit more confident about a bit of this or a bit of that. I think this is quite common - my mother could also have a reaction to spices etc, but would cook with them herself where she knew exactly what she was having, and how much. But it was endlessly frustrating to have her be so prescriptive and then see her happily tucking into something when we were out and about.

I did click on this thread thinking you were goign to talk about someone like one of DH's friends who announced, the day before they arrived for a long-planned celebratory dinner that actually, he's lactose free. Cue me scrambling around to change the menu (I'd planned roast chicken, served on risotto, and I forget what dessert was goign to be, but it definitly had dairy!) and am emergency run to waitrose.

Lovely new menu, including a selection of vegan ice cream. Only to find him tucking into the bar of milk chocolate I'd put out for the DC. To which is long suffering wife said, "oh, he just thinks he's got a diary allergy but doesn't seem to bother him when it's chocolate or things he likes."

I had to leave the table and go into another room for a minute.

She hates yr cooking and enjoys making it life hell. Let her cook her own food.

Sounds like you can dig out the cookbooks on day 2 and ask for suggestions of what to eat, tweaking recipes to make it work.

My intolerances drive me mad but with someone cooking from scratch it's much easier to tweak recipes and leave out what I can't eat.

I had the opposite sitution. A friend coming to stay with dietarty restrictions - we spend ages emailing back and forth about things I planned to cook and how I could adjust them. I was all set, food planned, shopping done. Then when she arrived she said she'd decided to go on a cleansing diet and would only be eating fruit and water all week.

I let it go on day one, and she had fruit and water, then in the evening she went to the pub and had beer and crisps. I was quite blunt, and said if you're not sticking to fruit then I'm going to serve you the meals I have planned and prepared. She ate them all, but I've not invited her again.

😀 You sound like such a lovely dil op! Kind, generous and diplomatic. Sorry to hear your mil is genuinely ill. I hope you can work out the dietary issues and yes a fortnight is quite long enough for hosting, even when your guests are very gracious, so YANBU at all!

Why is no one challenged the OP on the fact that her husband seems to be unable to do basic cooking?

imagine a woman saying that

Because that wasn’t the AIBU? Maybe he brings other strengths to the table? DIY, car maintenance, school pick ups/drop offs, taxiing teens around 🤷‍♀️ Equal doesn’t mean 50% of every chore.

I have an ileostomy and an extremely limited diet. Wherever I go I just organise my own food.

I once had my cousin and her partner round for dinner and accommodated her no onion, no tomato, no chilli etc. diet. Only for her to sit eating onion bhajis!

Serve up meat and potatoes, spag bol and very mild curries for a couple of weeks, and next time round, DON'T ASK HER what she wants. If she has any genuine allergies, accommodate that obviously, but otherwise just cook what you're cooking, maybe just dialling down the spiciness a bit, and don't worry about it. If she moans tell her where the bread and sandwich fillings are. She sounds infuriating.

Alternatively, maybe tell her she's welcome to cook?

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen thank you! MIL is herself a doctor, FIL is a doctor, all their friends are doctors. She is receiving care for her various conditions and taking lots of different medications. I’d be very surprised if thyroid issues had not been explored.

Ulcer, maybe? I was told to avoid spice, tomatoes, sweetcorn, citrus and lived on chicken soup and crappy white bread for weeks. The yoghurt is a bit odd, I use it to ‘re-set’ the dog’s stomach if he’s had diarrhoea, for example (natural, live), apparently this is very common.

Yoghurt gives me the most terrible acid

She hasnt had weight loss surgery has she OP?

Does funny things to your insides and one day is nothing like the next in terms of what you can tolerate. I just tell people not to try to cater around me, I will pick bits I can eat that day

Lots of posters have challenged it.

YANBU it's very annoying when people make up restrictions but it sounds like your MIL isn't a spoilt guest so I'd guess that she really does just not react well to lots of spice, acid etc but can cope with small amounts. That's quite normal, often it's not a case of can't have it at all, it's a case of not responding well to lots of something, so she probably thought best to avoid it (until she was tempted by your food!).

My mother went on and on and on for years about her wheat allergy, which was the rare kind of allergy that disappeared every time she found herself in proximity to a croissant or some hot, fresh baguette.

She event went as far as doing several weeks of an elimination diet that was meant to be followed by some kind of testing that would have confirmed an intolerance. But with about a week to go she announced that she felt so much better from the diet that it was obvious she was right about her allergy and therefore would not bother with the testing.

I don’t think she could bear hearing that there was nothing wrong with her.

Things like this are what make me worry about my diet when I visit people.

I've got a genetic disorder so my tissue doesn't heal properly and the inside of my bladder stings all the time. Citrus, tomatoes and spicy food make it hurt really bad. Like having cystitis 24/7. I avoid them for the most part, but occasionally change my mind and have a bit as a "treat" and just have more medicine or deal with the pain. I also don't eat much meat but will if I know I will put people out.

I know people roll their eyes if they don't understand but it's not invented, in my case at least. Might she have interstitial cystitis or another bladder disease you don't know about? It's sounds like a "bladder friendly diet".

I find it difficult to sympathize when you've created a rod for your own back.
You must have loads of free time . An hour in M&S for a single dinner? I could only dream of having even 30 mins free to wander around the supermarket, thinking. All my shopping with a list alone takes that much time.

Look, I get it, I'm Indian too, there's a cultural expectation. I also have a fussy DH (autistic) who suddenly gets obsessed with/goes off certain foods with no warning.

I love food and am a good cook, but I just don't have the time to research, prep etc meals with that amount of dietary restrictions. If anybody presented me with that list they'd be eating the blandest of the bland.

My DH makes his own food because of his fussiness, I make my own, we're all happy.

I suppose if you don't work full-time there's no excuse but I'm the main breadwinner and only driver in my house anyway. Can't expect me to be Nigella Lawson too, LOL. If anybody complains they're welcome to make their own arrangements and my husband 100% backs me up on this.

I've got guests coming soon. I've been told one of them can't eat 'red things'. Apparently they make his throat itch. I was going to try and tailor my menu and ask whether this meant meat, fruit eg raspberries and strawberries, 'veg' eg peppers and tomatoes, ketchup, salad leaves, kidney beans. But fuck it. He can have bread, cheese and ice cream and everyone else can enjoy the red stuff.

I haven't RTFT but from your first post sounds like she could have issues with acid reflux - the foods listed are common triggers.

So it may be she could tolerate a small amount without being unwell but not too much - but when someone else is cooking for you it's easier to say none and everyone's idea of a 'small amount' is different.