DH ruined my lunch.

[TwigletsAndRadishes]

AIBU? I don't know why I am asking really, I know I am not. I need to vent.

Bought two of those plastic trays of mixed salad from the self service salad bar at Morrisons. All sorts in them. A curried rice thing, a pesto pasta, grated cheese, lettuce/tomato/cucumber, coleslaw, beetroot salad, hard boiled eggs, potato salad, some sort of couscous thing. I did my best to place each different spoonful of stuff into its own corner of the tray with something else layered on top, like lettuce or tomato, or hard boiled egg, so it wouldn't be too much of a mixed up mush and it would still be possible (ish) to separate the different elements onto a plate at home. Ok, so it was never going to be easy/perfect, but not completely impossible.

DH asked if he should dish up lunch. I said yes, if you like.

I came in to find that he's tipped both trays of salad into one huge bowl and mixed the entire lot up so it looked like pigswill. WTF? Why would you even do that? It looked the scrapings off people's plates after they'd finished eating.

I was just incredulous and so exasperated. I said 'what the hell did you do that for? What on earth were you thinking? That's going to be disgusting.'

He was then furious at me for being furious at him. Apparently it was just too difficult to separate the different salads so he had 'no choice' but mix it all together and he just knew I'd moan about it, because I moan about everything. And I shouldn't have asked him to dish up (I didn't) if I don't like the way he does things and I can do everything myself in future because all I ever do is criticise and never say anything positive to anyone.

So he knew I'd moan, but he did it anyway?

He sat there pretending to enjoy his dog's dinner of coleslaw mixed with curried rice, grated cheese, pesto pasta and beetroot with soggy bits of lettuce in it and I took two mouthfuls and felt faintly sick. I don't have sensory issues, I'm not a fussy eater and I am not the type who can't have different foods touching on the plate, but even I have my limits.

I had a tin of soup instead. I am not being unreasonable am I?

I often make East Asian-style meals with lots of different side dishes. My husband has form for putting bits of everything on his plate and just grabbing a fork and going “stab, stab, stab, stab” into everything until his fork is overloaded with food, opening his mouth wide like a steam shovel until he has to make a “harrumph” noise to get it in and then just doesn’t taste anything. Drives me INSANE!!! (Basically a Labrador Retriever with cutlery…) Last night I threatened to put it all in a blender and make it into a smoothie for him. (Oh, and if there is any kind of sauce, he will just chuck it on everything, paying no heed to what it’s for or the fact that the food is seasoned, etc… Never heard of delicately dipping anything, it seems. GAAAAAAH!)

Gosh, you need to give your head a good shake ! What a pathetic individual you are ! Try being diagnosed with a serious illness ! You sound as if you need some MH support . A mixed up salad should not be cause for concern!!!!

What the fuck has that got to do with anything.

I have a life limiting illness. I STILL would be furious at being given a disgusting ruined lunch by someone who was a twat about it.

You actually are being very unreasonable. It's a worry that you don't think you are. Poor hubby

I’ll be honest, OP, if I didn’t think the flavours would go together on a fork I wouldn’t put them in the same salad. I don’t think curried rice salad and pasta salad belong in the same meal, for example, because the flavours clash.

I can see why he’d assume you thought they all went together, seeing as you had put them in the same box.

Either way, lesson learnt. He’ll leave your salad alone and you’ll have it as you like it.

How can you say this with any certainty given you've only heard one viewpoint? You don't know that the OP is not someone who frequently moans, complains and nitpicks and for the husband this was the straw that broke the camel's back?

He wanted it all for himself.

😄

Are you married to my ex?? That's exactly the sort of thing he would have done and had the same reaction....

Why did it need dishing up?! You should have just eaten it straight out of the tray??!

Great phrase! You could be onto something 🤔

(And I wouldn't have eaten it either!!)

My ex once went to collect fish and chips from an outside catering stall and came back with mushy peas spread over my chips. We'd been married about 5 years at this point and he KNEW I hated wet stuff on chips - no beans/mushy peas etc on top of chips....it's just gross!

I said "I can't eat that with the peas on it." (It makes me feel physically sick.) He said "I knew you'd say that!" THEN WHY THE FUCK DID YOU AGREE WHEN THEY ASKED IF YOU WANTED THD PEAS ON TOP THEN TWAT FACE??!!! It still makes me angry now!

Going off on a tangent slightly, we very occasionally have the salad bar as a treat. But why oh why does Morrisons insist on putting meat and fish next to the vegetarian food? Or worse, place the meat/fish behind the veggie food.
Then along comes a customer, filling their tray, who doesn't care if they drop bits of meat into the veggie food, and some unsuspecting non-meat eater, like me, finds bits of chicken and fook knows what else, in what is supposed to be vegetarian food.
Why is it so difficult to re-arrange the containers, Morissons? Seriously.

It's otherwise ok food and good value for money. And yes, i complained to a manager who didn't give a flying fook.

If you're reading this, OP, think of me, finding bits of chicken and ham dropped into my croutons. Gross.
Rant over. You'll survive.

Perhaps she should send "poor hubby" your way and you can eat his delicious curry-beetroot-rice-mushed up boiled egg-pesto salad and make the appropriate noises about how delicious and in no way utterly disgusting it is?

@TwigletsAndRadishes the absolute salad heathen! I love a Morrisons salad box.. the challenge of trying to fill to capacity.. section off the curried rice from the pesto pasta bows with strategic salad items… then eating it carefully at home in its various sections..

Is it too soon for a LTB? I’d never trust him with a salad again.. but I would do the mixing bowl with everything go he eats from here on in as he likes it so much.

fry up… smash it together, and pierce that egg yolk.
roast dinner…

why stop there. Purée his dinners from now on.

sorry… peri-menopause rage is strong tonight.

I disagree.

It's reasonable to not want eight different salads mushed together in the same bowl. Not the same as 'plated incorrectly'.

Yes, it's a minor issue in the grand scheme of things. But, here we are, and, as a PP said, it's weaponised incompetence by OP's DH.

I wouldn't want to eat this all mixed up in one bowl:
"A curried rice thing, a pesto pasta, grated cheese, lettuce/tomato/cucumber, coleslaw, beetroot salad, hard boiled eggs, potato salad, some sort of couscous thing."

@TwigletsAndRadishes says: He was then furious at me for being furious at him. Apparently it was just too difficult to separate the different salads so he had 'no choice' but mix it all together and he just knew I'd moan about it, because I moan about everything. And I shouldn't have asked him to dish up (I didn't) if I don't like the way he does things and I can do everything myself in future because all I ever do is criticise and never say anything positive to anyone.

He had 'no choice'. Bollocks.

Self-service salad bars are a breeding ground for germs. People cough and sneeze, pick things up with their fingers and put them back. Gross. Just buy a few little tubs coleslaw/pesto pasta etc and a lettuce and a tomato and boil an egg at home.

Flashheart, not Baldrick.

this is how fake vomit is made e.g. for movies.

Common sense says you don't stir together such things.

Even if the OP is the biggest pain in the backside that ever breathed, purposely mixing stuff together rather than saying 'I don't think I can dish this out without mixing it, would you prefer to do it' is beyond childishly twatty.

It really is irrelevant, unless the OP is actually outright lying and she in fact told him to mix it all together, and if we're going to assume that then theres fuck all point responding to threads here, everyone could be doing that.

That Morrisons salad is always a bit mixed up anyway, they dump everything in the same container. My DH likes to mix everything together too but I would have told him to leave mine! It sounds like a communication issue and a massive overreaction on your part. I'm not surprised he was upset you popped off at him.

2 things:
Say to him’ If you knew this would wind me up, why did you do it?’
Next time, put the things you want to eat into one tray and make it explicitly clear that that one is yours, and he must not touch it. Put his in another tray and he can do whatever he wants with it. If you want to be petty, you dish his up, and make sure it is mixed together like pig swill. He won’t be able to complain!

I don't think I understand. If I was getting a salad, I would have stuff that's nice together so mixing wouldn't be a problem

Well if you can understand that other people are not you, and think and act differently, you're almost there.
Also, this wasn't that type of salad.

YANBU that those salads don't go together but that's where it ends. The minute you put them all into the same plastic tray is when they started to mix. There's no way you can keep different salads and their sauces separate, especially when you factor in the journey home as well. By the time they got home they'd have been pretty mixed up and impossible to separate so I can see why your husband just dumped them out together.

I had to use a similar salad bar and one plastic tray on a work trip this year and swiftly learned only to pick salads that were acceptable together.

Also YABU to be so furious at your husband. Quite apart from the fact that the gross mix was your fault in the first place, it really shouldn't be such a big deal that anyone's emotions get to a state of fury over.

From now on every time you make him a meal serve it all mixed together in a bowl. Easy. 💁‍♀️