To be annoyed with MIL's almost out of date chicken?

[MrCollinsandhisboiledpotatoes]

Last night, about 4pm, MIL turns up while I was out with a pack of chicken breasts with the use by date of yesterday, puts them in our fridge and says they have to be eaten today (yesterday) as it's the last day. DH tells me when I get home that there's chicken in the fridge that must be eaten tonight.
I'm like, OK.... But I have stuff I had planned for dinner tonight and all week in fact, and I've got my own use-by dates on the stuff I bought and the week's dinners planned accordingly and now you're going to throw that all out of whack because we have to eat MIL's chicken instead, because of her poor planning and/or reluctance to throw out her own shit, you acting like her food waste bin?
But DH thinks we should be grateful?
Who's side are you on?

Planning your food for a week, yeah, how weird and controlling. God people are obtuse and horrible on here sometimes.

Food packaging does usually say 'if freezing freeze on day of purchase'. It's not always easy to know which instructions should be breezily discounted and which not. And I certainly wouldn't blame anyone for not doing that when it comes to chicken.

I was early postpartum and my mum was kindly dropping meals off for us, because she wanted to. MIL is quite competitive but also can’t be arsed, so didn’t want to look like she was less than. There was a piece of meat with a bite taken out of it in one of her offerings. She also doesn’t like me, so with her it was a bit of a slight too.

Yeah it does throw things, but I don’t think she intentionally meant to be annoying. She didn’t want it herself but didn’t want it to go to waste.

A piece of meat with a bite taken out of it 🤣🤣🤣

What meat? Was it cooked??!?

You can - I do it all the time

So do I. Cook the chicken breasts and have the meat in sandwiches or make a curry or pasta sauce for a day or so's time.

Big deal over nothing. YABU.

Why would she not freeze the chicken for herself to use up later?
My MIL does shit like this too, she is lovely, but I also find it irritating.

Exactly!

I'm not even sure why she bought all that chicken in the first place, considering she's on her own. I still have leftovers from cooking it all last night, and we are a family of four.

She buys too much chicken, doesn't eat it, doesn't freeze it, and then dumps it on us.

I just find it strange and annoying.

Why? Just a random gift.

I buy yellow sticker meat all the time that is on its last day and stick it in the freezer. It's fine. Somewhere along the way the food standards agency have managed to turn the freezer into something to be wary of. My MIL is always throwing stuff away because it's been out of the freezer more than 3 hours etc etc.

I love the way the OP refers to it as chicken 'dumping' lol.

It's like you're trying to make a completely unremarkable thing into something awful.

This has to be the biggest non event ever. Would have been easier for her to bin it but she drove it to your house for you to make use of it - there's nothing malicious about that at all. With the price of meat at the minute, I'd be grateful for it and would find a way to use it, but if you really can't/don't want to...just bin it.

There isn't a time bomb in the package.
It's won't suddenly develop mould when it's midnight.

Load of fuss about nothing.

I’d just cook them, then they’ll last a couple more days. Slice and pop in fridge. It’s the sort of thing that vanishes in my house as everyone opens the fridge and grabs a slice. I no have been left scrabbling around for dinner many times when cooked meat mysteriously vanishes.

I would be mildly annoyed but then wouldn't give it much thought.

We never meal plan and buy ingredients that look nice in the supermarket or are a decent price. We try to eat seasonally and British produce to keep costs down.
Most weeks I buy 2 joints of meat and make each last 2-3 days. Last week was a chicken - roast day 1, chicken salad day 2 and the last of it went into a paella on day 3. I also brought a pork joint and we had it with new potatoes and green veg on day 1, pulled pork burger buns on day 2 and we have made swine pies for day 3 and the freezer. We don't tend to decide what we are having for dinner until half 4 when my partner is driving home from work and we discuss what we fancy and ask our daughter what carb she would like and come up a meal based on that.

It was a beef stew, they’d literally just put their leftover dinner in a Tupperware that she wanted me to wash and give her back immediately too. Needless to say, we didn’t eat any of the dishes she brought over. Another was basically pasta sauce with a few bits of pasta left in it. She made my husband a cake for his birthday, cut him a slice and took the rest home with her. Some people are just weird when it comes to food.

Get your husband to cook the chicken next time if he’s wanting to keep it. He can show his gratitude by making something with it.

Eh? I buy food all the time. I know why - I’m going to eat it, lol. But no, I dont plan menus, days etc. What if I got to, eg Tuesday, and didn’t want what was on the menu/plan? Im not going to cook and eat something I don’t want, just because that was the original plan. I just eat what I want…

Of course you can freeze them on their use by date. You could have bought them from the supermarket on that date anyway

I am Pam . We are now going NC .

This

Extreme first world problems here 😆

Jesus what a drama. Substitute the chicken for whatever you were going to cook tonight. Or don't and chuck it out. No big deal.

You didn't need to replan anything. You could have frozen it and have enough chicken for 2 meals over the next two weeks. Personally I would have thanked her

This would annoy me too OP, and I don't know people are being so harsh on you.

Texting you to say "I've got this chicken that needs using up today and I'm not going to be able to use it, is it any use to you? I can bring it over?" is a nice thing.

Putting in a family whatsapp "Chicken going out of date today! can does anyone want it?" is a nice thing.

Just turning up at your house with it a couple of hours before dinner on a school night and putting it in your fridge and informing you you've got to cook it that night, is rude and presumptive.

What if you (which you clearly did) had dinner plans already? something was already in the oven? you were going to eat out? you'd promised your kids a specific dinner? you had your own chicken that was going out of date that day and needed to be used up?

Now you have to re-plan your dinner plans at 4pm because your MIL didn't want to eat/freeze/throw out what she had bought.

It's not a favour, it's offloading.

I’d be annoyed as well. Why didn’t she cook and eat it herself or put it in her own freezer?
I plan more or less for the week and eat in order of use bys so some random chicken would piss me off. I also wouldn’t have room in my freezer.
If your husband was that keen to point out it wasn’t an issue I’d have told him to cook and eat it himself then.

OP already said she had no room in the feezer.