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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

with MILS inept catering plans

158 replies

FolornHope · 26/12/2009 11:37

we go tomorrow
is family get together - very nice
then she said "I have no food for monday, i dont knwo what we will eat"

dh says " not everyone is obsessed with food like your family"

i say "its impolite not to have SOMETHING sorted"

am i right or is he wrong?

OP posts:
poinsettydawg · 26/12/2009 20:28

I had the ODDEST salad today at mil's. You will never guess.

WeThreeNinks · 26/12/2009 20:30

Conversely my ex-husband's dealer mate always kept his table fully set with crockery all the time. As opposed to putting it away in the cupboard. It was the most bizarre lifestyle-choice thing I had ever seen until I saw him on "Trisha" one morning proposing to his twenty-years-younger GF who was pregnant with another man's child. Then it made sense.

WeThreeNinks · 26/12/2009 20:31

I can't guess, poin, did it involve marshmallow though?

poinsettydawg · 26/12/2009 20:37

oo, ninks! What have I missed? I have eaten a sald with marshmallow but it was about 5 years ago.

It was one of these 'bring a dish' type informal meals at a neighbour's house. And this strange woman produced her californian salad which was marhsmallow and coconut and mandarin and there must have been some vegetable in there too because it was a salad to go with baked potatoes.

CaptainNancy · 26/12/2009 20:37

Then it made sense? Really? How?.....

poinsettydawg · 26/12/2009 20:38

Hwere is one of teh salads I ate today (yes, I did eat it)

cooked brocolli, cut into tiny pieces, left to go cold and then mixed with chopped red onion and mayonnaise. Can you adam and eve it

CoqAuVin · 26/12/2009 20:47

lol

WeThreeNinks · 26/12/2009 20:48

I can't tbh pointy, how odd! Inspired by er, Russian salad maybe?

In "Edward Scissorhands" one of the insane housewives brings "Ambrosia Salad" to the BBQ and I suspect marshmallow and coconut and mandarin to have been in that.

CaptainNancy I lied, none of it made sense in real terms, just in terms of the ex Mr Ninks.

poinsettydawg · 26/12/2009 20:51

ah yes, I remember it now in scissorhands. Yes, that was what she made. However, this woman would never have derived enjoyment from scissorhands.

My other salad that I had to eat at mil's today was:

salad leaves, heavy on the coriander (no dressing at all), few wlanuts in there, covered with long thin strips of pear until all you could see was pear (limited pear taste) and then - piece de resistance - covered with a grating of orange cheddar cheese.

ONly me and the dds thought these saldads odd. dh will kill me if he reads this.

WeThreeNinks · 26/12/2009 21:02

Jaysus that's a strange salad especially the orange cheddar with the pear and... oh it's all very wrong indeed.

Don't forget to log out tonight

poinsettydawg · 26/12/2009 21:06

Well, everyone round that table (all mil's sioe of the family natch) were complimenting those salads to the heavens

CaptainNancy · 26/12/2009 21:09

Doesn't walnut and pear usually be accompanied by gorgonzola in salad?

I have a nasty cold cooked broccoli taste in my mouth after reading that one...

Numberfour · 26/12/2009 21:10

my lovely, lovely, lovely aunt whom i adore is vegetarian, but she ALWAYS makes the effort of cooking some or other meat dish when DH, DS and I go to see her.

unfortunately it is sometimes tinned corn beef or pies that are sold at petrol stations. i have told her that we are very happy to have veggie and that she need not go to the trouble of making a meat dish for us (please please please don't do tinned corned beef!) but she says there is no reason not to feed us "meat" just because she does not eat it.

i would rather have beans on toast, but i love her and she is faultless in my eyes, save for tinned corned beef

btw, OP, eating my aunt's food never killed me and your MIL's food won't kill you either

btw, what's wrong with buying wine in tesco? where else are you "supposed" to buy wine???

Heated · 26/12/2009 21:10

Eating Pasta'nSauce is like coating your insides with wallpaper paste so YANBU FH at all!

Stock her up on Frey Bentos & Pot Noodles, dh's staple diet 1st year at uni. And take details of nearest take-aways, pub & restaurants so she doesn't "have to go to all that fuss"

poinsettydawg · 26/12/2009 21:15

gorgonzola would have been an improvement, nance, to the finely grated cheddar of the purest orange.

WeThreeNinks · 26/12/2009 21:23

"finely grated cheddar of the purest orange"

I didn't know you could still get that. I stayed at my aunt and uncle's house when I was three and came home asking for "the cheese that glows in the dark" because they had it. Very 70's.

Ronaldinhio · 26/12/2009 21:36

nice food is for your house and the places that you pay to enjoy

all other expectations are arsenuggets

my mother has produced prawns from the freezer that she bought on special last january and kept for this christmas
£1 seafood ready made sauce
uses 10p clingfilm to reheat everything (might as well wrap it in a tyre)
Cooks the turkey for 16 hrs

This is all true

I'm still manfully chewing the prawns and drinking pints of saline to rehydrate from the turkey

she thinks all else is "showing off" and "a waste"

feel for ya

muminthemiddle · 26/12/2009 21:42

I do feel for you.

I always do my own baking, takes ages as I prepare lots of different mini cakes.

I don't judge others who don't though, not everyone can do it or wants to take the time.

I have returned from my mums today and even I couldn't eat the over stewed veg, no matter how much I tried.

Just grin and bear it. Take a good bottle of wine to drown out the taste of your mils food!

WeThreeNinks · 26/12/2009 21:43

Ron, and I thought that the cheapskates buying next year's wrapping paper from the Pound Shop for 50p in their sale were bad. Old prawns FGS!

Ronaldinhio · 26/12/2009 21:51

she said
"for godsake they've been in the freezer, of course they can't go bad"
I explained how the star system works on frozen food (for the fecking 4000 time) and she said
"that's only for people with more money than sense"

It was honestly lioke trying to eat a bowl of those super bouncy little balls covered in radioactive bright orange oil slime

(was going to make sauce but whilst she assured me she had mayo she actually had salad cream "well same difference" apparently)

WeThreeNinks · 26/12/2009 22:05

"they've been in the freezer, of course they can't go bad"

My parents think the freezer is an infallible device along with the fridge. They keep things weeks out of date in there and won't consider chucking it until mould is everywhere.

Mayonnaise being considered "the same" as salad cream - check

Bookswapper · 26/12/2009 22:25

I have just been there. My MIL didnt bother to plan food for us and SIL cooked her mother's recipe for shoe leather steak with gravy - I got a blackened Quorn escalope (boak) accompanied by a giant mound of mashed potato to rival the one sculpted into the mountain shape by Richard Dreyfuss in the Close Encounters film...sigh The next day she was going to send out for Aldi's frozen lasagna - we went away and ordered pizza quietly.

I don't come to her house for the food but it is Christmas...a bit of planning is only polite.

poguemahone · 26/12/2009 23:53

My MIL never has food in for us. When we arrive (after a 10 hour journey) she'll say "I don't know what you like so I have no food in. The supermarket's still open...". Literally NO food. So we get back in the car and shop for our entire stay.

Not a class thing with her. More like she's tight as fuck.

WeThreeNinks · 26/12/2009 23:55

and another at your username. I tried to get that!

badgermonkey · 26/12/2009 23:58

My ILs are like this - never have actual food in the house, even when they know you're coming. My SIL once drove for five hours to see them and arrived at lunchtime to be greeted by FIL saying "I'm opening a tin of soup for my lunch, you can share it if you like". She found bacon in the fridge, made herself a bacon butty, then got told off on MIL's return because MIL had only bought the exact number of rashers for the two of them to have bacon butties one morning. Bizarre.