MN Jury - am I being unreasonable or is DH?

[Lovecat]

So I am doing menu planning in an attempt to cut down on the ridiculous amount of food bought and wasted in our house, and everything I now have in the fridge is purchased with a meal in mind.

There are also snacky things like cheese, ham, yoghurts, fruit etc.

Came in from swimming last night, wanted a quick tea for all as I had a rehearsal to go to afterwards, had planned quiche and salad.

Go to fridge, remove box containing quiche, feels light... open it up, find that all but an eighth of it has been eaten.

"Oh" says DH, "I got hungry last night, I didn't know it was for anything in particular"

I remonstrate that of course it was for a feckin' meal, since when do I buy quiche for him to snack on?

He replies that I didn't specifically tell him that it wasn't to be eaten, therefore he's within his rights to help himself.

I feel
a) I'm not his mother, why the hell should I have to inform him in minute detail of what he can and can't eat?
b) Neither are we students in a shared house, I should not have to label the food!
c) Why can't he eat 3 meals a day instead of saving himself for just once a day and then raid the fridge and cupboards for whatever he can cram down his mouth that evening? It's not like I'm not buying him things to snack on, but he always goes for the other stuff!

There's an unpleasantly smug aura beginning to hover over this thread.

Ha! mine too GITK

Unless you're on a really tight budget -

"oh, did you eat the quiche for tonight's dinner? Oops, you'd better pop down the chinese then. Right now, cos I've got to go out."

Do it EVERY time. He'll get the message.

...can you tell this is the voice of experience?

i mean of course unless it was a quiche with a whole cow in it!

Lmao..so thats what the smell is Pikelit...I thought it was the quiche

Chippingin - the point is I actually plan for the week, so certain recipes tumbledown into other recipes. I am not being controlling, I just don't want to go and cook dinner and find the main ingredient missing, even if it looks like innocuous leftovers - I can't afford to!

DH used to raid the fridge and eat all the pureed food i'd batch cooked for ds1. I did BLW with ds2 to avoid a homicide!

For those of you who say the OP is BU, and that a man should be able to eat anything he wants in his own house:

I pore over recipes, construct a menu and shop accordingly.

I go to Aldi, to see what I can get cheaper

then I do the online shop. I say to DH (who is usually watching some guff on tv about fishermen, or a bloke trying to build a porsche from 3 dustbins and a toaster)
"anything you want me to get for you in the shopping?"
"Sorry?"
"anything you want me to get in the shopping?"
"Erm, NAH!"

I unpack and put away shopping. DH comes home.."There's nothing to eat!"

2 days later, discussing finances, "Bloody hell, is that how much you're spending on food! You'll need to cut down!"

This from the man who thinks 8 slices of bacon and 2 fried eggs make "a sandwich".

Exactly. I ask every week if there is something that needs to be on the shop. Past that point, I'm allowed to be controlling. In that I'm controlling how the food I've ordered to last a week actually gets used, in order to last a week.

If I didn't we'd all be starving by Tuesday

Have deliberately not read any replies.

1. Yanbu

1. However, as you say, you are not living in a student house so what is in his/your fridge is his/yours to eat. So he INBU either.

No help. So,

1. You need to tell him if x y or z is reserved for a meal.

Was it clear to him what he was allowed to eat when you left him to fend for himself?

Oh, jesus, I have no patience with a grown man who won't help with the shopping or the cooking. Plonker.

YANBU. I menu plan to some extent but we split the cooking, so I menu plan and cook ahead 3 dinners on a Sunday. My husband makes another 3 dinners as he goes from whatever's still around in the cupboards. We get a roast chicken and some crackers and things on a Friday night.

A whole quiche is not a snack. Glad you left him to fend for himself. Big baby.

So does he not eat any dinner? I'm confused where you say he saves himself for once a day.

Thats why DH comes on the big shop...

I don't think quiche is dinner, it's lunch/picnic fodder, so I wouldn't expect someone eating it to think they have eaten a dinner. It would be different if you said 'we are having quiche for dinner because we're going out'

I can't see him eating a piece of raw fish/meat.

YANBU

And I think joolyjoolyjoo is married to MY DH!

A little different here as we are VERY far from a grocery store, so I make the trip with DS once a month. Menu planning is a requirement or we would starve the last week of the month! So I plan carefully (with DH requests!), list carefully, budget carefully, shop carefully, unpack carefully, and do 100% of the cooking - which means if DH scarfs an ingredient in a late night raid, I am not happy!

It only happened twice after I decided that if he eats it and it's needed for a meal, he has to travel to the store to replace it! Unreasonable, probably, but he now asks before scarfing anything remotely recipe-related!

Just occurred to me- if my DH is indeed bigamously married to lovecat and cobis, the sneaky bugger is getting fed in 3 different places, like one of those stray cats!! That's the last 6 pack of McCoys he gets in MY shopping!!

I have just remembered a worse sin committed by dd1 today...

While she was away last week (to be fair to her), we bought one of those Heinz Baked Beans Money Safes, and naturally put it in the cupboard because it would look bloody obvious in the livingroom

It is now useless after her applying a can-opener to the top while looking for food for her tea I did wonder why the emptiness hadn't occurred to her on picking it up, but she still wanted to investigate...

It's useless now- we'll need a new one.

OMG Joolyjoolyjoo, a 6 pack of McCoys?? We ARE married to the same man!

Have to say I'm bewildered impressed by those MNers who have so much cash to flash that their fridges are free for alls and everything can be replaced just like that. I'd end up spending thousands on food a month if we followed that route!

And LMAO at the men on this thread who think a quiche is not a dinner! With a big salad (spinach, peppers, avocado, tomatoes, cukes) of course it is!

Someguy - no, that's right, he has no breakfast or lunch, comes home at 6.30pm or so ravenous and starts making himself sandwiches (usually while there's only 5 minutes to go til dinner ), then after dinner once I've gone to bed if he gets nibbly he scavenges for whatever's available. To be fair to him his mum died when he was 10 and that's how he and his dad ate as neither of them could cook, so while I've been trying (it's been nearly 20 years now, I might give up...) to undo his terrible eating habits it's not happening!

Thank you all for your input - I shall be writing that list tonight!

I am not a man, and I do not think quiche is a dinner! No wonder the fella is starving...

Arf.

Dh does all the food shopping here but then is like Ready Steady Cook.

This week we have a packet of polenta and 2 jars of Nutella (BOGOF).

Also, he will stockpile the meat (we have a fridge packed with dead stuff) and then chuck one tiny packet of Quorn sausages in for DD, the lone veggie. Tis very funny.

When he comes back and starts unpacking I am always hovering over him saying 'what did you buy that for?' and 'how am I meant to cook that?'

So he says 'well you do the blardy shopping then'.

And that is a fair point because I hate blardy shopping.

Anyway, I digress OP. If he can make himself sandwiches, he can make you dinner.