How oh how can I tell Mr Inferior in a kind tactful and above all EFFECTIVE way that his culinary repetoire is deeply limited? Tell me that, eh?

[motherinferior]

I fully concede that I tend to cook the same things a lot. But DP - who only learned to cook about six years ago after taking up with me, in any case - currently cooks about two things in the week. Nigel Slater's chicken supper thing (somewhat neutered by DP's preference for skinned chicken breasts) and spaghetti bolognese which he learned from his mate Tory Ben. I have sort of tried sort of tactfully (by my standards) to ask could we not have the chicken thing every time he cooks. Hence the revisitation of Tory Ben's spag bol. Oh, and sometimes, to be fair, he does do some sort of pasta sauce variant. But it's deeply limited. Especially as DP has Prejudices against various foodstuffs including risotto. And cous-cous. And given my limitations in the areas of Tact and indeed of Relationships, please can you give me some suggestions for nudging him into a wide variety of gastronomic experimentations? Because quite seriously, it is beginning to get me down.

Oh and while you're about it how can I get him to cook more of our fresh veg delivery?

feck him off to a cooking holiday

I am enormously grateful for all the suggestions on this thread, and will ponder which ones will be most effective for DP's particular psyche.

And I should in all fairness admit that I made a lemon drizzle cake today, frightfully smugly, for DD1's school do this evening. Except that it went quite horribly wrong and we ate it at lunch as lemon stodge pudding

i'm not really one for pandering to the sensitive male ego and all that, but what I sometimes do is, if I don't think DP's cooking is good enough or often enough, just cook for me and the dds and when DP wonders where his meal is, make it clear that unless he cooks more (and nicer food) for us I'm not cooking for him either.

am not sure this qualifies as using Tact. but i don't really do tact in relationships.

but i have absolutely no way of getting DP to cook fresh veg, using frozen veg has been a major improvement for him on his pre-me cooking skills.

DH is very taken with Nigella and is enthusiastically working his way through "Forever Summer". But only the Cocktails chapter. DH griddles everything and everything he griddles he marinates in something which has to involve scotch bonnet chillis and honey. He also makes chilli con carne (do I spot a theme developing here?) and puts sugar in that (yes, I do see a theme...) and a vindaloo which is so hot it involves lots of whimpering and rolling round on the bathroom floor the next morning (him not me).

Oh he also had a horrid little book which he had as a student which involved lots of exciting things to do with mince (not). Sadly, this little bible of his accidentally got put out with the cardboard a while back.

Could you get a slow cooker, MI, not your DP, but one of those things that you chuck everything in - including those organic veg - turn it on and the next night, hey presto and voila, there's your goulash or beef carbonnade ready to eat and making the house smell lovely. Not very summery, I admit, but it won't be summer forever.

i ll say it agin MI
vooke yer slef you lazy mare
if you are good at it and he sint then why make him do it

Just buy different ingredients so he can't make the same stuff. Buy what you fancy and give him the recipe.

Easy

very very good for crap cooks

more modern than delia
more reliable than nigella

AND endorsed by nige

MI your threads are the best.
Lol at Capuccino eating any old cock and Marina's children eating the sofa cushions.

(BTW I wonder where you do live...I only ask because my sister's school fair with cake stall was on friday pm, and they don't have uniform....coincidence???)

Any progress on the DP cooking then? do keep us informed.

Poisson, just why am I lazy for not wanting to do all the cooking in this household?

lol@this thread. HOw about taking him to borough market one saturday ( with the inferorettes if necessary - make if a family day out at the south bank type of thing) and get him talking to some of the food stall holders about cooking and recipies - I don't go often but when I do I am always imspired to coook something fresh.

Failing that rather roundabout route to a new dish, just tell him he is so good it's time he took on fresh challenges - and say you will cook a new dish each week as well - take it in turns.

I found my own coooking recently got more veg orientated after working at an event over a few days where we got fed lunch supplied by an organic cafe - lots and lots of veg and salads. It really felt so much better than eating my ususal unimaginative stodge that I have made more effort in vegging up my cooking. If the veg thing is the real problem, can you somehow get your dp eating more veg meals when out?

And of course you and dp should share the cooking - he cooks what he cooks well enough, doesn't he? So no reason not to expand his range.

Use your DTP skills to create a cover for a new J Oliver cookbook, claiming it is by Jeremy Clarkson? Insert a few pics of JC revving up with a few bags of lamb shanks and artichokes spilling off the back seat?

Actually, you have missed a trick! there was a Gordon prog on the other week when he went and cooked Sunday lunch with Clarkson! They had lobster and some salads, I think. Clarkson was TERRIBLY foodie and hands on!

DP's cooking is horrible, but he is willing and hard-working about it. I haven't even muckled up enough energy to think about tackling it yet.

oh ffs MI .. where's yer bollocks

all you need to do is say

"look DP its very nice that you like chicken and spag bol but if you don't increase your repertoire soon you are going to end up wearing it"

hand him a cookbook and go out for dinnner

am pmsl at Acnebride...

You lot are all spoiled, actually. No one knows what domestic suffering truly is intil they have endured Mr Patty's patented grocery shopping methods...

Can you talk about it, Krabbie? It sometimes helps...

You need Hugh Fairly-Longname's MEAT book. It appeals to the inner caveman marvellously (although I did have to endure more offal than I would have liked one week).

I know this sounds a bit analy retentive but is there anyway you could do a list of what you want to eat for each evening meal over the next week or two and shop for it. Choose one simple cook book and use recepies from that along with stuff you and dh can already do

Stick the list on the fridge
eg.
Monday - chicken whatever - Page 73 - dh cooks
Tuesday - pasta whatever - page 30 - you cook
Weds - Dh's chicken dish
Thurs - something from your repertoire
etc..

Put one of his favourites as one of the dishes but make sure he has a new dish to cook at least one night in the week.

You could introduce the idea by saying - 'I think we need to widen our food repetoire a bit so I though we'd try this'

If you do this for a couple of weeks he will have a couple of new dishes in his repetoire - make sure you ask for them again quite quickly (assuming they are edible ) - else he'll forget how to make them.

You will need to do a bit more work in advance than just suggesting dh cook something different but he will have no excuse not to try it - The recipe will be there there as will the indredients.

In a couple of months your dh will have at least 4-6 meals he can produce - not great but better than 2 !! and then the listmaking can stop if you want it to.

I'd also like to point out that people are often not good at cooking because they don't practice. I cook much less than I used to (dh does most of it) and I have found that my skills have got worse. What suffers most is my ability to decide what to make and to put a proper meal together from ingredents in the cupboard ( something dh is a whizz at now !!). I can still cook though and do enough to make sure it is usually OK.

To soameone can't do it so let them not do it is ridiculous - It just needs a bit of will and some practice. We can't all be great cooks but most people can be competent cooks if they try.

can you not move him on gradually - e.g if he can make spag bol, it's not vastly different from making chilli.

I don't know what's the chicken dish, but same principle applies

if it's this chicken one, there's a lamb and a pork varient at the bottom of the page

Well, I thought I should post a jolly update. DP cooked portabello mushrooms baked with balsamic vinegar and butter last night, along with carrots and green beans and new potatoes. All from the delivery box . And bloomin' delish too.

I should also correct the misapprehension I fear a number of you have been given, that he only cooks twice a week. Far from it. We share the cooking (I assumed this was obvious, but was clearly wrong); what I was objecting to is that during the week - as opposed to the weekend (when he is, for instance, the only inhabitant of the Inferiority Complex to attempt roasting a leg of lamb) he tends to stick with the two damn things. In fact it was the fact we'd had the chicken thing twice in the same week that finally blew my gasket.

(Oh, and he makes the Inferiorettes pancakes a lot in the mornings, which frankly goes beyond any call of parental duty to which I have ever hearkened .)

good for him

DH makes pancakes every sunday too .. what a faff

DH makes himself a bacon butty for breakfast every morning. I can't look at them anymore!!!

MI - get a Donna Hay book - they are fab. really easy - barely even "cooking", just ideas for ways to cook basics - like lamp chops or pieces of cod, and interesting salads and the results are gorgeous.