How can I tell my daughter this? See inside.

She’s your daughter, you know the risks better than I. If it was me, I’d want your critique – it might help me improve it. Also since you’d be aware that if you tell me it’s good, you run the significant risk of getting it again, it might be in your own best interest to speak up! Though maybe soften the blow and leave out the ‘Stouffers frozen food’ part, unless she’d expect that, or that was her goal, anyway.

Why not just cook with her, or help her make the recipie better? She’s probably jsut learning, and no crap she can’t cook like a frozen dinner, they mass produce those with cheap stuff designed to taste good, nbody actually does the work.

“That was good, Hon. I especially liked <something>. Next time, how do you think we can make it more <this> and less <that>. But make sure you don’t lose the <other thing I liked>.”

You turn it into a quest for this and against that. Don’t criticize the meatloaf, lasagna, spaghetti, chili, whatever. “It’s good, but let’s make it better,” is usually safe.

Don’t you dare mention Stouffer’s to you daughter, @john65pennington! You appreciate that she took the time and care to prepare you a homemade lasagna dinner. Treat her the way you would want her future husband to treat her. What would you say if she said she’d prepared him a nice meal and then he said he like the frozen meal better?!! Don’t hurt her feelings. Choke it down.

I would leave the Stoffer’s out of it. While I agree that Stoffer’s does make an excellent lasagna, since conventional wisdom says that TV dinners are a poor substitute for homemade food, there’s really no way that’s going to sound like anything other than “your cooking is so horrendously poor that even crappy TV dinners are better than this”.

I say, you find a recipe that you like, and say “Hey, I found this new recipe for lasagna, and was wondering if you wanted to come over and help me make it? I’d love to have some quality cooking time with you.” (Or if it’s a recipe you’ve had for years, say “I was going to whip up a batch of my classic lasagna, care to come over and help me out – you can tell me all about that current even in your life?”). Then, when you both taste it, and agree that it’s delicious, tell her you’ll give her the recipe.

bkcunningham, I will not mention Stouffers and I did choke it down(with plenty of Coke).

Was it possible that her lasagna made me sweat? Never did figure that one out.

LOL, @john65pennington. The fear of what she made for dessert may have made you sweat.

Unless she asks you what you thought about it, why bring it up at all? Do you mean you’re thinking of just walking up to your daughter and just mentioning, out the blue, that her homemade lasagna wasn’t even as good as frozen! Are you mad, man? Why?

NO!!!!!!!!! She did nothing but a GREAT JOB out of LOVE for YOU! How many vegetarian Stoffers lasagna’s were mass produced just out of love for you!!! Wait…how old is your daughter? Regardless, I would not bring up other lasagna recipes for at least 6 months.

Thanks for the tip about Stouffer’s vegetarian lasagna!

Someone makes you a nice dinner that involves a fair amount of effort. Love it, love her, never be such an ungracious a bastard as to say she could have done it more to your taste. NEVER.

Don’t. Say. Anything. Except how great her lasagna is.

I think he was asking the question somewhat tongue in cheek. Hence, the “for my safety” part of his question.

For all those who recommend “say nothing critical”, I think it’s more of a disservice to unjustly praise a poor result (no matter how earnest the effort) than it is to be overly critical. Having received both unjust praise and too much criticism myself, I know that it’s only the criticism that led to improvements – however much I may have resented it at the time.

So I don’t think that praising a poor dish is going to do the girl any favors. She may decide that your praise is worthless, if she knows that the dish didn’t come out well. I don’t recommend being over-critical, either. But balancing “thanks” and “praise for what did work out well” sandwiched around “I think we could do this better next time” (and do suggest that you assist) is fair, useful and helpful.

If I make a dish and it comes out “barely edible” and I get effusive thanks and praise for that, then I’ll never trust that person to give an honest opinion again.

I wouldn’t tell her that you think a frozen lasagna was better….

Well, how old is she? She may not have had made it any other way, if she is learning. On the back of the Mueller lasagna box is a recipe for lasagna. Maybe you could tell her that while grocery shopping you happened to be in the area of pasta, and was thinking of her lasagna and looked at the back of the box to see how you make lasagna.
That would be a great idea, and if you want to-you could get the ingredients too. If you bring that to her, and ask her to make you more lasagna-she will most likely use the ingredients. You can say that you didn’t know how she made it, and you looked on the box.
She may get her feelings hurt if you bring up the Stouffers frozen lasagna. :)

@John: Here are the ingredients of that Stouffer’s frozen lasagna. You may want to rethink your analogy.

Ingredients
COOKED LASAGNA (WATER, SEMOLINA WHEAT FLOUR),
WATER, TOMATOES (TOMATOES, TOMATO JUICE, CITRIC ACID [ACIDULANT], CALCIUM CHLORIDE), COTTAGE AND PART SKIM MOZZARELLA CHEESES (MILK
INGREDIENTS, BACTERIAL CULTURE, SALT, MICROBIAL ENZYMES), COOKED GROUND BEEF, TOMATO PASTE, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, TEXTURED SOY
PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SUGAR, DEHYDRATED ONIONS, SALT, POTASSIUM CHLORIDE, AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, SPICES, GARLIC POWDER, LACTIC ACID, CALCIUM LACTATE, FLAVOUR (SOY SAUCE [WATER, SOYBEANS, WHEAT, SALT], AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, DEXTROSE, SOY OIL), COLOUR.
MAY CONTAIN PEANUTS/NUTS.

I love the idea of the two of you cooking together. The less you say, the better. Show by doing. My father never ever stood by me in the kitchen with a mixing spoon in his hand. It would have been unthinkable, given our family dynamic.

Your daughter is a grown woman, right?

I know that if I tried my damnedest to make a nice meal for my family, and they compared it (unfavorably, no less!) to a TV dinner, I’d probably cry myself to sleep.

Of course, I have bad parents and low self-esteem.

I have no problem with constructive criticism, but being compared to something factory-pressed and sold in the frozen food section on BOGO for less than $5 is just insulting.

These are a few of my favorite things: CITRIC ACID [ACIDULANT], CALCIUM CHLORIDE, MILK INGREDIENTS, BACTERIAL CULTURE, SALT, MICROBIAL ENZYMES, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, TEXTURED SOY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SUGAR, SALT, POTASSIUM CHLORIDE, AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, LACTIC ACID, CALCIUM LACTATE, FLAVOUR (SOY SAUCE [WATER, SOYBEANS, WHEAT, SALT], AUTOLYZED YEAST EXTRACT, DEXTROSE, SOY OIL), COLOUR.

While I thin @CWOTUS has a very good point, and a good answer, @john65pennington, is this the hill you want to die on? Your daughter’s lasagna? First, I don’t think a lasagna is worth the bad feelings it might cause between you and your daughter and second, and I mean no ill will here, but if you a prefer a Staufer’s lasagna to the real thing, the problem may be yours and not hers.

Tell her the truth. Be nice about it. Done.

If you want good lasagna, don’t think of Stouffer’s, come to the Bronx.

Research a recipe, try it out yourself, invite her to try it and honestly critique it yourself, and invite her to do the same. Then discuss how you and she are going to improve on it and make one together, and make it a family dinner and invite critique from all.

How old is she, John?

@gailcalled Why are you assuming those ingredients are bad? Just because they are big words that you don’t understand? They’d all be found naturally in “home made” lasagna too. For example, LACTIC ACID: “Lactic acid is found primarily in sour milk products, such as koumiss, laban, yoghurt, kefir, and some cottage cheeses.” Wiki. Cottage cheese is one of the types of cheeses I put in my lasagna.

And you can bet that your home made pasta has converted glucose 1-phosphate to ADP-glucose using the enzyme glucose-1-phosphate adenylyltransferase. link. That’s the kind of dangerous things plants, such as wheat, do naturally.

Would you ever use an ingredient in your lasagna that is a symmetrical tetraterpene assembled from 8 isoprene units? link. Well, a lasagna wouldn’t be a lasagna without tomatoes!

And I put sodium hydrogen carbonate in a lot of my baked goods.

We’re all gonna die.