What's the longest you ate someone else's food?

19 years. Until I left my parents home. I appreciated that my mom had a home cooked meal for my family every single day.

@chyna But, wasn’t that the same as eating your food? That was in your home. That’s why I specified as an adult.

When I lived in a fraternity, we had dinner nightly which was one meal choice. That was hit or miss sometimes, but 95% of the time was okay.

I didn’t pick up on the adult part. Yes, I had to move back in with my mom for 6 months at a point when I was an adult. I loved that my dinner was ready when I got home from work every day.

I stayed with friends and their four kids for a month or two after my divorce. But we already had similar eating habits so it wasn’t difficult that way.

The unhealthy food would get to me, I would quickly start cooking for myself, maybe announce I have health or religious reasons to be eating vegetables and fruit.

I ate my mother’s abysmal cooking until I was about eleven. After that, I took over.

Since becoming an adult, I’ve only really had the occasional meal out or dinner party. No extended stays anywhere, and my MIL doesn’t cook.

After I left my childhood home (at 16–17), probably only a week or so. I think I’d find it wearing for much longer than that.

Gosh…pretty much never more than a few days visit. I took over 90% of the cooking here in my current living arrangement and buy my own healthy snacks.

Never more than a meal at a time (dinner at someone’s house or for a party or something). It would drive me crazy if it was for an extended time. I have odd eating habits and am a fairly picky eater.

I stayed with my parents for three months when a building that I lived in burned in a fire. Luckily, the cooking that my mom does is just what I like. Simple, nothing fried, no elaborate sauces. A meat, a starch and a vegetable is what she consistently cooks for dinner. Breakfast and lunch is sometimes eggs or pancakes on weekends, sometimes cold cuts at lunch.

I think you’re in a tough spot, @Jleslie, because if you don’t eat her food she might take it as an insult. I’d probably try to eat minimal amounts of it, and eat breakfast and lunch out (salad, sandwiches, etc.).

@jca The toughest part is her fridge and pantry are stocked! It’s hard to find room to put my own stuff in there. I do eat breakfast with my own food now. We all eat breakfast at different times, and luckily mine is earlier so I don’t have her in the kitchen. When we used to stay for just a few days she would come out when she heard us in the kitchen and ask what we want, but she stopped doing that. My husband told her enough times we don’t need her for breakfast (not in those words) and between that and she isn’t really awake yet, she relented.

At first I ate lunch and dinner with them. Now, in the last week or so I see they aren’t eating lunch usually and eat just two meals late breakfast and very early dinner. That’s not a good system for me usually. Sigh. But, if I know that’s what’s going to happen I can adjust for it. Here’s the thing, they don’t let it be known what time dinner will be. No communication! No nothing to say, we’ll eat around 4:00 or 6:00 or whatever. Yet, she cooks for everyone to eat, and is offended if we don’t eat.

A couple of weeks ago when we usually were eating at 6:00 I ate an apple at 3:30 to hold me over. I could feel her staring at me. I offered her some apple and she declined and her no was in a tone of, “are you crazy? 15 minutes later she announced dinner was ready. WTH? She was cooking in the kitchen when I took the apple, but she cooks 3–4 hours a day. It is zero indication we are about to eat.

I visited my father and step-mother for a week and I cooked all but one day (I was sick in bed).

I have a very specific diet that I don’t wish to impose on anyone else, and actually don’t trust them to get right. So I just do the cooking.

I wouldn’t last long if I had to eat someone else’s food. Seriously. That would not be OK with me.

Your MIL sounds manipulative with poor boundaries. That wouldn’t be OK with me either. I give you a lot of credit for being so accommodating. I wouldn’t be, but then my husband would probably be upset with me for upsetting his mom and not going with the flow. F that. I care more about my health and having boundaries than I do about passive aggression and co-dependence. No thanks.

My guess is the MIL is obligated (in her mind) to cook for her husband (your FIL). He has certain foods that he likes and he likes things a certain way. She doesn’t want you to try to cook for the four of you and she doesn’t want to hear his crap if it’s wrong so she is faced with limited choices.

@jca Yes, her place is the kitchen. Not just in terms of she is the one who runs it for many years as many women do, but also in the sense that her husband expects his wife to “serve” him. Very traditional roles with the macho culture making the “demand” more extreme. He is actually much less into defined roles than when they were younger, but she has been trained and I think she is a little afraid. Plus, the kitchen is a place she can feel competent and useful. Ugh, so when we don’t appreciate her meal it makes her feel less useful and less nurturing I think. I understand that for her she makes people happy and comfortable through food.

They are out of town, I think I mentioned that, and my husband just threw out about 5 jars of stuff from her fridge. Stuff that went bad. I told him not to, but he wouldn’t listen.

@JLeslie: I’d be concerned she’d think it was me and not him throwing crap out.

There’s a Hispanic bodega across the street from where I work and you should see the crap they cook. Some people here eat it and I was telling the receptionist that I don’t because it’s all artery clogging. Pork, fried crap, salty crap.

@jca I worry a little she will blame me. I told my husband just that. I told him to show her it’s bad so she sees it for herself and he wouldn’t. Part of me thinks if it had just been one or two jars she wouldn’t even notice, because it was stuff that was months or years old. But 5 jars, with most of them from the fridge door that had no space for one thing more? She’ll notice, because now there is space.

She knows some of the stuff is old, because she mentioned it to me a few weeks ago. Still. He should have just left it I think.

She does fry more food than I want to eat, but almost everything she makes is from scratch, and a reasonable amount of it is healthy. If she just would make more of the healthy stuff I’d eat more of that and much less of the unhealthy.

I don’t see pork as less healthy than other meats, so I don’t mind that she makes pork, which she does, I just only want a small portion of it and lots of vegetables and some rice. Or, a baked potato sometimes rather than butter filled mashed. I naturally like the lower fat options in a lot of cases.

Eating dinner is fine, one meal is fine. If she just tweaked it a little more to have more of the healthy stuff it would help.

Besides the fridge I want to change her kitchen cabinets so badly. She is short, can barely reach the second shelf of the upper cabinets, and is on her tippy tippy toes all the time or needs us to get something. It would be easy to rearrange two of the upper, double, cabinets so the every day items are on reachable shelves. I showed her and asked her, and she didn’t understand. She emphasized that she likes her dishes on the right and her spices on the left. I get that. I get being accustomed to where certain things go. But, mostly she couldn’t understand the spatial part of it or she was just closed to the suggestion. Its her kitchen, I’m fine with leaving it, but I know it would be so much easier for her, so it drives me a little batty.