Preparing food for someone is a big responsibility. You not only have to make sure they like such food, and aren't allergic to it, but also make sure it tastes good and is properly cooked.
In today's story, the chef, or the OP, made sure to do everything right when cooking dinner for her in-laws. She spent nearly 4 hours preparing an intricate meal with pork, but her husband went and ruined it by leaving it on the counter during a hot August night. So, instead of a nice dinner, the couple ended up having a nasty fight.
More info: Mumsnet
It's heartbreaking to learn that something that cost you quite a lot of time to make has been ruined by someone's inconsideration
Image credits: Timur Weber / Pexels (not the actual photo)
This exact thing happened to the author of today's post – she spent nearly 4 hours preparing a meal that her husband ruined
Image credits: Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels (not the actual photo)
He did that by simply forgetting to put it in the fridge, leaving it on the counter during a hot summer night
Image credits: Luis Quintero / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Since the meal contained pork, the woman wasn't comfortable serving it to her in-laws, as she was sure it was contaminated
Image credits: namechange294824
Before she could come up with an idea of what she could serve instead, her husband canceled the whole dinner, making her feel ashamed and upset
The OP and her husband decided to have their first dinner guests over after moving and invited the man’s parents. Since the author enjoys cooking, she volunteered to be the designated cook for this dinner.
So, after work, she spent 3.5 hours cooking the meal and making dessert, which basically ate up her whole evening. All the prepared food was supposed to go in the fridge to be served the next evening. Emphasis on supposed to, as it didn’t happen. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Throughout these 3.5 hours, the husband kept criticizing trivial parts of his wife’s cooking. So, it’s no surprise he got on the woman’s nerves. Yet that wasn’t his biggest offense that night.
At around 9:15 PM, the woman was exhausted, so she asked her whining husband to take the meal out of the oven at around 10 PM, while she took a shower and went to bed. Well, he did take it out of the oven, but he then proceeded to leave it on the countertop overnight instead of putting it in the fridge.
Putting food straight from the oven into the fridge isn’t the best idea. Doing so might raise the appliance's ambient temperature, putting the food directly in the bacterial growth "danger zone." So, it’s better to wait around 2 hours for food to cool down before placing it in a fridge. Waiting for longer than that might, again, put the food at risk for bacterial growth.
So, we acknowledged that the husband got the food out of the oven and placed it on the countertop, likely for it to cool down a bit. Then, at around midnight, so after 2 hours, he went to sleep and still left the meal on the counter, even though it would have been perfect timing to refrigerate it.
In the morning, the 2-hour mark was long past, and the food was fully in the bacterial “danger zone.” No surprise it left the woman fuming – she had spent so much time cooking and now the meal was ruined.
Image credits: freepik / Freepik (not the actual photo)
At the same time, the husband didn’t see it as a big deal. In his eyes, the food was fine, since it had foil on. While we see why someone might think that makes the food safe, it actually doesn’t. Since the foil doesn’t completely seal the food from the air, it allows the bacteria to grow quite fast. Which, by the way, is something that one of the post’s comments pointed out too.
The World Health Organization writes that bacteria (along with viruses, parasites, and chemical substances) in food cause over 200 diseases that range from diarrhea to various cancers. Doesn’t sound appetizing, does it?
If that wasn't enough, the meal that the OP had made had pork in it. While pork poses the most danger to health when it’s undercooked or raw, knowing that this meal had been on the counter for a whole hot August night, it was logical for the woman to be worried about its quality.
So, the couple was fighting about whether the food was proper or not until the man ended up canceling the dinner with his parents. He didn’t hide the reason why – he said that it was due to the couple’s quarrel, which made the woman ashamed that the whole evening was ruined.
So, she came to Mumsnet to ask who in this whole situation was right – her or her husband. Most of the people there took the woman’s side, as they thought the man was dangerously unreasonable.
They also comforted the woman for feeling upset that the dinner was canceled, as instead of serving possibly dangerous pork, they could have ordered a takeout or something similar. As the OP clarified in the comments, her husband made a snap judgment to cancel, and there was not much time to change the situation.
Well, let’s hope that in the future the woman will get a chance to cook a harmless meal for her in-laws and the husband will become more appreciative of his spouse’s cooking and won’t forget to properly take care of it. As this story showed, wasting your partner’s time doesn’t lead to a healthy relationship, but it leads to harmful food.
People online fully understood why the woman didn't want to serve such a meal and felt sorry for her wasted time
