Some people have a real passion for cooking, others do it more out of necessity - sometimes enjoying it and sometimes not so much, I guess. Either way, there is a related but lesser-known passion out there, which is the infamous habit of “fixing” the food others are cooking without their permission or even despite their basically begging you to stop. It was one annoying thing this Redditor got to experience in her kitchen, making her finally snap at her husband and his sister.
More info: Reddit
A woman was well beyond fed up with her SIL "doctoring up" the food she was making
Image credits: Anastasia Shuraeva (not the actual photo)
The woman's SIL would put a full stick of butter in her shrimp that was already done, completely ruining it
Image credit: u/Wide_Competition9367
Image credits: nappy (not the actual photo)
Image credit: u/Wide_Competition9367
Or would dump sugar into the sauce, to the point that the woman and her kids would outright refuse to touch it
Image credits: Katerina Holmes (not the actual photo)
The woman's husband, meanwhile, decided to join his sister in her food affairs
The woman shared her story of her husband’s sister living with her family. While other things are working out well, she is beyond fed up with her sister-in-law “doctoring up” the food the woman is cooking to her liking.
The woman gave a few examples of her SIL’s deeds, mentioning her SIL putting a full stick of butter in the shrimp that was already done and despite completely ruining it, saying: “I’m pretty sure that’s the taste you were looking for.”
Or every time the woman was making spaghetti her SIL, would start dumping sugar into the sauce, making the spaghetti sweet to the point that the woman and her kids outright refused to touch it as the taste was nasty!
As if it wasn’t already bad enough, the woman’s husband, instead of helping out his wife here, decided to join his sister in her food “perfecting” adventures, which reached its culmination when the woman was making some home-made Mac and went to the basement for some veggies.
What she came back to was her husband putting canned chicken into the mac n' cheese, which their kids absolutely hate, in addition to her SIL pushing blocks of blue cheese into the partially cooked burgers, and the woman had had enough.
She asked both her husband and her SIL to get the hell out of her kitchen, while they were still claiming they were “just trying to help” and she was “overreacting”.
When the woman came back to her husband and his sister "fixing" her burgers, she had had enough
Image credits: Liza Summer (not the actual photo)
The woman told her husband and her SIL to get the hell out of her kitchen
While cooking together with a certain group of people might sometimes be a great uniting experience, Frances Short the author of Kitchen Secrets - The Meaning of Cooking in Everyday Life explained it to be a common phenomenon to not wish for someone to help out with one’s cooking.
Short noted that the majority of cooks he interviewed for his research don’t normally want to be helped when cooking. Or, to be precise, they most often prefer someone taking over the cooking of the whole dish rather than helping them out with a certain parts of it.
The interviewees pointed out disagreements about the specifics of how a certain meal or sauce should be done among the common downsides of joint cooking, as the interviewee shared his experience, saying: “We have arguments about how to make a sauce”.
Short also noted that unfortunately, “cooking with someone else might turn out into a recipe for upset, irritation and disagreement,” as one of his interviewees shared his unpleasant experience: “He’s always looking over my shoulder and saying ‘but what about this?” or “can’t you cut them a bit smaller?”
Finally, another reason for preferring to cook on one’s own as listed in the study was the need “to help out those who have come into the kitchen to ‘give a hand’”, as it was often quicker for people to do something themselves than show another person what they have to do.
All in all, while joining the cooking process might be tempting it might be a good idea to make sure one's help is welcome.
Redditors shared their takes on pasta with sugar and more
