Wife is just unimaginative with food and prefers to eat crap...at my wits’ end

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you not communicate with her at all? You say she conveniently forgets what you’ve made to eat. If so, call her or email or text and mention that dinner is made and you’ll be home by x-time. (This is different than her knowing you’re coming home and have dinner already made and just going out. You said she forgets conveniently. She can’t if you’re texting a few times ahead of time about it.)

Meal plan with her. See what she likes.

- get a crock pot and make it ahead of time
- have easy, ready food for “appetizers” to snack on while waiting for you: carrots and humus, cut up veggies, nuts, cheese, etc.
- grocery shop together
- buy ready made foods that are simple to create into a meal (on days we are rushing from sports, I’ll have frozen chicken breasts from a bag thawed and baked. When I get home, I’ll quickly make a rice packet dish, add the chicken, ginger, peanuts/peanut butter and we have a Thai-like dish in 8 minutes. I also will have that night’s veggie in a small pot ready to add water to and cook the second I get home. Maybe broccoli, asparagus, cauliflower, etc. you could also do those salads in a bag. Point is that you can have the cooking done yourself in 10 min or less from when you enter the door.
- hire someone to make food in the afternoons or weekends
- make food yourself on afternoons and weekends
- get the kids invested in making food - picking recipes, shopping, cooking - and then make a huge deal how we are having Larla’s lasagne that evening. Call larla at 5:30 and remind her to put it in the oven!

All good suggestions but this is a person who prefers not to cook. So having ready made stuff isn’t helpful. She needs to learn or get a divorce.

Yeah and I don’t think hiring someone will work unless the op and his wife can afford that long-term (hiring someone once does nothing).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are pasta meals with vegetables included in the frozen food section. Might not be as intimidating as cooking from scratch for her.

Can you make big batch meals and leave them for her to reheat?

+1 start with easy but healthier-than-fast-food options. And YOU do the shopping and plan out which meal for which day. Then all she has to do is microwave it and throw it on some rice or pasta.

Start with that and see how it goes, and then maybe do a meal kit one day a week with BOTH of you there. Then if she gets the hang of it, graduate to one night cooking alone and one night cooking together.

And I think OP is right to be concerned. The eating habits his kids form now will stick with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are pasta meals with vegetables included in the frozen food section. Might not be as intimidating as cooking from scratch for her.

Can you make big batch meals and leave them for her to reheat?

+1 start with easy but healthier-than-fast-food options. And YOU do the shopping and plan out which meal for which day. Then all she has to do is microwave it and throw it on some rice or pasta.

Start with that and see how it goes, and then maybe do a meal kit one day a week with BOTH of you there. Then if she gets the hang of it, graduate to one night cooking alone and one night cooking together.

And I think OP is right to be concerned. The eating habits his kids form now will stick with them.

About being concerned: I agree that he is right to be concerned, but he’s going about it the wrong way. He needs to have a better attitude both toward his wife’s approach to feeding her kids as well toward his wife as a person. He’s going to get nowhere if he just continues with “it’s your job so do it.” And divorce won’t help since presumably his wife would still be in charge of feeding the kids, at least part of the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are pasta meals with vegetables included in the frozen food section. Might not be as intimidating as cooking from scratch for her.

Can you make big batch meals and leave them for her to reheat?

+1 start with easy but healthier-than-fast-food options. And YOU do the shopping and plan out which meal for which day. Then all she has to do is microwave it and throw it on some rice or pasta.

Start with that and see how it goes, and then maybe do a meal kit one day a week with BOTH of you there. Then if she gets the hang of it, graduate to one night cooking alone and one night cooking together.

And I think OP is right to be concerned. The eating habits his kids form now will stick with them.

OP already does the shopping and preps easy things for her to do. She doesn’t WANT to do it and actually prefers to get/eat fast food. That is problem. Not her ability to cook

[Anonymous]

Maybe OP needs to just prep/prepare for the kids and himself. Tell her that he had spaghetti (chicken and rice, etc) prepared in the fridge that she simply needs to microwave for the kids at dinner time. That way, if she wants to go out and get nuggets on top of that, she can.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are pasta meals with vegetables included in the frozen food section. Might not be as intimidating as cooking from scratch for her.

Can you make big batch meals and leave them for her to reheat?

+1 start with easy but healthier-than-fast-food options. And YOU do the shopping and plan out which meal for which day. Then all she has to do is microwave it and throw it on some rice or pasta.

Start with that and see how it goes, and then maybe do a meal kit one day a week with BOTH of you there. Then if she gets the hang of it, graduate to one night cooking alone and one night cooking together.

And I think OP is right to be concerned. The eating habits his kids form now will stick with them.

About being concerned: I agree that he is right to be concerned, but he’s going about it the wrong way. He needs to have a better attitude both toward his wife’s approach to feeding her kids as well toward his wife as a person. He’s going to get nowhere if he just continues with “it’s your job so do it.” And divorce won’t help since presumably his wife would still be in charge of feeding the kids, at least part of the time.

This. If he keeps buying fish, avocado, rotisserie chicken and other things she clearly doesn’t like it’s not going to have a good outcome. Can you send her to the store or split the grocery shopping? In my house my husband does the Costco run, I do the regular grocery store. We both get some things of our choosing.

[Anonymous]

Crockpot meals are boring. Tell her she needs to learn how to use the InstantPot stat. It just sounds like your wife is a boring person who is fat. And likes to be fat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are pasta meals with vegetables included in the frozen food section. Might not be as intimidating as cooking from scratch for her.

Can you make big batch meals and leave them for her to reheat?

+1 start with easy but healthier-than-fast-food options. And YOU do the shopping and plan out which meal for which day. Then all she has to do is microwave it and throw it on some rice or pasta.

Start with that and see how it goes, and then maybe do a meal kit one day a week with BOTH of you there. Then if she gets the hang of it, graduate to one night cooking alone and one night cooking together.

And I think OP is right to be concerned. The eating habits his kids form now will stick with them.

About being concerned: I agree that he is right to be concerned, but he’s going about it the wrong way. He needs to have a better attitude both toward his wife’s approach to feeding her kids as well toward his wife as a person. He’s going to get nowhere if he just continues with “it’s your job so do it.” And divorce won’t help since presumably his wife would still be in charge of feeding the kids, at least part of the time.

I agree with all three of you.

I like the idea of the pasta meals from the frozen food section. That, some cottage cheese (for extra protein) and some fruit (even canned is fine and both kids will be used to it if they've ever been in daycare) would be a meal for the kids. Plus there are so many sous vide entrees out there these days that they could probably do 1 a day for a week and not have any repeats.

My only other suggestion would be for OP to put an oven roaster chicken in the oven before he leaves for work. One of those big birds would probably make 2-3 whole dinners each week (day 1 = roasted chicken, days 2 & 3 use the meat of the chicken in quesadillas, pasta alfredo, fajitas, chicken salad, chicken noodle soup, etc.).

I also agree that OP is doing this the wrong way. His disdain is apparent. It could even be that his wife feels so judged that she is responding in a way sure to provoke an even stronger response.

[Anonymous]

Who wouldn't have disdain for a person who has weight issues and yet keeps on eating junk?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DW retired from the military and is now staying at home with our two kids -1 and 4yo. I work the night shift at my job so I’m not home for dinner. Instead of cooking at home, she will take the trouble of driving to McDonalds or BK and get fast food instead. If she does cook, it’s Mac and cheese or spaghetti with pasta sauce. No variation and it’s not healthy for our kids. She isn’t healthy either, being in her early 40s and suffering from sleep apnea due to obesity. She says “I don’t know what to cook” so I bought her a cookbook weeks ago but she is visiting the drive-thru as I post this. She grew up on a farm in the Midwest and yet doesn’t like vegetables. She refuses to learn how to use the instantpot and takes the trouble of ordering fries, burgers, and nuggets when she could be cooking real food at home. I’m shaking my head. If you’ve faced this at home, how did you manage?

From a military family. Although mess hall meals have improved, it is still mostly crap and a lot of single service people never get the early 20s experience of experimenting with recipes. My dad (USAF) made truly horrific one pot meals for us growing up. Spaghetti with cut up hot dogs was his specialty! DH learned how to cook growing up but then didn’t cook much for twenty years in the Marines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I used to work nights and was home for dinner daily. How are you not home for dinner? Eat dinner at 530

Why won't OP reply to this? Troll

OP here. I wish I was a troll. I have to commute an hour to work so eating dinner at 5.30pm isn't going to work for me. I have tried many of the suggestions here but my wife tends to conveniently forget when I'm the one who does the cooking and still gets takeout or fast food.

I have a 2 and 4 year old. If my husband did all the cooking in advance, there's no way I would put the kids in the car and drive them to McDonald's. Sounds like your wife has an eating disorder/food addiction issue, and the fast food is really for her. It also sounds like you are probably aware of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DW retired from the military and is now staying at home with our two kids -1 and 4yo. I work the night shift at my job so I’m not home for dinner. Instead of cooking at home, she will take the trouble of driving to McDonalds or BK and get fast food instead. If she does cook, it’s Mac and cheese or spaghetti with pasta sauce. No variation and it’s not healthy for our kids. She isn’t healthy either, being in her early 40s and suffering from sleep apnea due to obesity. She says “I don’t know what to cook” so I bought her a cookbook weeks ago but she is visiting the drive-thru as I post this. She grew up on a farm in the Midwest and yet doesn’t like vegetables. She refuses to learn how to use the instantpot and takes the trouble of ordering fries, burgers, and nuggets when she could be cooking real food at home. I’m shaking my head. If you’ve faced this at home, how did you manage?

Who is obese in the military? I call troll.

There are lots of obese people in the military. DH always has problems with overweight, unfit Airmen, but it’s very difficult to get anything done about it. He even had one person drop a weight on their foot so that they wouldn’t have to take the fitness test. In the army it’s even worse.

[Anonymous]

And have you seen the food outlets they have on bases? It’s mostly crap. That pizza they serve at the gas stations on base is the worst.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And have you seen the food outlets they have on bases? It’s mostly crap. That pizza they serve at the gas stations on base is the worst.

The two gas stations here don't serve prepared food.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good for mom for getting what she wants to eat after multiple deployments and all that hard work. OP, were you ever active duty? You are benefitting from her service so stop complaining.

P.S. this is fake.

Good for mom? She's a fat oinker?

Nobody needs to be praised for being unhealthy.