“I’m bored with what we eat for dinner”

[Anonymous]

Is what DH told me today and DH travels for work 3-4 nights a week!!

We have a 6 week old and a 2 year old. Toddler has been sick for two weeks and thankfully has only passed a cold into the baby. . The easiest thing right now for me is to reorder my FreshDirect Cart and just make sure everyone is fed. I was livid and lost it. Told him he could do the shopping this week. He came back with berries. Thinking of going with kids to grandmas for some support and sanity.

[Anonymous]

"So am I, dear! What's for dinner?"

That crap is for the birds. If he isn't happy with a dinner someone else made for him, he can either cook or starve.

Ingrate.

A guy who was grateful, even if bored at times.

[Anonymous]

You need to tell him in a clear, calm voice why you are struggling to get dinner on the table, ask for him to think about what he said and say that you would like an apology after he really thinks about why it bothers you, and then say that you would like him to develop a strategy for helping you with this aspect of life for the next month or two. Maybe he cooks batch dinners on the weekend. Maybe he does the grocery shopping and then makes sure you have a chance to make batch dinners on the weekend. Maybe he decides he is fine with your Freshdirect order but he prepares it the nights he is home. Just make sure that his solution involves some help and buy in from him. Those first few weeks with two are hard for everyone and he said something thoughtless but I would start with the idea that it came from exhaustion and stay calm and straightforward when you point out that it hurt your feelings and you could use his help and understanding.

[Anonymous]

Yes go to Grandma's and don't come back until he's found a solution.

[Anonymous]

My DH said the same thing, so I showed him how to use Pinterest. He now has a recipe board of his own and twice a week I make something off of it. What I found is that, while I struggle for new (and easy) ideas, the cooking part isn’t hard if someone tells me what to cook. I don’t even usually use the recipe itself, just the meal pairing idea.

Example: we had chili lime cod with cilantro rice and grilled corn the other night. The fish cooked in the oven in 12 minutes. Rice was in the instant pot and cooked and depressurized in about 12 minutes. Corn on the grill was about 10 minutes. With prep and final assembly, dinner was done in less than 30 minutes. No longer than any of our typical meals, but not something that just came to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"So am I, dear! What's for dinner?"

That crap is for the birds. If he isn't happy with a dinner someone else made for him, he can either cook or starve.

Ingrate.

A guy who was grateful, even if bored at times.

This. My husband thanks me every night at dinner for making our meal, and makes sure to do so in front of our kids. If they complain about it, he tells them to be appreciative, even if they don't like everything.

If he had told me he was bored with our meals when we had a two year old and a newborn, I probably would have told him that he was now responsible for all the cooking (after telling him to f*ck off, of course).

[Anonymous]

I'd tell him he was in charge of feeding the family for the next week, and then just sit back and see what he does.

When my kids were that young, I was just happy that we all got fed. Variety and interesting meals came later.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DH said the same thing, so I showed him how to use Pinterest. He now has a recipe board of his own and twice a week I make something off of it. What I found is that, while I struggle for new (and easy) ideas, the cooking part isn’t hard if someone tells me what to cook. I don’t even usually use the recipe itself, just the meal pairing idea.

Example: we had chili lime cod with cilantro rice and grilled corn the other night. The fish cooked in the oven in 12 minutes. Rice was in the instant pot and cooked and depressurized in about 12 minutes. Corn on the grill was about 10 minutes. With prep and final assembly, dinner was done in less than 30 minutes. No longer than any of our typical meals, but not something that just came to me.

The pronoun above is wrong. It says “now twice a week I make something off of it.” It should say now “he makes something off of it. And it should say 3/4 times a week, not “twice.” But baby steps.

[Anonymous]

My DH world criticize dinner under the guise of discussing how to make it better. Every night. I hated that. It took many many requests and a near dissolution of our marriage to get him to stop and to just say thank you for cooking dinner, and not roll his eyes when I'd make something he didn't like. He'd deny that he rolls his eyes, but he still does. And that is exactly where my daughter learned that behaviour. The difference now is that I stopped caring and he shaped up. Too bad he didn't shape up first.

[Anonymous]

I hear Lye is in season. Why not see if he likes that?

[Anonymous]

Yeah, he was inartful at best. Ask him what he wants and assign a few nights a week for him to cook it.

[Anonymous]

You have a 6 week old and a 2 year old. And he says that. Wow. What a POS.

[Anonymous]

"Are you eating dinner you didn't cook yourself? Consider yourself lucky. Do you see these babies?"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DH said the same thing, so I showed him how to use Pinterest. He now has a recipe board of his own and twice a week I make something off of it. What I found is that, while I struggle for new (and easy) ideas, the cooking part isn’t hard if someone tells me what to cook. I don’t even usually use the recipe itself, just the meal pairing idea.

Example: we had chili lime cod with cilantro rice and grilled corn the other night. The fish cooked in the oven in 12 minutes. Rice was in the instant pot and cooked and depressurized in about 12 minutes. Corn on the grill was about 10 minutes. With prep and final assembly, dinner was done in less than 30 minutes. No longer than any of our typical meals, but not something that just came to me.

The pronoun above is wrong. It says “now twice a week I make something off of it.” It should say now “he makes something off of it. And it should say 3/4 times a week, not “twice.” But baby steps.

Np. I don't think there's anything wrong with division of duties. I did all the cooking but dh does all the laundry.

I'm also not opposed to what pp described. I would be bummed out if my dh was unhappy all the time with dinner (just like I'm sure he'd be bummed out if he kept shrinking my shirts or something).

It's all in approach. Go up to a mom with a 2 yr old and a 6mn old and say you think dinner is boring. Or go up to that mom and say, "hey I found some recipes online I think look good, any way we can work them into the lineup?" One is good one is bad.

Also depends how helpful he is generally.

[Anonymous]

I would stop cooking for him altogether.