She spent $80 a week cooking for her grieving MIL after she stopped eating — until a neighbor’s $10 comment exposed what her MIL had really been upto
When her husband asked his mom, she showed no guilt in accepting the truth
For over a year, a dedicated daughter-in-law (u/mike_davis19) spent three days a week cooking meals for her grieving mother-in-law, Helen, who had stopped eating after her husband’s death. Her familial devotion came to a screeching halt at the church potluck, where one of her mother-in-law’s neighbors gushed about her “incredible” cooking and Helen charging them “$10 per plate” for food. Instead of appreciation for taking care of her MIL, she was now being used to run her inequitable catering business. Her November 7, 2026, post has since been upvoted over 2,500 times.
WIBTA if I stopped cooking for my MIL after I found out shes been charging her neighbors $10 a plate for my food
by u/mike_davis19 in WouldIBeTheAhole
Love on a plate
The narrator described that ever since her father-in-law passed away a year and a half ago, her mother-in-law had been struggling to regain her appetite for food. Seeing her condition, she decided to cook for her about three times a week and drop meals at her home. "I spend probably 80-something dollars a week on the extra groceries, which I never thought twice about because she was going through it and she’s family," she explained.
The $10 surprise
It wasn’t until Sunday, November 1, that the truth was unleashed on her. The narrator was at a church potluck when one of her mother-in-law’s neighborhood friends came to her and started complimenting her cooking. Surprised, the woman asked whether she had tried her food. The lady replied, “Oh, Helen charges us $10 a plate, but honestly it’s worth every penny; you could probably charge way more than that.” Turned out that, for the past few months, her mother-in-law had been selling portions of the food to four or five neighbors. When the woman's husband asked his mom, she said she decided to sell her food since she was on a fixed, low income.
Her first instinct was to stop cooking for her, but her husband advised her against that because his mother was lonely, and interacting with a neighbor was more satisfying than interacting with him. He said sharing food with others is the “most social interaction she gets all week," and she’d be taking that from her. " That does get to me because I know the cooking was one of the only things keeping her eating at all in those first few months after we lost him," the narrator explained.
A delicate relationship
In Geoffrey Greif’s book "In-Law Relationships: Mothers, Daughters, Fathers, and Sons,” he describes a survey of 1,500 people on relationships between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, per TODAY. The survey found that about 15% of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law had a troubled relationship. Similarly, another study published in the International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR) found that 34% of daughters-in-law have a conflicting relationship with their mothers-in-law. Both the studies suggest that troubled relationships between MILs and their daughters-in-law aren't that rare.
'That’s rude'
Meanwhile, Reddit users urged the daughter-in-law to shrink the portion sizes she cooks for her mother so she’ll get the real picture of her effort. u/knight_4806 commented, “Your husband is right that she needs people around, but that doesn't mean it has to come out of your pocket. Ask him to sit down with his mom and work out a plan, like the neighbors paying for groceries or him covering part of it. It shouldn't all fall on you." Similarly, u/new_discussion_6692 suggested, “You don't have to stop cooking for her. Just stop cooking so much extra. If you're giving her enough food that she can sell 4 or 5 plates, you're cooking too much for her. Why not cook dinner for you and your husband and drop off your leftovers to her?”
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