Woman left fuming after husband ruins meal she spent 3.5 hours making for his parents

Sometimes, the hard work and effort someone puts into something goes unnoticed, and the response they get can feel hurtful. A woman found herself in that exact situation when her husband forgot to refrigerate the dinner she had spent almost four hours preparing, then canceled their plans the next day. The woman, @namechange294284, shared her story on Mumsnet, asking for advice from the community.

"Husband and I are both 34. We've been in the process of moving house over the past two months and are finally in a position to have guests in the house (i.e., we have a dining table and chairs)," the post began. "Moving hasn't been without its challenges and there have been some really stressful bits, but on the whole, it's been fairly straightforward and we don't have kids." The woman invited her husband's parents, who are in their mid to late 60s, for dinner at their new house on a Tuesday night. "I offered to cook. I prepared a starter, a main and a dessert on Monday night, ready to go in the fridge for ease of serving quickly on Tuesday (I was going to be getting in from work only 20 minutes or so before they arrived, so it made sense to pre-prepare)," she explained.

"I spent 3.5 hours cooking/baking on Monday, which wiped out my entire post-work evening. No drama; I'd offered to do it and I enjoy cooking," the woman expressed. "But throughout these 3.5 hours, my husband could not help himself from repeatedly putting his head around the door and being critical." The wife asked him to stop, but he didn't. "He probably whinged at me five times about separate trivial things while I was cooking. The main dish needed a long while in the oven. It was 9:15 pm at this point and he had totally exhausted me with his bit**ing and griping. I told him I just wanted to shower and go to bed and asked him to take the food out of the oven once the timer went off, which would have been at 10 pm."

Her husband took the dish out of the oven but left it on the counter all night. "He was watching telly until about midnight, well after the point it would have cooled enough to go in the fridge," the wife revealed. "I was so furious in the morning that after a night of whinging and sniping at me, he'd not even had the thought to properly put away the food I'd spent so long cooking." The husband told her, "The food's fine. It had foil on it anyway, just crack on and serve it tonight." The woman argued, "It's a meat dish (with pork in) and I don't feel comfortable serving it to his parents, who are in their 60s, after it's been left out overnight in the middle of August."

"He canceled the dinner plans and told his mum it was because we'd had an argument (which we had, I guess, but now I feel really humiliated and almost ashamed that their evening was spoiled because of us)." People took to the comments to share their opinions. @Maray1967 wrote, "Pork can be very problematic - I would have binned it and served something else. He needs to learn some basic food hygiene." @Ineffable23 remarked, "I wouldn't eat meat I had left out all night. Or I might possibly eat it myself, but I definitely wouldn't serve it to anyone else." @InevitableNameChanger asked, "Was there a reason you were cooking not him? I wouldn't serve a dish that had been left out overnight to anyone. Equally surely a decent ready meal or similar (Cook meal or something) was the solution when the first dish was ruined? Canceling was over the top."