OS Menu Plan for a vry fussy eater

butterflylady131

Hi,
I've done a seach on the forums, and there are plenty of menu plans, but my DH is the most fussy eater ever. We need to start saving money (I'm 22 weeks pregnant with our first), and I love to batch cook, it's just that I mainly batch cook for me, as he will not eat the same things I do!

Just for example:
He will eat
chicken, turkey, gammon, and beef, peas, carrots and potatoes, yorkie puds, chocolate, crisps and pineapple and a whole variety of KFC, Mcdonalds, Burger King etc.

He will not eat
Lamb, pork, anything chinesy, no highly spiced curries, any veg (other than the above), no mincemeat of any kind, no cheesy sauces (even though he will eat cheese), nothing with any wine in, no chillies, mousaka etc.

He flippin drives me nuts! And when I ask him why, he just says "Because I tried it once and I didn't like it".

How can I get him to eat the same things I do?;)

jackieglasgow

I would cook it and tell him its all there is, it takes ten tastes of something apparently to develop a taste for it, and for you to know for definite if you do like it or not. He needs to grow up, and that's that. I went through this with mine, and he is still a fussy get, but not as bad as yours, he will eat curry etc., but nothing with cheese. You also don't want your child to end up like daddy, so try and appeal to that side of him, too.

butterflylady131

His daughter is exactly the same! She even went up to my sister at a restaurant lately, and just took the cucumber off her plate and ate it, without being offered! I went mad, and gave her a right telling off. Not only is it rude and bad manners, just because someone has something on their plate that she likes to eat, doesn't mean it's hers for the taking!

I know it's all to do with immaturity, but how does one get her fella to grow up?:cool:

I also think it's to do with narrowmindedness (is that a word?), and that drives me mental too!

And no, I don't want my child learning bad habits! But if I put something down for him, and he doesn't want it, he just goes into the kitchen and helps himself to whatever he fancies! So it just makes me out to be a food dictator!:(

jackieglasgow

Its a difficult one, can you not try his dinners one night, yours the next?

MummyOfTwo

i agree its really childish behaviour, and not a good food attitude for a youngin to learn. if baba sees daddy getting away with it, they will naturally think they can too!

have you looked at The Takeaway Secret thread? might be worth you getting the book.

kinkyjinks

jackieglasgow wrote: »

I would cook it and tell him its all there is, it takes ten tastes of something apparently to develop a taste for it, and for you to know for definite if you do like it or not. He needs to grow up, and that's that. I went through this with mine, and he is still a fussy get, but not as bad as yours, he will eat curry etc., but nothing with cheese. You also don't want your child to end up like daddy, so try and appeal to that side of him, too.

I agree. My MIL has a nightmare with her OH, won't eat anything that has touched a vegetable if she's cooked it, yet wolfs down my chicken that has been cooked with onions and carrots, not to mention the gravy with mushrooms, onions and herbs. I've always put it down to either; immaturity and if he was hungry he'd eat it (he'd rather starve and moan though) or control. This site makes a bit of interesting reading.

RAS

I taught my then BF to cook a fairly basic range of foods including some "foreign" stuff way back. When his mum went into hospital for a long stay, he looked after dad and younger brother. What a palaver. One would not eat peas, another would not eat carrot, etc, etc, and neither liked the mince he cooked.

He discovered that mum had for many years cooked a meal, left it to get cold and then taken the fat off the top before re-heating it the next day. No wonder they were a skinny lot.

Anyway, he just told them that for the next 6 weeks they would eat what was on the table or else. They did.

When mum got home, he stayed on but the first night mum cooked they tried it on again. So he intervened and explained exactly what they had eaten whilst she was away. Bye, bye fads.


I think you need to find out what it is that he does not like about certain foods. For instance I loathe supermarket sausages but eat those from my local butcher. Why? Because supermarket sausages are ground meat which include grisle and makes me gag and the local butcher minces his meat. And packet made cheese sauce is vile. It may be flavour or texture that is the problem, so you need to know.

I think you need to do three things:

1. Find a list of meals that you will both eat discuss this with him. Batch cook them. And from what you say, he does not like sauces or gravies? Can you devise recipes that alow him to have plain meat and you to make it more enticing with a sauce, which you could batch make and freeze in singe portions.
2. Find a list of ingredients that you can both eat, so you say he will not eat mince, but apparently he eats burgers? Which are made of mince. What else will he eat but in a different format?
3. Then devise a two week menu that means one week you can cook things that you will both eat. The next week make sure there is nothing he can go onto the kitchen to get to make up for the food he dislikes, no crisps, choccie etc. With this menu have something he is OK about, but add one item that is not one his list.

Will he eat mashes? If so, can you hide other veggies as mashed swede and carrots.

And on the other tack have a real heart to heart about how immature his eating habits are, although I have to say that sadly a lot of teens and adults these days have food habits that are really restricted.

One girl I know only eats "plain" food, so plain meat, potatoes and some boiled veggies, plain pasta but no sauces etc.

On the otherhand, I was brought up to at least try anything that was put in front of me, even if it was a seafood pasta dish which originally freaked me out.

valk_scot

Okay, he can do the shopping and cooking from now on. On the same budget you do.

Really, men (and women) like that have to grow up, not to stay whining toddlers forever. There's a jump between not eating it because someone actually hates it and not eating it because it's not something they prefer, iyswim. We've all been in the situation that we've eaten something out of politeness in someone elses house and discovered by the end that we actually quite liked it...not enough to rush out and make it tomorrow, but it was okay.
My OH was like that when we first got together but the bottom line was if he wanted me to do the cooking, he could eat (within reason) what I cooked. He doesn't like cooking so he decided putting up with mine was the lesser of two evils. That was 20+ years ago. I won't make him liver or kidneys for example because he really does loathe them but I will make non-meat meals at least a couple of times a week...he mumps, but he eats it fast enough.

As to going through and raiding the fridge if he fancies something else well, how does that work with ingredients for other meals? Does he realise what he's doing to the budget? My solution would just be to buy what I needed for that day and not have alternatives availible or, see above. Let him do all the cooking to a budget and you eat what he makes.

At which point, ask yourself if you could manage to eat what he insisted on making you, even though you didn't much like it. I couldn't manage to eat my hubby's cooking 24/7 have to say.

Time for what my BIL calls a full and frank marital discussion, methinks. Remember though that you've got to eat healthily because of the baby, so that will have to come into it somewhere.

pebbles88

butterflylady131 wrote: »

Hi,
I've done a seach on the forums, and there are plenty of menu plans, but my DH is the most fussy eater ever. We need to start saving money (I'm 22 weeks pregnant with our first), and I love to batch cook, it's just that I mainly batch cook for me, as he will not eat the same things I do!

Just for example:
He will eat
chicken, turkey, gammon, and beef, peas, carrots and potatoes, yorkie puds, chocolate, crisps and pineapple and a whole variety of KFC, Mcdonalds, Burger King etc.

He will not eat
Lamb, pork, anything chinesy, no highly spiced curries, any veg (other than the above), no mincemeat of any kind, no cheesy sauces (even though he will eat cheese), nothing with any wine in, no chillies, mousaka etc.

He flippin drives me nuts! And when I ask him why, he just says "Because I tried it once and I didn't like it".

How can I get him to eat the same things I do?;)

oh my goodness, how old is he, my first thought is that he's a teenager... who needs to realise he aint a kid anymore and that there is plenty of different food out there!!

he wont eat mince, what does he think is going in his mcdonalds & burger king?

ok the highly spiced curries i get, not everyone like them, but has he tried mildly spiced ones?

i dislike meals with Red wine added when cooking as i find it overpowers everything else, but i never notice white wine in food.

anything chinesy.... :rotfl:what does that mean? it is the noodles, the spices... i like chinese food, but if i make something at home & use chinese 5 spice all i can taste is aniseed, bleurgh! but there are so many diff types of chinese food, you cant say you hate them all!!

what was he like as a kid? was he this fussy, did he have any reactions, when was the last time he tried anything to not like it....

good luck with this one, your going to have enough on your plate (scuse the pun) in a few months without faffing on with spearate meals!!

stiltwalker

Hi,

Good luck with this one! I used to be married to a man who lived on marmite sandwiches, crisps and biscuits - i kid you not! Please note the used to, it was one of the big problems in the end - I'm a chef and a serious foodie and it really restricted where we could eat etc and it even influenced where we went on honeymoon so there would be food he would eat. I spent a long time trying to get him to try things but mostly got "urggh, don't like it, what is it?" TBH didn't have much success but the few I did have were in taking a type of flavour/ texture he did like and finding something close to it but different.

mrs_motivated

Hi, i agree with the other posters - he needs to grow up or shop and cook for himself.

however, You could try homemade burgers and things like that.

i would also try the 'toddler trick' - hide other things in his food that he claims not to like and then tell him he has eaten it after the fact (this will need to be disguised into things he likes of course)