There are countless unspoken rules when it comes to dinner parties.
Eating foods you normally hate just to be polite, bringing a bottle of wine to show your appreciation, offering to clean up the table, saying you like what you’re eating no matter how you may actually feel.
The fact that these are unspoken rules means no one is obligated to abide by them.
When people don’t follow these guidelines, however, it seldom goes over well.
The mother-in-law (MIL) of Redditor orchidsandmangotrees offered to cook a meal for the original poster (OP) and her husband during a recent visit.
An opportunity the OP and her husband were initially happy to oblige.
However, their family dinner proved to be anything but harmonious, with the OP’s MIL even storming out and accusing the OP of being disrespectful for making a small adjustment to the meal she had been working on.
Wondering if she had stepped out of line, the OP took to the subReddit “Am I The A**hole (AITA), where she asked fellow Redditors:
“AITA for dipping lasagna into hot sauce?”
The OP explained how she found herself at odds with her MIL owing to a certain condiment:
“I (20 F[emale]) love hot sauce and put it on most things.”
“I live with my husband (22 M[ale]).”
“For the last couple of days, his mother has been in the area, and yesterday she asked if she could come around and cook for us before heading home.”
“Since neither of us were working, we agreed, and offered to help her so we can all cook and eat together and it’s less work for her.”
“She refused and said she wanted to do something nice for us, and also refused us helping with the cost (she went grocery shopping specifically for this).”
“Anyway, she arrives early in the day and spends eight hours on making a lasagna.”
“Not all of this was active cooking time (most was just the meat sauce simmering) but even then she was saying how she wished she had overnight (we have an apartment and there wouldn’t be room for her to stay the night.)”
“I am grateful for the time she spent and thank her multiple times, although her coming around for such a long period was more than we had discussed and did mean we had to reschedule some plans we had made for earlier that day.”
“It comes time to eat and we have the lasagna and roast potatoes.”
“This is when the problems started.”
“We keep condiments in the middle of the dinner table, and I put some hot sauce on my plate.”
“Dip a potato in, dip the lasagna in.”
“Make eye contact with my MIL and she looks at me like I’m eating a human baby.”
“Puts down her plate, pushed it away and begins getting ready to leave.”
“I ask her what’s wrong, and she tells me she has ‘never been so disrespected before by any of my son’s women’ and that she spent ‘8 hours slaving away just for you to ruin it with that crap’.”
“My husband did defend me, but my MIL has now begun a narrative in his family that I’m ungrateful.”
“I’m not sure if what I did was actually wrong or not.”
“AITA?”
Fellow Redditors weighed in on where they believed the OP fell in this particular situation, by declaring:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
- NAH – No A**holes Here
The Reddit community was somewhat divided as to whether or not they felt the OP was the a**hole for dipping her MIL’s lasagna in hot sauce.
Some had trouble sympathizing with either the OP or her MIL, feeling that the OP should have at least taken a bite or two before dipping in hot sauce, but that her MIL overreacted badly:
“Ehhh. I get it.”
“I’m married to a hot saucer.”
“But it sucks when you work hard on a dish and they immediately dump a bunch of hot sauce on it.”
“It’s like they’re saying, here, fixed it!”
“And I love hot sauce, but when you use a lot of it, that’s all you taste.”
“ESH.”
“Sounds like you didn’t want her cooking for you anyway.”
“So, job well done, I guess.”
“Also, eating that much for sauce means you are ingesting a ton of sodium.”- Ok_Stable7501
Others found the OP to be at fault, feeling she was disrespectful of her MIL, and wondering why anyone would put hot sauce on lasagna.
“WTF.”
“This is sacrilege.”
“YTA hot sauce does not belong on lasagna.”
“You should be taken to the colosseum and fed to lions.”- Long_Ad_2764
“How else was she supposed to interpret that?”
“Especially with the eye contact thing, what is that even?”
“You pretty much implied she doesn’t know how to make food.”
“Because she can’t season.”
“YTA.”
“I love my gochujang on plenty of food or just on my sandwich, but even i know not to just use that on food someone else made.”- issy_haatin
“YTA.”
“When someone does the whole 8hr routine you suck it up and eat it as is.”
“Immediately putting hot sauce on it is a declaration that it isn’t fit to eat.”
“It’s a friggin lasagna, nobody puts sauce on it.”
“Have some manners.”
“Are you trying to tick off your MIL?”- protomyth
Then there were those who couldn’t abide the reaction of the OP’s MIL, agreeing that the OP had every right to her food in her own home however she wanted to:
“Apparently this is a somewhat unpopular opinion, but it is weird af to police how other people eat their food.”
“Absolutely wild.”
“NTA.”
“There are so many real things in the world to get mad about, or even be offended over.”
“This is not one of them.”- RedHotGingerSnapped
“NTA.”
“I’ve never understood the whole ‘I cooked for X hours and you just ruined it because you like condiments’.”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“My dad is an amazing chef, but we had a family friend who puts ketchup on the prime rib he makes.”
“He’s never offended or upset, he just laughs because it’s funny.”
“I also love hot sauce, and not once has anyone said anything to me.”- Vivid_Technology_145
“NTA.”
“And anyone taking your MIL side is obviously just as insecure and controlling as her.”
“I am a non-hot saucer in a hot sauce family.”
“You did not drench the meal in hot sauce, you dipped it.”
“If she was upset, or feeling as though maybe you didn’t like it, she could have asked and I’m sure you would say ‘oh it’s great, I just love a spice kick’.”
“I am picky about a lot of things, and when my MIL makes food, I often eat around or ignore the things I don’t prefer, and it’s never been an issue (and my MIL is pretty type A).”
“You adding hot sauce to ADD to her flavoring is no different than adding salt or pepper or whatever seasoning you prefer.”
“She probably didn’t intend her lasagna to be spicy, which is normal, and your taste is somewhat abnormal so it should have been assumed you would in fact add hot sauce.”
“And like others have pointed out, you didn’t go out of your way to add the hot sauce, it was simply on the table.”- Illustrious_Diet1706
“NTA.”
“It’s simple.”
“You cant tell people how to eat their food. “
“You didn’t dump hot sauce all over the whole dish, you dipped your own serving.”
“She has no reason to be angry.”- hollowl0g1c
“I think her spending 8 hours cooking something and refusing any offers of help sounds like she’d already worked for her martyr complex, and anything short of undying adulation for what is essentially a fairly basic meal would have been a personal insult.”
“You did well with the hot sauce; otherwise, she’s always going to be barging into your space to do you favors that you neither asked for nor wanted.”
“NTA.”- sock_cooker
“NTA.”
“Reusing a comment I made here:”
“’If a cook doesn’t want someone altering their food then they shouldn’t cook food for others’.”
“‘What’s next, MIL is going to cook burgers and lose her mind when OP puts hot sauce on it?'”
“‘Or is that somehow okay because other people would also put condiments on burgers so it’s just that OP puts hot sauce on “weird” foods?'”
“‘Either way it’s strange to police how people eat their food, even if you don’t understand it or like it’.”
“‘People have added things I absolutely hate to food I cooked and I still can’t imagine reacting the way MIL did’.”
“‘I just recognize that different people have different preferences and don’t immediately take it as a personal offense towards me’.”
“Your MIL was either looking for a reason to start an issue, or has some issues dealing with big emotions that she should get professional help for because her behavior was not normal.”
“She wanted to test you knowing you’d ‘fail’, and that’s so messed up.”- liveoutside_
Some people just have a tendency to add an abundance of condiments, be it hot sauce, salt or ketchup, to almost anything they’re eating.
They’re not trying to be rude, but the person who cooked the food they’re eating may nonetheless take that as an insult.
Something the OP maybe should have considered before dipping her MIL’s lasagna in hot sauce.
Even so, there were any number of ways the OP’s MIL could have reacted other than storming out and badmouthing the OP to the rest of her family.
Her reaction suggests that she isn’t terribly concerned about being on good terms with the OP.
Making one wonder how this dinner would have gone had there not been any hot sauce on the table.