Stepmom doesn't reprimand stepdaughter when she 'corrects' the food the host made. AITA?
When this stepmom feels like she may have parented her stepdaughter poorly, she asks Reddit:
"AITA for not putting a stop to my stepdaughter “correcting” the food the host made?"
I (32f) have been dating a widower with a daughter, Nara (12f), for a year. We currently moved to a new city because of my boyfriend’s job promotion (I freelance) and are in the middle of settling down. Nara and I get along very well.
Nara plays tennis. Since the move, she’s been in the school team and competed a bit. The parents of her teammates often organize some kind of get together and her father and I tried our best to have her attend most of them.
I would say Nara got along well with all her teammates and I thought the parents were friendly. Last week the team captain’s parents hosted a potluck party at their place.
Nara and I brought over some brownies. There really was a lot of all kinds of food. The team captain’s father did most of the greeting telling us his wife was preparing something special for us all. Once everyone was at the party, the wife came out of the kitchen with a special dish, a recipe of a specific country.
Now, Nara looks white but her late mother actually came from that very country. The wife host began to serve everyone and share her recipe and ingredients and how it was “not that difficult to make once you substitute the local ingredients” and feel free to ask her for tips.
At this point Nara spoke up, saying that the authentic recipes included such and such and how their particular scent and taste added to the whole experience of eating the dish. She said if so many substitutes were used, they may as well call the dish a different name.
The wife host looked a little unsettled and told Nara that she and her husband traveled a lot in their youth and she had the dish many times and knew what it was supposed to taste like and the substituted ingredients work just fine.
Nara then said her mom was from the dish’s country of origin and she understood that some ingredients were hard to come by but substituting so much turned the dish into something else altogether.
During all this I mostly kept silent. Nara was not being rude, just matter of fact, and as this was a matter of her heritage I thought she could speak up.
The host wife spluttered a bit before saying everyone should just go ahead and enjoy her dish, no matter the name. Everyone tried though nobody asked for seconds (I personally thought it was a little bland) and there was a lot of leftovers.
Nara’s team captain later called her, thanking her for putting her “annoying stepmom in her place.” When my boyfriend came back from his business trip and learned of this, however, he thought I should have reprimanded Nara for being rude to the host.
He also had a talk with Nara and she seemed to be sulking a bit though she was not grounded or anything. AITA?
Let's see what readers thought.
mothertradition776 writes:
YTA. Nara was extremely rude. This woman opened up her home and spent time and money to prepare this meal. Nara trashed it before she was ate it. Maybe you and Nara don’t realize this but there are different ways to prepare a cultural dish.
Not everyone in a particular culture prepares their food the exact same way. Maybe the dish tastes similarly to the way it was prepared when the hostess ate it during her travels. Your stepdaughter needs to learn graciousness and respect.
If I pulled something like this when I was her age, my mom would make me write an apology letter to the mom.
Then she would volunteer our family to host the next team get together and make me do all of the cooking by myself so I would learn to have respect for people who invite me into their home and prepare a meal for me.
The team captain is also an ungrateful brat. If her stepmom is so annoying, she needs to handle the hosting duties for these gatherings herself.
selectpromotion7 writes:
NTA. OP’s daughter was right. The host could have presented the dish in a different manner and nothing would have been said. All she had to say was the dish was inspired by one of their favorites but it isn’t as good as the original as they couldn’t find the local ingredients.
Instead, she comes across as all knowing and made the use of local ingredients seem irrelevant. It’s a bit insensitive coming from an adult.
thetightend writes:
YTA. Nara was rude. Cuisines have long been adapted to include what foods were available locally. Perhaps the captain's stepmom was showing off a bit too much, but as the host, that should be humored.
Nara needs to learn that even when one is factually correct, there is an appropriate time, place, and manner to state things. This was wrong on all three counts.