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Baking food for your loved ones is a lot of fun, but it is also a lot of work.

What would you do if you baked treats for your weekly family get-together, and every week, your cousin would take some and eat it, but throw half (or more) of what he took away?

That is what was happening to the woman in this story, and it was very offensive to her, so she asked him to stop. When he refused, she told him that he was no longer welcome to eat the food she brought. This, not surprisingly, started a major conflict in the family.

I think the cousin is way out of line for being disrespectful, but I don’t know that it is worth a major fight over. Read through the full story and see if you agree.

AITA for saying that my cousin can no longer eat my baking?

I bake a lot, it’s one of my favourite hobbies, and my family meets up most Saturdays at my grandmother’s house.

What a wonderful tradition.

We live pretty close and we’ve had this routine for years, so it’s usually me, my dad, my gran and grandad, my auntie and my two cousins.

The cousin in question is 22M. It’s become customary that every weekend when we go over, I bring some of my baking along – it can be a full cake, a traybake, cupcakes etc. If any is left over then either my gran will keep it or my dad will take it home and dish it out at work. No big deal.

This is very wasteful.

The problem I have with my cousin is that no matter when I offer him my baking, he will eat some of it, and then I recently discovered that he will just bin the rest.

Not because he doesn’t like it, he’ll just say “I’m full” or “I’ve had enough”. Okay then, so this goes on for a few weeks and I keep seeing that he’ll throw ~half of it away, which I think is pretty rude.

Why does he do this?

So, I go up to him and say if I’m cutting slices too big or if the portion is too big for him, why doesn’t he cut himself a slice? I start bringing the cakes/traybakes etc in whole and offer a knife around to everyone so they can cut as much as they want.

So, he will cut the size portion he wants… and then I open the bin last week and still discover about half a slice of flapjack in the bin.

She is taking a very firm stand.

For the record, he doesn’t have any kind of eating disorder, any kind of intolerances, and has always been the kind of person if we ever eat out to just eat what he wants and leave the rest. The idea of leftovers seems to be a foreign concept to him.

I confronted him about it and texted words to the effect of “I think it’s really disrespectful of you to waste food, and the fact that I’m offering you to cut as much as you want, and you also have the option to just… not have anything at all… I don’t want you eating my baking any more. The rest of the family enjoy it, but you obviously don’t respect the work that goes into my baking, so from now on I’m not going to let you have any”.

What a weird thing to fight about.

As of writing this, it’s Monday now and there is still discourse going on about it. My aunt (his mother) particularly is saying it is really unfair of me to say that, that it will make things very awkward for him being over at weekends because he will be “left out”.

I explained the situation to her and how I felt disrespected, not to mention a bit offended at his attitude to food waste, so then she suggested that I just stop bringing my baking over at all.

Why is it so hard to take a small slice?

This has caused an uproar with family saying that they love my baking, they enjoy having it over morning coffee but it’s unfair just to leave one person out etc etc and it’s all the biggest load of nonsense over nothing, it really is.

Basically, my cousin wastes food I make for him, I don’t like it, so I said I don’t want him wasting it again, family are mad because they want their cake and to eat it too (literally).

AITA?

I really can’t understand what is so hard about cutting a small slice. If he wants more after he is done, he can get up and get it. What an unusual thing to take a stand on.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this situation.

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This commenter has a great suggestion.

It really is this simple.

Wasting food is rude and disrespectful.

It doesn’t make sense why he won’t do that.

This would be such a simple solution.

What kind of person keeps wasting food after being specifically asked to stop? It is rude and disrespectful.

On the other hand, why does she care what he does with it? It isn’t like it is any different to her whether he eats it or throws it away.

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Author

Michael Levanduski