Gorge yourself on the chili.
Welcome her home with a 21 gun salute, if you know what I mean.
another vote for both! 
This. When my husband went on a trip recently, the kids and I ate frozen fish sticks, Boca “chicken” patties, Kraft macaroni and cheese mixed with tuna and peas, frozen creamed spinach, etc. It was wonderful.
Dang! I missed “Longest Celebrity Toenails”?
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the concept of the wife preparing meals for the husband ahead of time before she leaves town…
You and me both. In our household that’s about as likely as her asking a hooker to stay with me while she’s gone so I don’t get too lonely.
Silenus, I think it comes down to which of these meal types go best with the man movies you’re going to be watching. While Pale Rider, Rio Bravo, Lonesome Dove and The Thing are on, do you want to be partaking of vegetables or venison? Arugula or A-1? Butter beans or bison? Milk or The Macallan? Stay thirsty, my friend.
Whatever you eat make sure you put at least half that wonderful stew in a wife approved container and freeze it. She will not be happy to come home and see her untouched stew festering after five days in the fridge.
By all means indulge your inner junk food genie and live large, she’s gone for the whole weekend!
Only thing I have ever forbidden to be in my house is some truely heinous ‘red hot sausage’ product that actually lists ‘snout’ in the ingredients. The stench of cooking hangs around for days and is nauseating. We took to calling the product ‘snout’
There is no snout in my house …
It’s not that I’m “forbidden” to eat certain things. It’s that certain things produce byproducts in my system that are forbidden by international treaty. That and the wife has this silly idea that she’d like to be married to me for an extended period, and me dying of gluttony isn’t really her idea of a good time. So she cooks balanced meals, with vegetables and salad and everything! The horror…
I’m eating lots of onions while she’s gone because I usually don’t eat them at home. Onion breath is one of my wife’s least favorite things, so if I want to enjoy connubial bliss, I’d better not be going to bed with Vidalia-osis, if you get my drift.
Last night was guy food. Meatballs and peppers over rice with beer in front of the Dodger game. Tonight I’ll make some inroads on that wonderful stew. Tomorrow…is another day.
When she takes a trip, I announce a few days in advance that it’s going to be a Manwich weekend! She makes a face and shakes her head.
We split cooking duties anyway so it’s not like I’m ignoring a fridge full of pre-cooked food.
statsman1982 said:
Because people who live together often make meals that they share. So both party’s food interests must be appeased. Then there are the side effects of eating certain foods, such as killer heartburn (causing 2nd party suffering to the one who has to listen to the moaning and bitching), gas, horrible breath that won’t get you any close time, etc. “If you’re going to eat that, don’t expect kisses from me for a week. It will take that long to wear off the stench.”
Hazle Weatherfield said:
Wish I had a wife to create my meals. I’m single, and can’t cook well enough to sustain myself indefinitely. I solve that by not cooking. I either eat out, or out of a box.
It’s like something out of a paper towel or dishwasher detergent commercial, one with the annoying ‘duh duh’ husband (I know this has been complained about on the SDMB before, so people should appreciate Sarah Haskin’s take on it).
As for having some say over what your SO eats, I can understand that, to a point. If one of you has allergies, that’s one thing. And food, especially meat, can affect your body’s odor and taste. I can eat what I’d like, of course, but having a healthy eater as a partner shames me out of some of it. I suppose that’s how it usually works – the healthier partner has veto power. If they are trying to encourage the other partner to live healthier/longer, it makes sense to make it easier for them to do so by preparing meals for them.
That’s not the issue. I happen to be a very good cook. Not in my wife’s class, but pretty damn good if I do say so myself. See Irishman’s first comment for why my wife leaves me meals when she travels, or at the very least thaws certain items. She’s trying to make sure I eat healthy even when she isn’t there, is all.
If she made you all that food, you’re going to have to eat at least some of it. To show appreciation for the work she did in making it, if nothing else. I view cooking for your spouse or partner as a caretaking gesture. You could alternate meals, maybe, or eat a little of her food and a little of the guy food in the same meal. I agree with the poster who said freeze what you don’t eat, if you can. That way you can enjoy it later, and maybe tell your wife, “This was so good, honey, I wanted to save some of it for later.”
My wife would do soemthing like this, if she had any cooking skills at all. She can do the bare bones college basics, and that’s about it.
That being said, she wouldn’t do it out of a feeling of obligation, or because I would expect it. She would do it so that she knew I had some food that wasn’t garbage, and it would make HER happy.
Women’s Lib means that a woman gets to CHOOSE if she does those things, and some will choose to do so.
Living in Western PA has floored my wife, with all the women she knows at work who won’t let their husband do laundry, or cook, or give the little one’s baths and such. Floors her, and me too. But if it’s all consenting, and everyeone is happy, no harm done.
I’m not silenus, but when in a relationship and living with someone, you may not eat certain things because they make you flatulent and you don’t want to torture your spouse. I would only eat most of those items if I wasn’t going to be around my wife and son.
When my wife is away, I eat Iams PreBiotic Cat Food. I read about it in a Google ad. I slather on some Becel Omega3plus fats, and keep the resulting concoction in a facility for secure, monitored storage of critical biological material until I am ready to consume it.
Yes, there are guys out there who can’t cook well enough to sustain themselves for a week on something other than junk. My husband has the following challenges when cooking:
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He doesn’t have a good grasp of nutrition, so he usually assumes a pizza is just as healthy as baked or roasted chicken with salad.
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He doesn’t have a good grasp of meal planning and, even were he to pull out a recipe book, would probably get so hung up on the details of preparing the meal, he wouldn’t eat. If he prepares a meal on his own that requires any sort of recipe, he will actually pull out a ruler and measure how large he’s chopping an onion.
That said, if I just point out nutritious convenience food to him (packets of frozen, baked fish; edamame that can be microwaved, etc.), he’ll generally eat that first or he’ll at least have our son eat it first. But I never go away for a week without expecting that I’ll come back to a garbage can full of pizza boxes or takeout containers.
To answer the OP: eat your guy food for the first few days, then, as suggested, eat your wife’s for the last two. It’s annoying to go through the effort of making sure healthy food is in the house if NONE of it has been touched.
Why yes, there are.
I married one of them.
There are only three food preparation utensils he is competant to operate unsupervised: the microwave, the toaster oven and the telephone. I’m fairly certain there are utensils I use commonly that he could not identify by sight and certainly couldn’t locate in the kitchen. To be fair, this is because he has no interest whatsoever in learning how - and his parents comprehensively failed at teaching him the rudiments when he was at a teachable age.
If I leave town without him I don’t prepare meals, though. Mostly because it would be a waste of time and food He’s going to live on Boston Market, frozen pizza and possibly delivery food no matter what I leave ready for him to eat.
But you’ve said you know how to do this yourself. Presumably being married to her is important to you too. And if you don’t feel like it, will a week really kill you?
Why not eat everything? You can eat the “guy food”, while your buddies and the strippers can indulge in the food the Mrs left.