I was raised in a family in which both parents were brought up with reasonably strict British household etiquette. As such, there are certain things that people do that they wouldn’t give a second thought, but that make me cringe when I see.
One of those things is etiquette when someone is making a meal for you. Not as in “cooking together” but when someone’s specifically preparing something for you. The way I was brought up is that if someone’s cooking for you, you are essentially their guest (even if you live in the same household). You can ask if they need help with anything and be a gracious guest, but unless it’s agreed that you’re cooking together, you don’t touch their cooking unless asked.
There is reasoning behind this. If the guest starts poking around with the food (i.e. checking on it while it’s being made), it’s as though the guest is assuming their host doesn’t know what they’re doing in the kitchen. Which is a bit insulting to the chef (not to mention rude that the guest is poking at food other guests are likely going to eat).
Why I bring this up is because of a scenario that arose this morning. MrAsianMan’s parents were over at our place, so we’d put together a hotpot dinner the night before, shared between MrAsianMan, his parents, a housemate we’ll call Hello Kitty, and myself. After dinner, we’d agreed that the next morning I’d make pancakes for everyone. In my house, I make pancakes pretty much every other weekend, and everyone in the household knows this.
So, this morning I woke up fairly early (9am on a weekend is early for me 
) and started prepping. Everything was going well and I had a few pancakes already made and in the oven, and was cooking up some more. As I was waiting for the next batch to come out of the pan, I had my Nintendo DS out and was playing a bit of Pokémon to pass the time. MrAsianMan and I were standing around right beside the stove. Hello Kitty came downstairs and started checking out and asking what we were doing, which was fine – I’m not exactly the type of person who will guard recipes and eye people suspiciously if they ask how to make something.
Then she grabbed my spatula from off the counter, and with a “Oh, don’t mind me,” she started checking underneath the pancakes to see if they were cooked. It was one of those moments where I kind of cocked an eyebrow but didn’t say anything; maybe she just wanted to see how much to let pancakes brown, for future reference.
Then she started chattering away and being like, “Oh, they were smoking and I saw you were playing Pokémon, so I thought I should probably check.” At that point I was definitely taken aback. Not only was she messing with my cooking, but she basically explicitly stated her assumption that I was so engrossed in my game (I was just setting the time on my DS) that I was letting the pancakes burn when I was standing right beside them. I pretty much had to bite my tongue to stop from saying, “…it’s steam. Things tend to steam when you cook them and they get hot.” If anything the pancakes were still slightly underdone.
Maybe it’s just the way I was brought up, but I was definitely a little annoyed. I take great pride in my cooking, alongside MrAsianMan, I can whip up something fairly delicious out of random odds and ends in my fridge. Whereas Hello Kitty goes pretty much straight off recipe cards, at least in every meal I’ve seen her make so far. I’m not saying that she’s “beneath me” in cooking level or anything, but unless she has a relationship with me that MrAsianMan and I share (living together for 3 years and experimenting together with food), or unless I’m genuinely about to burn down the kitchen, she really shouldn’t have interfered.
I remember reading an FMyLife anecdote related to this. It read, “Today, my boyfriend was cooking me dinner. He walked away and I decided to help by giving the pan of veggies a sautee flip. My boyfriend failed to mention that he had just pulled that pan out of a 500 degree oven. FML” and was a blatant effort to garner sympathy from those who chose to comment. Luckily most of the commenters had common sense, with my favourite comments being, “Well, of course he failed to mention it, you weren’t supposed to touch it!” and a sarcastic retort of “Today, I decided to be sweet and cook my girlfriend dinner. I took the pan out of the oven, placed it on the stove, and went to grab something. My girlfriend grabbed the hot handle, burned her hand, dropped the food all over the oven and floor, and blamed it on me. FML.”
So yeah. Cooking interference annoys me.
