My husband and I met on a plane on the way to Montego Bay for a singles’ trip. When we got back stateside, we had a whirlwind romance for a year and have now been married for two years.
As luck would have it, he was actually born and raised in Jamaica, and I’m from the Deep South. Apparently, when it comes to being married to a Jamaican man, there are many cultural differences that I just didn’t know about.
For starters, the way that I cook tends to be a point of contention. I’m used to getting in the kitchen and throwing down on soul food on Sunday evenings: fried chicken, mac and cheese, rice and gravy and collards. However, he is more into looking for a meal that includes plantains, curry chicken and rice, steamed cabbage and escovitch fish.
I am a total novice when it comes to cooking Jamaican cuisine, but I have put my best foot forward and attempted to learn. Between YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram, I have become pretty adept at cooking some of the foods my husband grew up eating.
This past weekend, my mother-in-law came to town to visit her best friend, who happens to live only a couple of hours away from us. Thankfully, she stayed with her friend and just came to our house to visit. As soon as she arrived, she started to give me a hard time about things. She wanted to know why it didn’t smell like bleach in our home, why I am so thin, and when I was going to produce grandkids. It was annoying and rude, to say the very least, because she’s always had something to say, nitpicking me to no end.
On Sunday, I cooked for my husband, my mother-in-law and her best friend at our house. I made the basic Jamaican staple dishes and was very proud of my presentation — if I might say so myself. Everyone seemed to enjoy the food, and I was overjoyed until later that evening when our guests left, and my husband told me the truth. He regretfully admitted that his mother and her friend actually didn’t enjoy the meal at all and strongly urged that while his mother was here on vacation for another week, I take cooking lessons from her.
I was livid. After all the hard work I put into preparing an authentic Jamaican meal for them, the least they could have done was to be honest about how it all tasted. His mother has always been overbearing and aggressive and has made it difficult for me since the beginning of our relationship. And now I feel like she’s trying to drive a wedge between us with respect to my cooking.
Should I begrudgingly accept the cooking lessons or politely decline and keep trying to learn on my own?
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