Dear Queenie,
My mother-in-law lives with us and she loves to cook so she prepares all our meals. This has always been a big help because my husband and I both have full-time jobs.
The problem is that recently her cooking is not so good. She will make the food hours before we are going to eat, so it sits there on the stove until mealtime, and she cooks things too long until they are almost burnt and hard to eat. If she doesn’t have the right ingredients or can’t remember them, she uses substitutes that usually don’t work very well.
We don’t want to talk to her about this for fear of offending her.
Queenie, what should we do?—Worried daughter-in-law
Dear Daughter-in-law,
The first thing to do is to take your mother-in-law for a complete physical and mental check-up. She may be showing signs of dementia and things might get worse to the point that she would not remember what to do if something caught on fire.
It also might be a good idea for you all to prepare your evening meals together. If she does not want the “company”, you could put it to her to that you want to learn how to cook as well as she does.
