It’s been now a few days since my Chinese mother-in-law left Germany and it gave us enough time to rediscover our kitchen. Before her 3 months visit I already feared that the kitchen might be destroyed but thankfully it didn’t go that far. However there are a few things which are not really anymore the same. Right now I have to disappoint you as I did not take any pictures of the kitchen during MIL’s reign as it was just too much to take and I didn’t want to have any record of it.
So what did happen in the kitchen? As you can see in the featured picture above it is a rather “simple” kitchen without too many things being all around. Well, it stayed a simple kitchen but it got stuffed with all kind of things. The kitchen counters were filled to the brim with Tupperware, vegetables, medications, some kitchen equipment, trash and other stuff. The same fate the fridge had to go through…filled to the maximum with all kind of things. The worst part was that she simply forgot some things/ lost the overview so more than just once food started rotting in some corners. The ultimate horrible happening was right after she had left and my wife went through the fridge. She found one Tupperware with some unknown creamy thing inside which smelled cheesy…it was the rest of the whipped cream my brother and his girlfriend brought for his birthday cake 6 weeks ago! My crazy mother-in-law just saved up the rests from that day and forgot about them.
Also some things broke during those three months. One bowl we lost as she dropped it from the fridge (yes, bowls filled with food, sauces and unknown materials were always in the fridge), another bowl has a crack, one part of the kitchen counter vanished (a small part to cover a gap behind), the tile flooring suffered as well, the fridge defrost drain got clocked more than once and many other smaller things.
Then there are the just weird things such as her talking often about how less many other Chinese are cleaning the kitchen equipment and she actually showing the very first day how to do it right but then never doing it again. This resulted that I spent hours scrubbing every pot clean/ back to their metallic look rather than the brownish crusted look, scrubbing multiple times the induction hob plate, the filter of the kitchen exhaust hood (usually done once every six months, during her reign every 2 weeks to no avail as oil was just running down on it all the time) and still much more things still. She seems to really dislike cleaning in the kitchen otherwise I can not explain this whole mess. I do not even want to mention the rice cooker…I still got nightmare from cleaning it. In my opinion she is a kitchen demon to wipe out humanity with dirty kitchen rags and rotten “things” all around.
Have you experienced similar kitchen nightmares?
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Crazy Chinese Family 