A wife says she’s considering asking her husband to stop making breakfast altogether because the smell has become too much — even though it’s been his long-running routine for years.
In a post on Reddit, the 31-year-old woman explained that her 34-year-old husband has made the same breakfast for a long time: “a tofu scramble with various veggies made on the cast iron skillet.”
At first, the scent didn’t bother her. But she said things changed a couple of years ago when her husband “started getting distracted while cooking,” leading to frequent burning.
Now, she wrote, “almost every single morning the food smells like burnt oil and just awful.” The smell, she added, is “revolting” and has even triggered “coughing fits” from the smoke.
Recently, the situation has felt even worse for two main reasons. The couple moved into what she described as “a very old house with terrible ventilation,” and she’s also pregnant, dealing with morning sickness and strong food aversions.
She said she has tried raising the issue more than once, but claimed her husband’s reassurance hasn’t led to real change. “I’ve tried talking to him about it a couple times… and he says he will be more careful,” she wrote — adding that she doesn’t think he understands just how fed up she’s become.
“At this point I want to demand that he either 1) stop cooking breakfast entirely or 2) get a blacktop and cook outside so that I don’t have to smell it,” she continued, asking other Redditors whether that would be unreasonable.
Several commenters focused less on the smell and more on the behavior causing it. One pointed out that he “shouldn’t be walking off and leaving things to burn” and argued the meal doesn’t take long enough to justify stepping away during cooking.
Another agreed, saying the habit matters even more with a baby on the way. Leaving hot cast iron unattended, they warned, could become a serious safety issue once a child is old enough to wander and grab things.
One commenter also shared a cautionary story from their own life, saying their husband’s ex-wife once started a fire by leaving a pot unattended — and that it left her husband anxious about open flames, especially with a mischievous pet in the home.
Not everyone focused on carelessness alone. One Redditor raised a different possibility: whether the husband can actually smell or taste how burnt his food has become. The original poster replied that she hadn’t considered that — and said it made her wonder.
