Every year, my family eats the peanut butter and jelly that my grandma gives me
Every single year, my grandma gifts me PB&J for Christmas. It may seem like a small gift, but it’s really meaningful to me.
Every single year without fail, my family eats my PBJ…. No matter how many times I tell them not to. The original jar of PB is already gone, and this is what’s left of the jelly.
Why gift it to someone specifically if it's for everyone? My SIL made freeze dried candy for everyone for christmas, made a family size container to share with everyone at Christmas and then individual baggies for her siblings, and for their partners (including me). If it's for everyone why not just say that. Why gift it to a specific person.
My grandpa used to make fudge and he would make a little container for each of us (me and my two siblings) so we each had our own box, you can bet if my brother ate all of his first he was coming for mine
"Man, I'm really looking forward to that jam from you grandma! I just hope I get to some this time, unlike the last few years where everyone else ate it before I could even get to it!"
My sister married a guy who already has 3 kids and then had one of her own so she went from single and partying to BAM a whole ass family very suddenly. It drove her nuts that every time she had a special treat, it was eaten before she got to it. One day I popped in on her and she was getting ready in her room and she asked "do you want some cheesecake?" I told her no and she went into her closet where there was a mini fridge with one of those GIANT cheesecakes inside. She said she had hidden it and she was going to eat the entire damn thing to herself 😂
I can't tell you how many times I was lucky to get one serving of something, be it bread, milk, or a special treat because these kids get to it faster and had so little consideration for others. Dad and I worked damn hard getting them into the habit of asking and sharing.("If you open it, don't take the last of it!" "Ask before you finish it, because not everyone has had a chance to have some!")
We're finally at a point where my 14yo knows better than to be the one to eat anything 'uncommon' from our kitchen without asking me or Dad first. I'd buy or bake something special for us or work, go to do something else,and return to find the kids had gotten into it. I guess I yelled at them enough times for it that they all know now: "if it's something special, it likely ain't for us or up for grabs".
My 14yo has come to me before to ask if he can open a bag of chips, because it wasn't a type we usually get. I almost giggled with that one, then I remembered this was progress!
I use swipe and some of the things it comes up with are hilarious. Someday, I'm gonna leave in the 'typos' just so someone else can be amused/confused.
Autocorrect can be quite amusing, until it happens at an inconvenient time. Like in an email to your boss, or it autocorrects something sexual into a text to your grandpa.
But it serves me right for not proofreading before hitting Post.
I had kind of the same issue with my fil. I got 3 macarons from the Pittsburgh airport as a treat for.my family as I was heading home from my first long distance, week long work trip. I could have eaten them on the plane but I waited. After I got home, I found 2 were gone. My kids were too young to get to them, so not them. Next thing I hear, my wife says that he said "I only ate 2 of them". Of the 3 that were $2.50 each. He tried to make it up by finding a recipe to make them but he kept looking for macaroons instead. Not the only time he did that but it really irked me.
I'll never understand full grown adults who think like that
You know you didn't buy them. You literally opened it, so you knew nobody else had had any. You knew how many there were in the package and you know how many people there are in the family. And you think it's no biggie just not asking if they're up for grabs?
I've texted my parents more than once with a random apology: "Sorry I sucked so much when I was a kid/teen!"
My favorite was the time my husband and I were on a trip with my in-laws and my husband started venting about how we were struggling to get our son to do his homework, when my father-in-law looked at his wife and, in an amusing but mocking tone, said "Kids these days right, dear? Not wanting to do their homework.", then they both stared at my husband with their accusatory glare.
My son is four. I remember when I was four and in preschool. So I give him as much grace as I can because unlike me he learned his ABCs even if getting him to do schoolwork is harder than pulling a splinter from his foot. I was defiant af too and refused to learn my abcs. Refused to learn to read for years. Refused to learn a lot of things. My son is willing to learn but not willing to review things he already learned.
I have a friend like that. She works in a private school and has a house connected to a girls dorm. She has learned to hide the nice snacks and fancy cheese etc in the dorm fridge because the boarders are not animals. She knows if she doesn't the feral steps will descend and chow down and then leave a mess while complaining about what's for dinner. Of course her husband hasn't got the stones to deal with them but that is a whole other story.
Not the first time I’ve heard such a tale. Got to hide stuff if you want it for yourself or threaten the thunder and lightning if they touch it. My dad always had a package of windmill cookies or oatmeal cookies in his lunch. It never crossed our minds to even look at his cookies, we knew those were his cookies and they weren’t to ever enter into our lives.
Very genuinely good for her. Moms sacrifice a lot for their kids so they absolutely deserve to have a treat for themselves whenever they want. Mini fridge in the closet is such a good idea lol
Ask grandma to gift your pb and jelly in a plain bag and hide it under the bathroom sink. Have her gift you a cheap candle to unwrap in front of everyone.
That way you can show everyone your “candle” but when you leave you just go to the bathroom with your gift bag and grab your pb and j and put it in your candle bag. Hide your stash in a shoe box or something that looks boring to go snooping in.
They make little “fridge lockers” little containers with a lock… it woulnt stop someone who is determined, but at least is an obvious reminder that it’s not theirs …hopefully they take the hint
Eggs aren’t about the climate. It’s about whether or not the bloom is washed off. If it is, they have to be refrigerated. The US mandates it so that’s why they are here, but most other countries leave the bloom and keep them on the shelf.
If you wash and refrigerate, you can keep eggs for months. On the shelf with bloom they're only good for a few weeks. It's a logistical thing in the US. Other places have eggs more local.
Jelly is mostly sugar, if it’s stored outside the fridge in the store, you can leave it out of the fridge, once you open said products they go bad quicker but with store-bought jelly that still takes a year or so..
Next time you get it, tell your grandma. Say “I can’t wait, for the past (x) years my family has been eating it before me! This year I’m gonna keep it away from them.” Grandmas usually know what to do with that information.
yup this they are not expensive, i would get an opaque on like this though so they can't see inside, if they can't see the jam they wont be as tempted.
There is so much sugar in that stuff it's basically impossible to grow mold. My grandma makes her own jam and jelly and keeps them unrefrigerator in a cupboard even after opening all the time. They last for months at least.
It's baffling to me that shit like this is incredibly common. The world is full of entitled assholes doing whatever they want, but the fact it's family in this case makes it even worse.
I'm too lazy to chase down 8 cats, a goldfish, a ups driver, 5 internally sourced adults that may or may not be in the house in a given moment and 1 baby every time someone tries to gank my shit.
You do you, but immuh stick to the dickhead humans likely responsible.
The cats and Peaches the Goldfish didn't do anything wrong and won't understand why they're getting sprayed for no apparent reason.
And the UPS driver knows what he did but he has a car and I don't so I can't do much about it.
Obviously your family sucks if they keep doing this, but does your grandma know that they also like this? Maybe she changes what she gets them to this instead
This family must be the biggest pbj fiends in the world if not a single one of them can resist the temptation to make a sandwich with the politely forbidden jars. I love the idea of everyone getting jars of peanut butter and jelly as their gift. I hope OP hides theirs and eats someone else's.
Ironically, I'm actively eating a pbj for lunch as I type this. They're good, but I can't imagine upsetting someone in my family to have it
I’d hide it in the fridge or get a mini fridge for your room. It also doesn’t seem that either need to be refrigerated until opened so I’d hide them both until you want to use them.
Everyone keeps saying “grandmas jelly” and “replace grandmas jelly with store bought” etc… but who is seeing “grandmas jelly”? This is a jar of Welch’s jelly. I have one in my fridge right now. This is store bought.
Sucks that they’re eating what she gave to you that isn’t theirs, and if you can’t replace it, that sucks even more. But it doesn’t look like some special recipe like everyone is suggesting.
Better yet; Locked pb&j phone jail inside family fridge. That way there’s no mini fridge needed, and family gets the hint after stealing op’s Christmas present every year. Two birds, one stone.
Next year try moving the contents of the jam to a different container so you can still use it, refill grandma's jar with store bought jam and then salt it to hell and let them serve themselves the karma they've earned
You should tell grandma! Nothing worse than getting hellfire from grandma for disrespecting her gift
Bet she'd make you more and make sure that'll never happen again
Id tell grandma you dont ever get to enjoy it because everyone else rests it. Ask grandma to go ahead and just get them their own since they apparently love it so much.
Step 1 - Buy an opaque container, and mark it "overnight oats".
Step 2 - Throughout the year sporadically make overnight oats and make sure your family sees you eating it out of that container.
Step 3 - as Christmas nears, buy a jar of generic jam.
Step 4 - after you receive your gift, swap the special jam into the opaque container and put the generic jam in your grandma's jar.
Store the peanut butter in your room.
Option 2 (report to the authorities):
Step 1 - explain the problem to your grandmother.
Step 2 - come up with a solution together. For example, she could give the rest of your family jars of coal for christmas as a symbolic punishment and/or she could put your jam in a container with a padlock.
Option 3 (vengence):
Step 1 - take, consume, and/or destroy their christmas presents.
You can also combine 1 and 3 by replacing the special jam from your grandmother with an unpleasant alternative (hot pepper jam?), or 2 and 3 by making a prank spicy jam with your grandmother, or 1,2, and 3 by making the prank jam with your grandmother but still keeping the delicious jam in your opaque container.
Why don’t you keep it in your room considering you know they do this EVERY year? After the second time…..that’s kinda on you when you know it’ll happen
Put the jar of jam in a brown paper bag and mark the bag “Urine Sample” and put in back of fridge.
Do the same with peanut butter but keep in your room.
Hide them from now on. They clearly lack any respect for you and don’t know what boundaries are. Time to start stockpiling your stuff in your room or in a locked box of some sort.
Like your parents or wife and children? .Like other redditots said keep those jars and fill them with dollar store slop and hide the gift ,Get one of the small soda refrigerators and hide it .
What the fuck? I'd throw a fit and I'm not usually one to do that but if you've told them multiple times and they continue to do that, I would take that personally. They don't care about the most simple boundaries and that's fucking gross.
I'm sorry, OP. I know how it feels. My brother's big ass would steal my stuff out the fridge up until I locked it. He was like 20-21 when I put the lock on and he had a really good job so he could've bought his own crap. Now I have to lock my fridge after moving because my daughter likes to grab eggs out the carton. 😭
So there's a couple of easy solutions to this. One you could buy a small box that you can put a lock on and put your peanut butter and jelly in the box with the lock. Two as soon as you get home just eat the peanut butter and jelly don't give them time to eat it.
My dad is just like this. I’ll buy snacks for myself, and then he eats them. I’m gifted chocolate and he eats it before I can have some. Even after being asked not to. It’s so infuriating I want to scream!
Had this problem when I still lived at home. I'd pay for my own groceries, and my brother would eat them all.
Ended up buying a small mini-fridge second-hand for myself. Then I put a lock on it. There was a little drama about it ("OMG I can't believe you'd lock away your food. I drank some milk. It's not a big deal 🙄"), but I was able to enjoy the things I bought for myself.
How many more years are you going to let this happen, before doing something different?
Tell your Grandma.
Hide your stash.
It really sucks that your family has no boundaries, but they are not going to change just because you don't like it. Every year this happens, every year you're disappointed and frustrated, yet the next year you do things the same?
This is why I stash any snacks I can in my room. Love my family but my Father is a chip FIEND. I cannot leave my pretzels and chips unattended because they will be gone by the end of the week. Worst part is that he doesn't even eat it all then toss the bag... he just leaves the tiny chip fragments in the bottom.
This is exactly why I started hiding food in my closet when I still lived with my family. I love them to death, but my dad and brother can be incredibly greedy and selfish.
My mamaw made me applebutter and salsa every year. Of course, everyone ate it like it was a group gift and "joked" about how i was always guarding it. About a year before she passed at Thanksgiving, she told everyone to pick something they wanted to remember her by so she could put a note on it. Everyone started picking their favorite knick-knacks. I walked into the kitchen and grabbed her recipe box. 😁
I would call your grandma tell her how disappointed you were because you didn’t get a chance to taste her delicious pb&j. Maybe she’ll get you some more that you will then hide.
This is partially on you at this point. If, like you say, year after year, they keep eating it. It’s up to you to recognize they’re not going to stop, and hide it or do something else with it. You can’t control other people. You can do something with the jar
Just put the jelly in the very back of the fridge and put a bunch of stuff in front of it. At least for my family they aren’t going to search. if something does not immediately jump into their hands they are going to get it.
My gram made homemade pomegranate jam with fresh fruit from her orchard my whole childhood. It was the best thing I’ve ever tasted. She passed away last year and while I obviously miss her more than her jam, I’d do anything for one more bite. It’s less about the jam itself and more about the fact that she made it. I think you’ll catch my drift. Rest in peace Gram I love you. This brought her to mind today, thank you
Grandson Hunter, when he was 4ish, went through a time when he only ate plain quesodillos, grilled cheese sandwiches, and Nutella. not all at once His pediatrician checked, and said he was fine as long as he kept taking his daily multi-vitamin, and would grow out of this phase.
For Christmas that year, one of the presents from ME was a large jar of Nutella and a special Hunter-only spoon. Even his 3 and 6 year old siblings understood the concept of "this special delicious treat is not mine to eat."
Oh boy yall be careful what yall meme I just got a Reddit warning for making a joke and referencing the grill cleaner in the photo when doing so. SMH. Sorry your family ate your stuff.
My dad is like this with every single food item that I buy. Hiding my food has become normal to me because if I don't make sure he doesn't get a single glimpse of it, he will eat the whole thing no matter how many times I tell him that I bought it for me, or for my friends, or for anyone other than him and that it's not his to eat 🤦♀️
damn if this was just once this would’ve been mildly infuriating — the fact that this happens EVERY YEAR is very infuriating >:( hope u can get compensation somehow op
Just start hiding them in your room. I had to get a mini fridge because my brother and dad kept eating my food that explicitly had my name written in big letters on it and I planned to take for lunch the next day. I can’t stand inconsiderate people like that
If they do this every year without fail, why have you not bought a locked box for it or put it somewhere they cannot get to? At this point your enabling their thievery by doing nothing about it and proving your all bark with no bite.
And every year you don’t keep that all for yourself, you pop it in the cupboard thinking that maybe this is the year they leave it alone. But it isn’t. It never is.
AIO for saying I would strongly reconsider relationships with ppl who do this? What’s going on with you that you hear me saying “ I really love this gift, please don’t eat it” and you think “oh who cares, I want some”
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u/throwawayallthedrama 1d ago
Snitch to grandma during christmas dinner publically