Yes to both. I did (do) buy and make some foods specifically because I know my roommate(s) won't eat them.

Also when I lived at home I totally hid stuff I really wanted to eat myself behind stuff no one wanted, because otherwise my senile grandfather would eat everything. There's nothing worse than going to the kitchen for a cookie and finding them all gone.

Sure, I had to hide food from my family and make stuff I knew they didn't like.

But, worst than that is that, even living alone, I have to make sure bread is locked away, or it'll be hunted. Good bread, anyway. And we won't talk about what they used to do when I'd bring home the good croissant from the Lebanese bakeries back in Detroit.

Erm..I should mention that the "them" in question are the cats.

Funny story...growing up, we didn't have much $$ for fun things like ice cream. One day, mom had some extra cash and said we could get whatever ice cream we wanted. I got a box that contained 8 bars, my sister, got a box that contained 10 bars and my mother got a gallon of ice cream. I was a teenager and went out with my friends for the night; my little sister fed the whole neighborhood our treats and my mom and she pigged out on the rest. By the time I got home, the next day, all of our ice cream was GONE! I was so mad and my mother told me I should have stayed home to enjoy them. I told her that I couldn't very well tell my friends that I can't go out because we bought ice cream and if I did, they would be gone by morning! I was so mad...we laugh about it now...I know how you feel! But we didn't just have a gallon. We had them by the dozens! LOL!

It makes me feel like such a little kid but I do it with my Husband now. We count things out to make equal shares or otherwise I would go to get it and I wouldn't be getting anything- and he knows I count it frequently!

I used to have a bread-eating cat. What was really annoying was that he'd have to eat some of each slice in a loaf or some of each roll in a package of rolls. If he'd just have eaten one slice or one roll I'd have been more willing to share.

It's a lot easier to hide food from cats than it is from humans, though. And none of my current cats seem to be bread-eaters.

I have to sometimes hide things from hubby, because he thinks that if something is in the house and he can eat it first, he should do so.

I have had to go out last minute to replace an ingredient in a dish I was planning for company because I went to the get it out and he had eaten it.

I, on the other hand, love to dole things out one at a time with time between. That way I get to appreciate each one fully.

I wasn't able to get online yesterday afternoon & evening and I come back and there are tons of messages. It must be a special welcome back for Elizabeth.

They must know I love comments. :-) EL

I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who hides food from their husband. He's from that same school of if it's there, I can have all of it. He usually tells me he was afraid it was going to go "bad." Yeah right. I have a girlfriend whose husband feels the same way. Is this mostly a male thing? I wouldn't think of doing that without leaving/giving him some.

My parents always had to hide food from me growing up or else I'd devour it before they had a chance to enjoy it.

Usually I found it pretty easily but my dad did come up with one really good hiding place that took me several years to discover: Inside a bag of frozen vegetables in the freezer. He knew that was the one place I'd never go looking.

He also liked to buy peach ice cream because my brothers and I wouldn't touch it. He says peach ice cream was the only ice cream that lasted more than a day in our house.

I have to hide dried cranberries from my husband or he'll eat the entire bag the night I've come home with them! It's an odd hide, I know... but he's an odd bird!

Growing up in a family of seven,, we weren't allow to hide food...If we couldn't get enough for everybody..nobody got any.

Also EL are you sure that was a half gallon or one of those new "Quarts on Steroids" sizes.

Last but not least Charlie Brown's...
"Happiness is knowing there is another popsicle in the freezer"

I don't get it. If food is in the house and a person is hungry and has a desire for said food, why should the hungry person NOT have a serving of said food? Or, do you run your establishment where only YOU know best what each inhabitant needs, wants or deserves?

As to the ingredient eater, was it clearly stated that X was obtained because of its importance in making Y for Z? Or was that arcane knowledge assumed to be obvious, since X is never stocked, except to make Y for Z? And if X is so desirable, why is an inventory not maintained?

I ask these questions having grown up in a household where pickle chips were distributed at the rate of three per sandwich, PERIOD. You didn't need more. (Who knew more bread and butter pickles were bad for you?) I'm sure many of my current eating habits were informed (isn't that such a wonderfully pretentious way of saying influenced) by this early training (and not is such a good way.) So consider well what your need for control and dominance maybe doing to supposed loved ones in your household.

I went to the store hungry and spied a 3 lb block of Belgium chocolate, ripped into while shopping before realizing at the checkout it cost about $25.00. Yikes! Too late. Told my sister I had to hide it at home from my husband cuz it would have been gone that night. Hide it behind the stuff on the "not used often" shelf. Five years later when we were moving I found the stale, graining white bar. I often think how good that $25.00 little square of chocolate tasted.

Use to make stuff for myself and put coconut in it. My roommate hated coconut and that was the only way I was sure I'd ever have anything to eat when she was around. LOL

Postscript to my last comment (having pushed the post button before my slow working brain thought of this): aren't foodstuffs inventoried and maintained in order to be eaten? This seems such an unhealthy control issue, on the part of either the provider or consumer (if gluttony is the outcome of consumption.)

Oh, well. This maybe something that, living alone (since book stays in the car and eats so little ice cream) I am destined to never understand. So, just blog right around me.

there's something about it being not yours that makes it taste better. otherwise, why else would i steal my roomie's TJ strawberry licorice when she bought me my own to prevent this debacle?

The only food I have ever hidden was black jelly beans. I "borrowed" them from my cousin/roommate and hid them in a box of tea. He caught me eating them about 3 months later and could not believe I had hidden them and that there were still some left. Then again I was the kid who could make Easter candy last to Halloween and Halloween candy last until Easter.

Robert (the Single One) - I don't think it is a matter of control. You say "why should the hungry person NOT have a serving of said food." The key is "a serving of said food." My ex-husband thought a serving of said food was the entire bag/box of everything. It is more a question of the lack of consideration when someone eats all of everything without any thought that the other inhabitants would possible want some of the food.

RtSO-
The problem isn't control, it's (As KitKat mentioned) the eating ALL of something...I'm all for sharing but if I went out and bought it I'd better get *some*.

Also, with my old roommate it was a problem of her never paying for anything ever, leaving the apartment a rancid mess in her wake, and eating (in some cases all of) the stuff I paid for without asking. (And furthermore using my shampoo, shaving cream, etc...) At some point it got to be a matter of principle. I didn't want her eating my stuff because she was being a jerk. Also she ate such gross food that I had no desire to retaliate.

Why just yesterday evening I went to my freezer to have a little Ben & Jerry's ice cream that only my daughter & I knew was there. To my great surprise, she (or someone) finished it and I was left standing with a spoon in my hand.
I ofter buy cookies that I wouldn't eat for my sons because I know that I won't want them.
My younger son hides his deli meat so that he can make lunch in the morning and not find that his brother has eaten it overnight.

My husband eats and drinks everything constantly, and FAST. But he hates raisins and any cookies with fruit, so I know that if I buy something like strawberry newtons they will be mine, all mine.

So we're not supposed to say s#cks anymore? In honor of George Carlin, I'm going to have to flout that a bit, but I will be talking about ideas, which have yet to be censored here.

Interesting point: even though it is its antonym, bl#ws is also its slang synonym. Much like the findings of the International Funk Convention of 1976 that to "get up" and "get down" were synonymous. In fact, they also found that sometimes you have to get up to get down. I believe that was Parliament's conclusion.

You can; I can't. Don't you ever read this blog? :-) EL
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/dining/reviews/blog/2008/04/this_entry_doesnt_sk.html

Too busy to read it lately, what with battling all my addictions (decorative cod pieces, Rubitussin-tinis, etc. And my own personal search for a D@L crossword puzzle spokesmodel. Life is full.

I've never had a bread-eating cat, VoR, but we did have a silver Persian who liked avocados and vanilla ice cream (but not the cheap stuff--puhleeze!) He was born to wear a crown and lie on a soft cushion.

Oh yeah, I had a bread-eating cat. He'd claw into the bag and nibble at every slice or roll. My solution was to buy a breadbox. It was perverse fun to watch him try to get into the box. Hah, foiled his butt!

We buy absolutely delicious fair-trade 70% dark chocolate through our church. I buy four bars, hide two for me, and share the other two with my husband. Hey, all's fair in love and chocolate!

Dahlink, ALL cats are born to wear a crown and lie on soft cushions. Remember, in ancient Egypt cats were worshipped as gods. They have not forgotten this.

No, I don't police the amount of anything anyone eats. It's just that when you buy it because you might want some--it would be nice to actually get some. The same applies to wine. Especially when the offender can buy what he likes at the liquor store, but never buys wine. He has no problem drinking all of a bottle I've bought--and he doesn't replace and then has the nerve to tell me it was all that good anyways. Geesh!
Like he's looking out for MY health and waistline. LOL

EL--should have said "not" all that good. Fingers too fast.

My grandma used to make us Pizzelles. I loved them so much (still do) that I would hide them from my family. After my parents yelled at me my grandmother would make twice as much and give me my own batch that no one else was allowed to eat.

Remember the adage, Sandboxers: "Dogs have owners, cats have staff."

Yes, Mr. O.F. and Dottie--you are quite right. My other occupation is cat nurse and general factotum to the cat.

I'm going to have nightmares tonight about bread-eating cats. I just know it.

My dad used to hide cans of macadamia nuts in a small cabinet way high above the stove. He needed them to have with his scotch.

they make pint-sized ice cream containers that lock. saw them in a catalog once.

Dottie, I have cats and a dog. But, I'm not the dog's owner. He answers to the cats.

The first bread-eating cat I had only ate the good stuff. My partner offered him a slice of white Wonder Bread once, and he refused to eat it. Just pawed at it a bit then looked at her in disgust.

He taught my older cat to eat bread before he died, and she taught my younger cat.

The dog eats everything within reach.

If you really want to taste a brownie in my house you have to make them with nuts, that keeps my daughter out of them. Same goes for cookies. Make something with raisins and they will last more than an hour.

I just found out from my recent college graduate that he and his older brother used to hide the goodies from each other. I was evidently oblivious to all this.

Hubby wants me to tell that his mother still hides food in a locked drawer in her bedroom. His sister and her husband live with them and she is hiding them from them and from his dad.

She's like me in that she will eat one or two pieces of something wonderful and then lock the rest away for tomorrow or next week – when the spirit moves.

She will take me into her room when we go there and share with me since I won't eat everything in one sitting. She does not share with Hubby.

I had a Dorito and bacon/horseradish dip-eating cat, that was her very favorite treat. Luckily she never learned how to open the dip, but she always showed up when I was eating it. Not the stuff of nightmares, but it was funny to see.

Growing up, my otherwise wonderful mother, had her own private cache of chocolate. However, there was occasionally divine justice, as she would forget where she hid it.

However, we were often not lucky enough to find it, for months on end.

When my dad was growing up, my uncle would routinely buy packages of sticky buns, sit and eat one in front of Dad and my grandmother, and then go hide them until time to pull out another and eat it in front of them. They searched the house repeatedly and never found the buns. It became family legend, what a great hiding place he had. It was only about a year ago (uncle in his 70s and Dad in mid-60s) that he finally told my dad where he hid them - in a place so obvious and mundane (top shelf of the pantry) that it had never occured to them to look there.

This goes along with hiding food in plain sight. When I was in my teens my mother was always on some diet or other. The most bizarre one was her "lamb chop" diet. She'd fix one of her usually disgusting concoctions for dad, 2 sis' and me (like canned corned beef, marcaroni, canned tomatoes and peas mixed up in a cassarole) and then fix herself 3-4 baby lamb chops and told us it was a special diet and the lamb was too expensive for everyone to have some??????

No wonder why psychologists/psychiatrists are so busy. This is not healthy.

Lamb chop mom (anonymous) was from me. Why does the personal information disappear sometimes?

One of my former coworkers had a psychic cat. If he went to the freezer to get frozen peas, for example, the cat would not react, but if he was thinking about pulling out the ice cream, the cat would be right there, demanding its share.

Ah, yes, ice cream cats! I don't currently have any bread-eating cats, but I do have an ice cream cat. He has a very highly advanced ice cream detector.

Sometimes after dinner he'll try to convince me that it would be a good idea for me to have some ice cream (I let him lick the bowl when I'm done).

he finally told my dad where he hid them - in a place so obvious and mundane (top shelf of the pantry) that it had never occured to them to look there
Ah, the purloined sticky bun...

One of my cats is a cream cat - this includes any dairy - ice cream, cream, yogurt, cream cheese, butter, etc. He will not come into the kitchen if it is not his mealtime unless one of the dairy items is being thought about. He then runs in and does the figure eights around our feet until he gets his share. He just turned 15, so we're a bit more indulgent with him than we used to be.

As I predicted, I actually did have the nightmare about bread-eating cats...

It was part of my recurring nightmare about my car being stolen, which I've had ever since my car was stolen in the dead of night 4 years ago.

My mom has recurring nightmare about showing up for a test without a pencil or something like that, but I always dream about my car being stolen. Sometimes men in green jumpsuits arrive and carry the car away, without making a sound, so as to defeat my strategy of leaving the bedroom window cracked to hear the unique sound my car makes when it starts.

This time, the bread-eating cats used the bread to silence the starter, so I didn't hear anything until they had already driven away, to use and abuse my car before abandoning it in west baltimore, on the exact day the theft investigator from my insurance company predicted it would be found, smelling like rancid milk and stale bread.

This is life in Charm City, Bucky.