My (26F) parents (60/62) are terrible cooks. They learnt somewhere that EVERYTHING needs to be boiled for 20 min. I grew up on mushy vegetables, overcooked pasta and rice, many soups that consisted of just noodles and broth, and various fried items.

I started to cook all of my food when I was 14. Learnt by myself and it became one of my hobbies. At 16 our family pet died and I decided I wanted to become vegan. I was not allowed to and my parents forced me to make meals with meat or fish in them until I was 18. After that I got even more into cooking and experimenting and tbh I've felt like they always resented me in some way for not being "thankful".They also call my food "weird", "exotic" and "too much" just because I cook outside of our culture and use spices. Wouldn't say I'm the best cook but I'm not bad at it either.

Fastforward to today, I'm still vegan, living in the UK with my boyfriend. My parents and brother are visiting over the holidays and they'll stay at a hotel but we'll be having meals together, both at restaurants and at my bf's.

My mom told me she's excited about what we'll be eating, to which I was surprised. She said she's been wanting to experiment more and bring my dad out of his comfort zone. I've tried in the past, I asked them to eat my meals as a bday present more than once. I also asked them to try my "experiments" (not always successful lol) growing up. They will always find a way to criticize me and tell me I'm not better than them because I eat healthy (I don't, I just like veggies sometimes) and use spices. Whenever we've gone to vegan restaurants (maybe 5 times total) they'll sulk all meal and not eat. Food waste is also a big issue with them and it makes me sick. My mom always makes me cook meals for her when I'm back home, which she usually likes, but feels very weird and she gets mad if I don't want to.

She's now asking what I'll do for apps, main course AND dessert. I don't know if I'm being overly sensitive but I really don't want to spend XMAS listening to my dad and brother complain and not eat and my mom make weird comments about some food I was excited to cook. Then see it all being wasted, specially during the holidays when overspending already makes me feel like crap. I just want to tell them to buy their usual pre-made oven xmas meals we ate growing up. My bf thinks I should cook the food since we are hosting and we already had recipes chosen and were excited to cook them together.

AITA?