I like to think of myself as a bit of a gourmet cook. Chicken Marsala, Sweet potato-encrusted Salmon, Beef Wellington — you name it, I can cook it. The fact that no one eats my food is, I'm sure, chalked up to them being picky eaters. "It can't possibly be me," I reason with myself. The fact that my children eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and turn their nose up at even the toast I make can't possibly be my fault.

Perhaps it's hereditary, ya' think?! My mother tries like hell, but was a little lacking in the domestic area while I was being raised. Opening all the doors and waving the dish towel in front of a blaring smoke alarm was a nightly occurrence. To put it bluntly, the woman could burn Jell-o. I have a cast-iron stomach from all the tar-like substances I've been fed as a child. You need roughage? Come over to my parents' house and you'll be pickin' up your colon off the linoleum — and that's just breakfast. My taste buds have been permanently scarred — maybe that's why nobody will eat my food. It probably tastes like road kill, and I'm thinking its filet mignon.

For years I actually thought that mashed potatoes came from a man named Hungry Jack and didn't discover until college that people actually boiled real potatoes and then mashed them up. No wonder Jack was always hungry after eating that crap. Spaghetti sauce? More like red-colored water over remnants of over-cooked pasta. My mother would take tomatoes, put them in the blender, and then just pour the concoction over the noodles with not a hint of any spices. It was a plate of red colored water at the bottom of soggy pasta — nothing stuck to the pasta. A V-8 thrown on there would have had more staying power.

Each year for the holidays I'd look forward to a great-tasting turkey only to suffer through a bird so dry there was no amount of gravy that was gonna help it down. Just thinking about it makes me gag thinking I have a bone stuck in my throat. The worst is if it was undercooked — we'd all be killing each other for rights to the toilet. Thank God they finally came up with that little knob in the turkey that goes "boop" when it's done — I like to think that at least I've got a "boop" of a chance at surviving the salmonella now.

Every year I try to create my own dish to enter into the Betty Crocker Cook-off for their million dollar prize. I eagerly wait each spring to watch the televised live finale on the cooking network. One housewife came up with the idea of taking a package of French toast sticks, cut them up, added spices to it to make stuffing, and then put the little package of maple syrup it came with over some chicken and baked it. Can you flippin' believe she won a million dollars for that? That's just cuckoo bananas right there. So I came up with what I thought was a great casserole of turkey meat, vegetables, egg noodles, a special sauce, and topped with bread crumbs that I was sure would be in the top ten at least. I served it to my family and all my brother could say was, "It tastes like a turkey pot pie," which I considered an insult. No offense, Swanson, but really! A turkey pot pie?! I spent hours coming up with just the right balance of ingredients that Betty Crocker herself would go ga-ga over, for heaven's sake!

I do like to be adventurous at times. I've cooked cow tongue, snake meat, ostrich, alligator, rabbit, and shark. Sad to say only the alligator and ostrich came out okay. The shark tasted like rubber, the cow tongue tasted like a really bad French kiss, and the rest would only be tasty to contestants on Survivor that are half-starved and would eat your eyeball if given the chance. Hey, maybe that would be a good career move — become a chef cooking platypus for the Survivor show. I'd have a captive audience that would actually eat and enjoy the slop I shove in front of them out of sheer starvation. In that case, my kids would be a shoe-in to win at that show. The next time they turn their nose up at my entree I'll simply tell them they're in training for Survivor.