Cooking from the planet Mars

"Next up on the Food Network, what not to do when you're trying to cook an edible meal!"

Well, that's essentially the premise of a cooking show starring me. The more eye-catching, viewer-nabber would probably be:

"Did You Leave the Oven On?"

And then I'd bust through a fake door into a fake kitchen with singed walls and counter-tops. I'd be wearing a level-4 virus, flame-retardant suit, much like this:

The course of the show would feature me committing all of the most dangerous kitchen mistakes while cooking, including reliving my famous biscuit-baking-tablecloth-melting experiment. (True story, folks!) At the end the kitchen would always explode, resulting in an impressive pyrotechnic display capped off by the movie voice-over guy saying, "Join us next week...in a world...where cooks have singed off all their body hair..."

For real though, the biscuit thing happened...my mother kicked me out of her kitchen for life at age 13, after I set a searing hot baking pan of fresh-from-the-oven biscuits on her plastic spring tablecloth. I melted the shit out of it. But since that life-scarring experience, I've returned to a new kitchen--MY kitchen. Where there are no plastic tablecloths, the stove runs on noble gas and raw chicken can hang out on the counter if it wants to.

I AM CHEF!!!!! HEAR ME PAN-FRY!!!!!

Anyway, my point is that I've been a little more domestically inclined these days, driven by the desire to cook for a man who would have otherwise only made himself some easy mac n' cheese with just cheese mix and water, because the milk we bought last week is starting to turn green. (No offense, baby...)

I come from a family of amazing cooks. Until recently, I'd started to think that I was the runty gal of the bunch, unable to do much more than burn my Rice Krispie treats. (I have a vivid memory of lying on the floor in the fetal position, bawling my eyes out, after burning them in an effort to make a birthday treat for someone.) But very recently, it was like I hit cooking puberty, or I discovered the cooking "force." All I had to do was let go of my inhibitions and fears, and the meals started cooking themselves. Meat-loaf, chicken-rice casserole, strawberry cream souffle!!! All to the delight of myself and those fortunate enough to eat at my table. I learned from my foibles and got control over my appliances.

As of a few months ago, I started to collect recipes here and there. I'd nab something from a magazine, or pick up some pamphlets from the gym. I'd put my own spin on them and then stash them in some nook or cranny. After a while, they added up, and started cluttering up my sacred kitchen. I needed an outlet for my culinary creativity!!!

So I found this nifty We Gotta Eat site. It's like the MySpace of the cooking world. It lets you catalog all of your favorite recipes, make friends, share recipes, discuss the latest super-foods, etc. I heartily endorse it, if you're into cooking, want to be into cooking, or have trouble keeping the kitchen appliances from burning the house to the ground.

Anyway, I think I have to run back to the kitchen, because now that I think about it, I totally left the oven on.