ina garten of hellish delights

one of the more delicious ironies about my situation as the mother of a child with multiple food allergies is that i haaaaate cooking. ditto grocery shopping. hate, hate, hate it. have i mentioned that i hate it? i hate it.

i hate cook books, too. those smug contessas with their 18 kinds of fresh herbs and homemade soup stock and "just simmer until it reduces by half" incantations. the only thing simmering is my systolic number.

i hate the melting and the flaming and the charring. and that's just my utensils. did you know that plastic spoons burn really fast? really fast.

it seems like i cannot make a pass through the kitchen without setting an oven mitt afire or a smoke detector howling. i spill worse than exxon. i knock things over. i drop things. i curse (quietly, very quietly).

even when i follow the freaking recipe, something goes wrong: in tonight's case, the recipe itself was wrong, but i didn't clue into that until after i'd made the stupid pot of soup. eff, eff, eff!

and as much as i'd like to throw in the kitchen towel, i can't, because my baby has to have foods that are safe for her to eat. which in many cases means from scratch so i can control the ingredients. so even though i would commit several felonies to have a fat lorenzo's pizza delivered to my abode (oh, fatties, i hardly knew ye!), back i go to slave over my hot stove...after i disconnect the smoke detector.