While some artists work in oils or clay, my true medium is food.

Any food will do – Mexican, Italian, breakfast, lunch or dinner. But my favorite is special occasion food.

I have a real gift, an innate natural talent if you will, for bringing out the full artistic potential of special occasion food.

No one else can completely, totally & profoundly destroy special occasion food like I can.

This year’s anniversary disasterpiece was glorious in it’s simplistic deconstruction & post-modern Italian flavors.

In fact, it was so glorious that I couldn’t bring myself to eat more than 3 bites of it. Although Eric, loving husband & long-time supporter of my work, manned-up & ate it all like a good soldier.

After which he looked up at me with smiling eyes and a loving heart & reminded me, “I didn’t marry you for your cooking.”

Which is entirely true, otherwise he would’ve married my sister. She’s the cook in the family.

Growing up, Erin got the gift of culinary insight – inspired by her Easy Bake Oven; I got the gift of pseudo-artistic talent – inspired by my bucket of broken & wrap-pealed Crayola crayons.

(Yes, my sister’s name is Erin. And yes, the single alpha, Freudian difference of having a sister named Erin & a husband named Eric is not lost on me. They are quite similar in some aspects. But don’t tell them that.)

Truth be told, I just don’t get it. I spent over a month planning this meal. I researched recipes; found ones I thought would be simple enough for me to tackle yet still tasted good. I made sure I followed the recipes to the letter & had everything pulled together by 6 o’clock.

(Although the boy actually came home early for once & was home at 5 o’clock to find me – face all made-up, hair done, wearing an oversized, holey white t-shirt with pajama boxers & his size 14 flops. Maggie had run off with my shoes.)

The presentation was pretty enough given I only brought one tablecloth to Korea and all of my good silver still resides in that Oklahoma warehouse. But the taste?…disastrous.

The chicken was over-baked, over-breaded. The tomatoes were too soft & fell under the weight of the ricotta, corn & pesto filling. The lemon spaghetti was way too lemony. The only bright spot was the zucchini & cheese corn muffins.

But it was a Jiffy mix – you just can’t destroy Jiffy, no matter how hard you try.

[dig the circa 1989 country blue plastic mixing bowl]

Luckily dessert made-up for that one shining success by completely & totally sucking with it’s way too thick, nearly unbreakable crust & sucker-you-in, glimmer of false-hope, chocolate-dusted beauty.