"In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced in television." -Erma Bombeck

My 4 year old has decided she no longer likes to eat... or rather, she no longer likes to eat anything I cook.

She has basically been living on cereal, oatmeal, french fries, ice cream, and ranch dressing. That is about it. This has started to worry me so her evil plan is working and I am bending over backwards to make her something different from the rest of us just so I can be sure she has food in her stomach

When I was a kid, if you didn't like what my mom was cooking for dinner... tough crapola. And my mom was not a "kid-friendly" type of cook either. She made things like pea soup and bean soup and liver and chicken 5 nights a week. We were only allowed the chicken legs as well-the breast was reserved for my dad. Today I cannot bring myself to eat a chicken leg, or any kind of chicken on the bone. I get flashbacks and end up curled up in the fetal position sucking my thumb on the kitchen floor.

I remember one night my mom made bean soup. It was disgusting. I refused to eat it, so I got to spend the remainder of the evening sitting in my chair at the table in front of my now cold bowl of brown colored bean soup. All of the dishes had been cleared away and they even turned out the lights when they left the room to leave me sitting in the dark with a bowl of muck that was gar-on-tee'd to make me gag. It was horrible and it has taken years of therapy to give me peace with bean soup. My parents still owe me for that bill.

I try to make meals that my family will enjoy. I go out of my way to make it healthy and appealing to the masses. My kids don't like big stewed tomatoes in their sauces, so I will usually blend them up in the blender. They don't like big onion bits, so I chop and chop until the onion is so small they don't even notice it. They don't like vegetables so I find new and yummy ways to cook those carrots and peas. Basically, I am the kitchen bitch around here. I look at myself and wonder, "What happened to me?"

Well, this short-order cook is taking off the apron (which by the way, I would love to have one of The Kitchen Madonna's aprons!) and tonight I am making liver with a bean soup chaser. I am taking back the oven! I am going to be a crusader against kid-friendly cooking. I am going to enjoy a big ol' juicy tomato in my spaghetti (well, maybe not that because I think cooked tomatoes are gross... but for effect sake I will eat one!) And if they don't like it... well then they can sit at the table for hours until they pass out and what they don't finish in the evening they can finish for breakfast!

But before I wage this war with my children I think I am going to bake those cinnamon rolls I have sitting in the fridge. My 4 year old will eat a cinnamon roll...