What with the Rachel Ray smackdown, I started thinking, what is it about her that sets me off, really? It is true she's perky and I hate perky. Perky, even when it isn't, always seems fake to me. And no one is perky all the time so people who always seem to be make me suspicious. And perky at the butt-crack of dawn will get you shot around me.

But it isn't the perky. If it were I'd also hate Kelly Rippa and I don't. I'd not love my friend Cara as much as I do, either, because she's about as perky as it gets. I sometimes want to put Cara into a box to calm her down, too, but I still love her.

It isn't the success or money, either. If I wanted that I could have it. I don't particularly want it. I watched what it did to my father and it doesn't appeal.

I don't think she's funny looking. She's actually pretty cute. The latent bi-sexual in me would do her.

So what's left? The food. It has to be the food.

I honestly think that Rachel Ray would have a meltdown trying to cook for my family. She also wouldn't be able to do so on 40 dollars a day. No way, no how. That's what gets to me. I know, deep in my soul, that she has never faced the challenges I do in the kitchen and probably would fail abysmally if she tried to surmount them.

It bugs me that she is considered some sort of frugal cooking guru. Cuz she ain't. I am, dammit.

However, this post isn't really about her. It is about me. So enough about her.

I grew up with a mother that hated to cook. Truly hated to. She cooked everything on high to get it over with as soon as possible. So everything was crispy to black on the outside and raw in the center.

This was a problem for me because I liked food. Good food. I solved this dilemma by teaching myself to cook at a very young age in self-defense. By the time I was 17 I could make just about anything and I'd discovered a real talent for baking.

Then I had kids. For the first little bit this wasn't a problem since kids eat kid stuff. The problem came in when they became old enough for real people food and I discovered that the little buggers had their own ideas about what was and wasn't good. They turned their little noses up at the things other people would beg me to make for them.

Then I had more kids and things got even more complicated.

At one point in time I had 1 child that would eat nothing he thought had anything from the allium genus (onions or garlic), one that would touch nothing green, one that would cry if his food had red in it and another who would not touch corn. That doesn't leave you with much to work with, let me tell you. Especially when you factor in a husband that doesn't like carrots.

The above is why Schuyler was my favorite child during that period of my life. He likes food like I like food and for him new flavors and textures were a spiritual experience. The memory of Schuyler closing his eyes, slowly chewing something I had made and was new to him, and the noises of satisfaction he made still brings a tear.

I managed to survive those years by mincing all garlic and onions very small and throwing them in on the sly, lying my ass off about why the food was that color ("Really, honey, those aren't green. They just look green because an evil alien put a curse on them. They taste orange.") and avoiding corn. My husband learned to eat carrots because no way in hell was I going to cater to him when I had to deal with the kids, too.

Then they got older and most of that nonsense stopped. The challenges didn't. The bigger they got, the more food they required. Since I have cooked for 8 people at minimum for the last 13 years until last year when it went down to 6 that meant I had to find ways to feed them all without going into the poor house.

I took up gardening. And then it took over me. But it is a cost effective way to feed people and not resort to boxed crap. And discount grocery stores became my friend. I can feed a family of 6 on 200 or less a week. Take that Rachel! Oh, yeah, I wasn't talking about her. Where was I?

That's right, how to feed them all without becoming poor. Fresh produce I produce myself. But there was the recipe problem. You can't stay out of the poorhouse with a meat and potatoes menu. Not with that many mouths. So I learned 1001 things to do with pasta or rice and a little meat.

The things I can do with a couple of pounds of ground beef, some garden fresh veggies and some rice can make people cry. In a good way. I can take the contents of a near empty pantry and make something edible with it.

Have you ever wondered why Chinese food, real Chinese food, is so good? I know why. Because when you have limited resources to work with and many mouths to feed and a yen for good food you learn to take a bunch of small amounts with different flavors and mix them into a big amount that blends well.

I'm not even sure where I'm going with this. My kids can all cook now so I don't have to on the rare occasions I don't feel like it. There are no more challenges for me to face in the kitchen. I've mastered the forgotten domestic art of cooking for many. Good thing, too. It is about the only domestic art I am good at. Well, the only one I can tell you about without giving a not safe for work warning.

Maybe I should write a cookbook. But I'll be damned if I'll pose on a sink in daisy dukes if it sells. Ooops, there I go again. Rachel Ray has nothing to do with this post. Right.