Among friends, my reputation as a cook continues to take devastating hits. When they gather together, some who have known me the longest take unbridled delight in making fun of my alleged mishaps in the kitchen.

They recall with special pleasure the time when I blew up a chicken on our stove’s launching pad. That incident occurred in the early 1970s when I belonged to a household of six companions that ─ for literary reasons, being fans of the novelist Walker Percy ─ we called “Love in the Ruins.”

When it came my night to cook for the group, I placed the chicken (already dead, mind you) in a glass dish, shoved it into the oven, turned on the gas, and, after a time, was greeted by an explosion that made my housemates rush to the kitchen looking to find me dead also.

However, I’m glad to report having survived the explosion more or less unscathed. I cannot say the same for the chicken. The poor beast had glass shards driven into his carcass all over. If it had been dead before, it was triply so now.

Instead of letting me serve the chicken after some more broiling, my companions forced me to put the remains out in the trash. What they did for sustenance that evening I forget. But old friends have never allowed me to forget the chicken. And they take malign delight in my misfortune.

Some time after this catastrophe, I acquired a Crock-Pot, a vessel whose contents were less likely to end up on the kitchen ceiling. I was even able to prepare a pot roast for my mother, who pronounced it “better than good.” (Fairness requires me to add that my mother was known far and wide for taking delight in any meal that she had not prepared herself.)

Over the years, my specialties have evolved. In my present-day household, on those occasions (admittedly rare) when we serve lobster, I am invariably assigned the role of killer. Even my wife and daughter, both of whom have sometimes shown themselves critical of my kitchen performances, praise me for bringing a quick death to those crustaceans.

Unlike me, they feel scruples about cooking lobsters, but not about eating them. But if the lobsters (like the chicken) ended up on the kitchen ceiling, wouldn’t they be accessories after the fact?

I also once baked a cake. That enterprise forced me to don an apron, the only time I can remember being so attired. Unfortunately, however, the doorbell rang just at the crucial moment when I was about to take my creation out of the oven. I rushed to the door to find several young neighborhood girls who were selling Girl Scout cookies.

What bothered me about that event was not the spoiling of the cake, bad enough in itself, but the sight of me at the door. There I suffered the humiliation of presenting myself, not as a strong male patriarchal figure, but rather as a wimp dressed in an apron. (My in-house critic points out, however, that the latter is an admirable role model.)

In any event, this traumatic experience has inhibited me from learning to bake, though I rate as an expert consumer of chocolate-chip cookies and apple pies.

Other dishes of mine, such as hamburg or steak prepared lovingly over a slow fire, have been pronounced “adequate.” This word I would like to take as praise, but my nearest and dearest regard it as almost entirely negative. Perhaps my wife’s judgment goes back to her French-oriented convent school days when weekly good-conduct cards were being handed out.

In that era when words countered for something, the phrase “assez bien” was  dreaded by those schoolgirls. Though literally the words meant “good enough,” in context they signified that you had not only done badly but, if you had enough of these judgments, you were in acute danger of being thrown out of the place.

That’s what “adequate” means in my kitchen and dining room. I stand in mortal fear of hearing these words from those closest to me. We all know what they mean.  And, as I think about the chicken and the pot roast, and the cake, I can be grateful not to be subject to weekly judgments of assez bien.

For my next project, I’m thinking about writing a cookbook. My inspiration would come, not merely from the adventures cited above, but from the example of Irma Rombauer. Born in 1877, her birthday falls on the very day in which I am writing these words.

In 1935 she published The Joy of Cooking, a book destined to become one of the all-time favorites in the genre. She did so “even though she was a terrible cook, according to her own family,” as Garrison Keillor has reported.

What further inspiration do I need than that?

Richard Griffin