"What Are We Having for Dinner?"

This question doesn't bother me as long as it isn't followed up with the following statement:

"I hope it isn't {insert whatever meal I happen to be making at the time}."

About a month ago, my older kids turned into super picky eaters. Because saying that they don't like something doesn't earn them much sympathy around these parts, they have devised a new strategy to avoid eating undesirable objects that includes likening me to a carcinogen.

"What's wrong?" I asked at the dinner table tonight. My kids looked at each other knowingly. They all were sitting on their hands and looking like they had just been poisoned.

"Did you touch any of this with your hands?" my daughter asked, gesturing to her bowl of stir-fry.

I shook my head.

"But you breathed on it," Cortlen said.

"I'm going to pretend like I didn't hear that."

My three year-old, who, thirty minutes earlier, opened the refrigerator and ate his way through half a jar of pickles before I caught him, pushed away his plate too.

"Yucky!" he screamed.

"Great example," I told my older kids.

My daughter suggested that I should cook with a hair net, like the ladies in the school cafeteria.

"And gloves and a mask," Kellen added with a straight face.

Around that time, I started to feel a little bit persecuted. "Everybody out!" I barked and banished them all from the kitchen.

Then I made some brownies.

"I'm going to die of starvation," one of them whined as he watched me take the pan out of the oven.

"You want some?" I asked with a smirk.

Three people nodded like ravenous dogs. Suddenly, my lack of gloves and hairnet wasn't a problem.

"I spit in the batter," I told them as they scarfed up the dessert.

They didn't even acknowledge me.

"I licked all the brownies before I gave them to you," I added.

Nothing.

"I mixed in some of the stir-fry ingredients into the batter," I continued.

Out of all of my confessions, this was the only one that was true. If it worked for Jessica Seinfeld, I figured that it would work in some grotesquely modified form for me.

My kids stopped chewing and eyed the brownies suspiciously.

"It's just a chocolate chip," I said of a protruding mushroom, and smiled.