It's All Go Here At Master Chuff - Ladies & Gentlemen, Let's Cook - Tomorrow

Having watched Masterchef for what seems like eons, I now feel qualified to throw together a sea bass on a bed of 'foam', cobble together cranachen and do something improbable with venison and blackberries. 

Unfortunately I have discovered a law of the universe so baffling that even Rhonda Byrne would have trouble hiking an enormous camera crew and numerous American Law of Attraction experts across Bondi Beach to explain it in one of those waffly self-help type films - the number of cookery books you own is inversely proportional to the amount of cooking you actually do - and worse, the level of skill you will attain.

Gregg & John would be traumatised by a visit to Hobbis Towers

I suspect this can be quickly validated by looking at the success of food blogger, anti-poverty campaigner and meal-on-a-budget expert Jack Monroe. Her cooking pizzazz is borne of necessity and uses minimum equipment and no fancy ingredients. I have a kitchen cupboard stuffed full of the most random and hotch potch collection of ingredients which appear whenever I have a new cookery book and kid myself that I will finally try to whip up something to tempt hubby's tastebuds.The mere suggestion of this is enough to make him hide in the cupboard under the stairs until what he considers to be one of my latest hormonal onslaughts has passed.

I think lots of us equate food with love. Us mums are supposed to be legendary cooks, aren't we? Aren't we supposed to arm wrestle each other for supremacy of our Yorkshire pudding or roastie production skills? Our apple crumbles are supposed to be bottomless, our rice puddings skinless and our lasagne worthy of praise from Gino. I'm afraid my culinary CV would simply state "burns pans and creates smells".

Still, whilst Ieuan is still vegetable averse and, as we tell him daily, never likely to grow higher than four feet, nor develop the motor skills to even put a Spiderman suit on, we are still in the "fishfinger years".  The kids seem to be doing fine, despite having a fear of gravy and the husband, well, hands up, he tends to do most of the cooking.

Perhaps I'll enter him for Masterchef.