To give you a sense of my cooking abilities, around here when we refer to the dinner bell, we would be talking about the kitchen smoke detector.

It's not that I don't try, it's that I really don't have much of a gift in this area. As far as I'm concerned, truly good cooks are artists, as deft with seasonings and ingredients as a painter is with his palette.

My mother-in-law is a truly good cook. She can sight read a recipe just like a musician can sight read a score and tell you if it's going to be good or not and where it can be improved.

She cooks comfort food, throwing a handful of this, a smidge of that, and before you know it a warm, savoury meal is in front of you.

So as you can guess, the spousal unit grew up surrounded by good food. And then he married me, a woman who grew up in a household without good food.

I have burned things. I have undercooked things. I have underseasoned things. I have made things indescribably spicy. Along the way I have collected some tried and true recipes that are actually good.

Through all the experiments, no matter how bad it was, he ate it.

I think we should all observe a moment's silence in recognition of that poor man's gastronomical sufferings.

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Alrightee then.

Tonight I surpassed myself.

The dish in question involved a spicy peanut sauce, noodles, and stir fried vegetables, kind of a riff on the Thai food I ate recently at ChuChai in Montreal.

One of my cookbooks recommended mixing peanut butter, hoisin sauce, some cayenne and coconut milk to make the basic peanut sauce. This produced a thick, muddy brown peanutlicious sauce which bore an uncanny resemblance to Jabba The Hutt.

Despite the fact the colour was kind of disgusting, it was lumpy and it needed a bit more cayenne, I thought the dish was pretty good for a first try.

Yes, yes my standards are THAT low when it comes to my own cooking.

Sadly, the spousal unit did not agree with my assessment.

He was very, very brave and soldiered through four or five forkfuls before he gave up, went downstairs and made himself a snack. It turns out that as far as he's concerned, peanut butter is fine, but peanut-flavoured main courses are not something any thinking person would actually want to eat.

So there you have it. It took me almost 28 years of marriage to do it, but tonight I finally produced something Even The Spousal Unit Could Not Eat.

Feel free to mark this date on your calendars.