I grew up in the House of Fussy. A family of 4, we had a 10 item rotation with no requests honored. My sister actually only ate 4 out of the 10. Where sides are not mentioned, assume canned corn. There was always a half a loaf of white bread and a bottle of molasses on the table.

1. Pork chops came from a frying pan. Remove the bone and fat and you had a medalion of porcine leather the size of a silver dollar. Apply applesauce liberally to swallow.

2. Spaghetti. Boiled for 20 minutes until it was good and fat. Home made sauce from Grandmother's recipe. Sauce production started right after breakfast. I always suspected that there was a missing second page of the recipe that contained the seasonings. I was wrong. It turns out Grandmother was Scottish. The meatballs were okay.

3. Hot dogs. Boiled. New England style buns. Beans.

4. Hamburgers. Made with meat that was at best 50% lean. Broiled in the oven, they couldn't be served until all the fat had cooked out and was sitting on top of the burger in greyish, slimy lumps. Mustard and relish were your only friends. Carrot and raisin salad.

5. Meatloaf. On a good day, probably the only edible choice in the rotation. Involved Lipton's Onion Soup Mix. Sometimes she didn't mix sufficiently and you would get a mouthful of nothing but salt. Once she tried a different recipe and my dad left the table after one bite and wouldn't speak to her for the rest of the night. Boiled potoatoes. Boiled spinach covered inexplicably in vinegar.

6. Chicken. Broiled. No seasoning. Salad was a bowl of iceberg lettuce. In the summer there might be sliced tomatoes on it. Thousand Island Dressing.

7. Eye of the Round. Well done. Lumpy Gravy. Mashed potatoes.

8. Hash. Diced potatoes and leftover eye of the round. Took a whole bottle of ketchup to moisten and get down.

9. Breakfast for dinner. Scrambled eggs. Toasted white bread. Bacon. Grape jelly to mix into your eggs. We were the only people I ever saw do this.

10. Friday had its own rotation. Tuna Salad, Broiled Swordfish, Egg salad. I got excited if my dad came home with take-out pizza. I had no idea that there were toppings for pizza. Cheese was good enough for us.

I learned to cook in my parents' kitchen. By the age of 16, I was cooking and eating things they'd never heard of. I always thought my dad was the reason for the limited menu, but as an adult, I would serve him new dishes and he would ask my mother why he'd never had them before. He always cleaned his plate. I love having my mother over for dinner, serving her all the stuff she never served me and watching her push it around the plate. I tell her no dessert unless she eats at least one Brussels sprout.