Serves: For the moment

Ingedients:

1. One parent

2. One lb ground beef

3. One bag brown sugar

4. One still-recognizable onion

5. One box soda crackers

Directions:

Standing with your back to the sink, reach above your head and get the rectangular baking dish, the clear one with the baked-on brown line about two inches from the bottom.

If you can't remember what a rectangle looks like, consult your child's Sesame Street Dictionary. That book is roughly a rectangle.

Using your hands (after cleaning them with a waterless industrial hand cleaner), take most of the above-mentioned ingredients and mush them together in the baking dish, TAKING CARE TO REMOVE THEM FROM THEIR RESPECTIVE PACKAGES FIRST.

Approach oven when it is not looking, lower door, insert dish GENTLY.

Close door.

When kids ask how it's coming along forty-five minutes later, realize you forgot to turn the oven on. Apologize and order pizza.

When wife asks what that smell is when she returns from her trip and finds oven still occupied...

Cooking time:

'til she chooses to speak to you again.