My soon-to-be-released book, TABLE FOR SEVEN is about regular people cooking delicious meals. So, finding good recipes has been on my radar.

Last week, I decided to try out a new soup recipe. It was unusually chilly in South Florida, and therefore good soup weather. And a pot of soup bubbling on the stove always makes the house smell cozy.

Still, new recipes are fraught with danger. Even if you follow the instructions, and read the helpful hints from other cooks on the Epicurious site, and do everything right, it can still go terribly wrong. If the dish comes out, you’re a culinary hero. If not, you’re tossing out expensive ingredients and ordering a pizza.

This particular soup recipe called for smoked ham hocks, which I’d never cooked with before. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen them at the grocery store.

According to Wikipedia, the source for everything you can ever want to know about anything:

A ham hock is the joint between the tibia/fibula and the metatarsals of the foot, where the foot was attached to the hog’s leg. It is the portion of the leg – also known as pork knuckle – that is neither part of the ham proper nor the foot or ankle, but rather the extreme shank end of the leg bone and the associated skin, fat, tendons, and muscle.

So, basically, while a ham hock is not an actual pig foot, it’s pretty damn close.

Also: it’s disgusting.

Behold: the ham hock

As soon as I opened the first package of hocks, I was pretty sure this was something I wanted nothing to do with. But I bravely soldiered on. I boiled five of these things in a pot, with assorted chopped vegetables and aromatics, for four hours, to make the stock.

The smell . . . it was not good. It smelled like ass. I opened all of the doors and windows, trying to flush out the odor with cold air, while my family shivered under sweat shirts and blankets.

When the stock was finally finished, the recipe directed me strain the stock, reserving the hocks. Once they’d cooled, I was supposed to chop up the meat for the soup.

I tried. I really did. But there wasn’t any meat to chop. As soon as I took a knife to the hocks, they fell apart in a pile of skin, and fat, and disgustingness.

I tossed the meat, put the stock in the fridge overnight, and the next day, went back to Publix for ham steaks to cut up and use in the soup instead. I was hopeful that, while gross, the shanks may still have a produced a decent stock. After all, a chicken carcass isn’t exactly pretty, but I boil those suckers into delicious stock all the time.

So after another few hours of labor – chopping and cooking more vegetables, adding in the vastly-less-disgusting ham and the now gelatinous ham stock – the soup was finally finished.

And then I tasted it . . . and it was bad. Really bad.

Just to make sure, I called George in.

“Try this,” I said, offering him a spoon.

He gamely complied. An odd expression crossed his face. He put down the spoon.

“That’s the most revolting I’ve ever tasted in my life,” he said.

I sighed. “Yeah, I thought so, too.”

“Then why did you make me try it?”

“I wanted to be sure it was really as bad as I thought it was,” I said.

Two days of work dumped down the drain. Oh, well. At least the pizza was delicious.

1. Smart Cars

2. Inspirational Quotes on Facebook

3. Cockroaches. Especially when they hang out by the toilet in the middle of the night.

4. Loud cell phone talkers.

5. Bad children’s movies featuring annoying characters.

6. Country Music

7. Asshole drivers

8. Toe Shoes

Thanksgiving is just a hop-skip-and-a-dozen-peeled-potatoes away. Which can mean only one thing – Elf on the Shelf time is upon us.

What is Elf on the Shelf you might ask?

He’s the newest Christmas tradition. As the story goes – which is detailed in the book that arrives with your elf – he arrives on the day after Thanksgiving, and watches over the household to make sure everyone’s behaving themselves and staying on the nice list. Basically, he’s a minion of Santa, and reports back to the big guy.

This is the hook for the parents. Does your kid talk smack or scribble on the walls with a Sharpie? All you have to do is turn to the elf, shrug helplessly, and say you hope Santa is a forgiving sort of a guy, because new DSi’s don’t just find their own way under the tree.

It works even better than informing the munchkins that you have Santa as a contact, and if they don’t stop whatever bad things they are doing, you are are sending him a text RIGHT NOW.

The bad news? Every night, your elf flits off to the North Pole, makes his report, and then returns to your home.

How do you know he’s left and come back?

He moves. Every single night. From Thanksgiving until Christmas.

Even if you’re just about to fall asleep. And have an early morning. Or have overindulged in egg nog. Or if you sprained your ankle trimming the tree after having overindulged in egg nog.

It doesn’t matter. The damn elf still has to move.

This in itself would be just a minor pain in the ass. The elf can move from one book shelf to another, or, perch on a lamp, or sit on top of the television (where he watches you with those creepy, creepy eyes).

No, the problem is with other mothers.

You know the kind. The annoyingly competitive mothers. The ones who aren’t content to have their elves plop down on a shelf, slumping to one side.

Oh, no.

Oh, no no no.

That would be too easy. And that would put them on the same footing as other, lesser mothers, which the Competitive Mother can obviously not allow to happen. Especially after she went to all that trouble with the cloth diapers, and the organic vegetables, and the banning of television and war weapons from her home.

Competitive mothers have to have fun elves! Naughty elves! Elves who cause mischief and mayhem!

These mothers delight in creating tableaus with their elves.

Or

But they don’t stop there. They’re so committed to this elf shit that they’ll happily mess up their own freaking houses at the busiest time of the year, just to prove how superior they are.

These women are the reason I avoid the PTA.

You know what weirds me out? When a man posts a review on behalf of his wife on a shopping website.

I was looking for a pair of sensible, non-spike-adorned black pumps on Zappos, and came across the following review:

My wife cannot go anyplace wearing theses shoes without getting five compliments. They add a fun flair to a business or professional attire.

Um, okay. Thanks for the feedback, man. Now go find your testicles and reattach them.

I adore these shoes.

I know. At 6 1/4 high, they’re a tad impractical. Plus, there’s the not-so-small matter that they cost nearly as much as my mortgage payment.

But the very thought of shoes that double as a weapon is irresistible. I can just picture using them on the assholes who walk through a door right ahead of me and then come to a dead stop.

Is it just me, or are the school supply lists getting longer and longer with each passing year?

When I was growing up, we showed up on the first day of school with a three-ring binder, some loose leaf paper and a couple of Bic pens. And that was it.

No longer. Sam’s school supply list has twenty-six items on it, and requires me to go to three different stores. I’ve managed to procure about half of what he needs, and it already fills two recyclable grocery bags.

Seriously, our mothers had it way easy. And they got to drink wine and eat blue cheese while they were pregnant.

I’ve been overdosing on the Olympics. My main focus has been on tennis, of course – Wimbledon 2012 2.0! Go Roger!!! – but I’ve also been watching the swimming and diving, and was especially riveted by the women’s team gymnastics.

Gymnastics is such a freaky ass sport.

First of all, the girls competing are all just that – girls. Little tiny girls wearing drag queen eye make-up and glitter in their hair. They all look like they swanned into the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique at Walt Disney World and demanded the Full Princess Prostitute Package. And when they speak to one another, they squeal and say the words like and awesome a lot.

Then those same little girls march out in front of thousands of people, and perform the most jaw dropping physical feats. Like knocking out a series of back flips on a 4-inch wide balance beam. (How is that even possible???) Or effortlessly flying back and forth the uneven bars, while turning somersaults in the air. They’re like little ass-kicking glitter ninjas.

Equally fascinating are the gymnastic parents, who are stage moms on steroids. I couldn’t get enough of Jordyn-spelled-with-a-y Wieber’s mother, and thought that NBC should just keep the camera fixed on her while her daughter competed. The way she swooned and screamed, and gyrated in her seat, and made the crazy eyes, and then did that weird closed fist clapping thing . . . it was great TV. Someone needs to get this woman a reality show, stat.

Just imagine how amazing THE REAL HOUSEWIVES OF THE OLYMPIC VILLAGE would be!