Some of you are probably world class cooks like my friend Allegra. When you make lasagna, you peel tomatoes to make your own sauce, plunging the tomatoes into boiling water, slicing an x, separating the skin and then scooping out the seeds. I tried it. Please. Who minds a little peel? It's not a pumpkin.

Or you grind your own spices. Allegra does. I tried that too. Ground them in the coffee grinder I had bought because Allegra had one. Now my coffee tastes like curry and my curry tastes like decaf.

You gourmet chefs would have had no trouble entertaining Richard, the man my husband was hoping to lure to his firm.

But me, I was thrown into instant panic.

Then he said, "It reminds me of my mother's food."

You see, Richard used to be a chef.

He cooked in an upscale restaurant, probably things like medallions of goose liver, served on a bed of sweet potato with onion marmalade and croutons of St. Mor cheese.

Let's get it straight right away. I am not a gourmet. Not a gourmet chef or eater. Neither was my mother. We like canned vegetables and the parts of the chicken that other people throw away.

I like the fatty part of meat. I like macaroni and cheese mixes. I like beef jerky. I like bologna -- with mayonnaise, on white bread.

I like big plates of food. Not nouvelle cuisine with its three dabs of color- coordinated food in the center of a plate surrounded by a sprinkle of chives.

I don't have a food processor or a mixer.

So cooking for a chef threw me into a bit of a stew.

Whenever I try something fancy, I fail.

Like the time I made pate and left the top off of the blender. My kids really enjoyed the way the chicken liver hung from the ceiling.

It's not that I can't cook. I amaze myself sometimes by cooking the most delicious food. My sister loves my food. She says that it is soothing. But she lives in Manhattan and orders out every meal (even coffee). For her, home cooked food is a novelty.

Allegra said I should do something easy like phyllo dough with a layer of pumpkin, a layer of rice and spinach and pine nuts, and a layer of rice and parmesan. With a melange of wild mushroom soup. (I don't think I can be friends with her anymore.)

And then I remembered something that I'd read --

When entertaining, you should make something you're comfortable with, something you've made before.

So I made tomato soup and mashed potatoes with parmesan cheese.

I made a salad.

I made brownies.

Then I went out and bought some French bread.

In the evening my husband arrived with Richard. We sat at the table.

My four-year-old son asked him: Do you pee in your bed?

Then I went to get the dinner.

The French bread had gone stale. So I took the stale bread and made croutons for the soup.

The potatoes were lumpy. So I covered them with fried eggs.

The soup was too salty. So I added milk and made it cream of tomato.

Richard picked up his fork and ate heartily.

"Delicious," he said.

"Comfort food. It's so nice to have food that isn't fancy. This food was made with love."

And I thought to myself: He must be drunk.

The he said, "It reminds me of my mother's food."

And I realized: There was food and there was mother's food.

Then I served the brownies and remembered: I had forgotten to put in the flour.

So I called them Mom's fudge.