I'm kind of with Paul on the baking business. I am fantastic at following step-by-step instructions when life demands it, but for some reason I do a great job of botching that when it comes to baking. I actually once had a total blue-screen-of-death meltdown in the middle of a grocery store when it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea how to cook almost everything in the building.

I eventually got over this phobia by going overseas. Going to a grocery store when you don't know how to cook anything is nothing compared to going to a grocery store where nothing looks familiar and the things that do don't taste familiar. After forcing myself to eat my own cooking for four months (AKA eating sandwiches for breakfast and pizza for supper), I then managed to top this by going to Russia for a week.

If you have no cooking ability, no dishes or cutlery, nothing to cook with but a microwave, can't read any of the packaging, and can't pronounce anything out loud, then you cannot eat in Russia. I wound up living off of ramen noodles, crab-flavored potato chips, and cake for an entire week.

The sad part is, that isn't even on the top five ways that Russia almost killed me. On several occasions I had it pointed out to me that my continued survival there was impressively improbable.

For breakfast today I ate thin pancakes with pistachio pudding. It was incredible.