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I make a home-made version of a bacon dog under the broiler, then I add cheddar, chili, jalapenos and onion.

There have only been a handful of times that I have endured my MIL's cooking, usually we end up going to olive garden for 'family dinners' at their place (still not sure which one is worse).

The first time I ate over at their place, my MIL decided to cook something Italian since she knew that half of my mom's whole side of the family is from Sicily. Her version of chicken cacciatore consisted of a whole chicken thrown in a crockpot and covered with plain tomato sauce (no veggies of seasonings of any kind) and boiled for hours. The resulting mess didn't really taste like chicken or tomato sauce. And for some reason she decided to serve it over white rice.

The second glorious meal was for thanksgiving the first year we were married. There was the obligatory over-cooked turkey (She HAD to wait until the timer popped) with zero seasoning, canned green beans that were left simmering on the stove the ENTIRE time the bird was cooking, botched stove top stuffing (I don't think she even read the directions), turkey gravy from a jar (I offered to whip up some gravy, but no dice), and in order to save time she boiled her potatoes ahead of time and then mashed them right before serving. There wasn't a single fleck of pepper or grain of salt added to any of the dishes, and I found out during dinner that they didn't even own salt and pepper shakers or keep either spice in the house. Thankfully they had some decent frozen pies for dessert.

The Fresh Markets in my are do the same kind of setup.

I was eating a salad at a local restaurant, and I discovered a quarter-sized piece of jagged porcelain right in the middle of the salad. Thankfully I didn't bite down on it too hard, but I was still not a happy camper.

My favorite non dining out store comes from Quaker oatmeal. My mom would always buy the variety packs (not sure why) of the instant oat meal, and I couldn't stand the apple cinnamon flavor with its weird dehydrated apple bits. One day, she made me eat the apple oatmeal that had been sitting in the pantry for months. When I opened the pouch and poured it into a bowl, it was crawling with green inchworms.

I was really disappointed by the PB Co.'s dark chocolate peanut butter as well. It was surprisingly bland and really thick, making it very difficult to spread onto sandwich bread.

The cookies and cream flavor is pretty darn tasty, but the cookies get really soggy after about a day in the fridge. They also have a chocolate flavor with either butterscotch or toffee flavored chips, but that one fell flat for me. It pretty much tasted of only chocolate.

I remember about 10-15 years ago, ben an jerrys made a brownie ice cream sandwich that they sold in convenience stores and supermarkets that was unbelievably good. I'm pretty sure it was cookies and cream ice cream inside.

If I felt like a dark beer, Brooklyn Black Ops (If it exists, of course), for a lighter beer I'd go with Allagash Confluence.

I would take one of those over a cupcake any day.

I've been known to enjoy a good cupcake now and again, but I've never bought or made a whole cake for myself. I've baked them for family members for various occasions, but I make pies for myself pretty frequently.

I've always been a fan of good aged tequila, and last Christmas my brother got me a bottle of this tequila liqueur that he found in his travels. It was very similar to Grande Marnier, but made with tequila instead of Cognac. Very tasty stuff.

I'm not sure what the official name for it is, but my Italian grandmother used to make this dish that was kind of like a peperoni roll, but it was flat with 5 or six layers and used pizza dough as the bread. She would make her own tomato sauce and sausage for it. When I was little, I would help her roll out the huge sheet of dough on her dining room table. It was so good, and she would make huge batches so we would have plenty of leftovers.

I bought a super basic Henckels set that came with an 8" chef's knife, 6" chef's knife, two paring knives (not sure exact length), 10" carving knife, 6" serrated knife and 10" serrated. Other than that, I've bought a small cleaver and a santuko.