Not long ago, before leaving for school one morning, my wife, Tia, announced, “You’re responsible for dinner tonight.” I knew she must be feeling crummy because putting me in charge of dinner was commensurate to putting Jefferson Davis in charge of uniting the country.

“No sweat,” I thought, and that afternoon stopped at Trader Joe’s, the one-stop shopping place for completely cooked, microwaveable meals and meats. After cruising by the frozen bins, although tempted by several airbrushed color box tops worthy of framing, I ogled the plastic-wrapped meats.

“Take me! Take me!” a small ham shouted, doing a spot-on impression of Daniel Day-Lewis at the end of “Last of the Mohicans.”