What are you afraid to cook?

Time to confess: What are you afraid to cook? Is it live lobsters with their creepy swimmerettes, or whipped cream that you're sure won't get fluffy? And how about those scary egg whites?

For Halloween, I've been looking for the really scary foods, the ones that people are afraid to tackle. So far, I've heard from a woman who claims she has a mysterious non-gelling affect on all gelatins. Her husband can make Jell-O, but she can't.

Send your scary food stories to me at kpurvis@charlotteobserver.com.

As for myself, when we cooks gather around the campfire, I hold a flashlight up to my face and tell a story I call "Night of the Living Lobster":

Once upon a time, I tried to kill a lobster the way the cookbooks always say to do it, by plunging the point of a knife straight down between the head and body.

What the cookbooks don't tell you is that the lobster may be dead, but the swimmerettes, those little legs and flippers, don't stop moving. For a very long time. Even when you're hurrying the trash bag of discarded lobster parts out to the trash can: Twitch-twitch, twitch-twitch, twitch-twitch.

This girl will stick to steaming from now on.