With this column, I have completed my 27th year of writing a weekly humor/recipe column. Back when Linda Grosskopf hired me to take over writing "Cooking in the West" for the Agri-News, the only job description she gave me was," Just run some great recipes, write some funny stuff about your life, and have it in my email inbox every Monday morning." That sounded easy enough, so 324 columns later, I am sitting here on my laptop on a Sunday night trying to cheer up enough to write something funny to share this week.

I should stop watching the news several days before the column deadline, becau...