Lesson 3: Chicken

The student: Martin Sweetman of Mountain View, California.

The disaster: When Joan Sweetman went back to college after 25 years of marriage to husband Martin, a director at a software company, it became his job to cook dinner one night a week. 

When he tried to grill chicken breasts, he doused them with so much salt and cooked them for so long that they turned into jerky. "Even a steak knife wasn’t sharp enough to cut these babies," wrote Joan.

The hope: A tried-and-true technique. "He needs more help than I can give ― please!"