Making dinner for someone can be a bit tricky. Especially when it involves an oven.

Take this past Wednesday. I invited someone over for dinner and wanted to make sure we were going to have a nice meal.

I figured pizza and Chinese take out was unacceptable.

I had marinated some chicken the previous night. So all I had to do was go to the store and buy a few other items to go with the main course.

I went over to Jim's Super Valu after work and headed to the deli. After passing on the potato salad, I went with the honey mustard pasta salad, which turned out to be a good pick.

I figured rolls would go really well with the chicken and the pasta. So I went over and grabbed one of those crescent roll tubes and looked at the directions on the back.

Initially, it looked a bit complicated. It said you had to unroll the dough and tear it apart in triangular shapes, then roll it up and place it on a baking pan.

I wasn't feeling too lucky. I didn't want to chance it buy buying these rolls and screwing the whole thing up. Plus, I only had a pizza pan.

So I headed over to the potato chips.

They had everything from Doritos to Funyons. I knew it would be easy to prepare. Just take it out of the bag and place on the plate.

That's more my speed.

Except, it just wouldn't be the same as those hot, fresh rolls right from the oven.

So I went back to check out the rolls. Luckily, there was a nice lady there who just picked up a crescent roll tube.

I had to ask.

Excuse me, but are those rolls hard to make?

&uot;These?&uot;

Yeah.

&uot;Oh no,&uot; she said, chuckling.

What are you making them for?

&uot;We're going to have pizza hot dish.&uot;

But why the rolls?

&uot;You just take these rolls and line the bottom of the pan, then you can make your hot dish. It's really easy.&uot;

So I headed to the checkout counter. I had to get a second opinion.

I asked the cashier if these rolls were easy to make. Apparently, that question made her day, as she started laughing out loud, exposing my Julia Child-like shortcomings.

Sheepishly, I paid for the rolls and pasta and headed home.

But I was running late and wasn't for sure if the rolls were going to be made in time. Sure enough, they weren't.

Fortunately, shortly after arriving, she helped me make the rolls. Everything worked out.

In retrospect, even though I had to go through all that trouble to make the rolls and put a layer of non-stick spray to the aluminum pizza pan, it was worth it.

So now I'm thinking about taking her to a Twins game Saturday. No more food at home until Monday.

Baking once a week is enough.

Dan's column appears Fridays in the Austin Daily Herald. E-mail Dan at :mailto:dan.fields@austindailyherald.com