![image: [ Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York: burns her toast every morning ]](/olmedia/50000/images/_51275_fergie300.jpg)
Sarah Ferguson may have her own cookbook of 125 recipes to choose from whenever she decides to entertain but, by her own admission, she cannot actually prepare any of them.
Appearing on American television, the Duchess demonstrated the accuracy of her self-assessment while attempting to serve up a crunchy chicken sesame salad with ginger dressing.
Her culinary efforts got off to a bad start when she forgot to turn the stove on.
As she told hosts Kathie Lee Gifford and Regis Philbin, despite bringing out Dining with the Duchess with WeightWatchers, she also has problems making toast.
"It's quite interesting that I've done this because people say, 'You don't cook', and I don't," she said.
"But I love to eat. I can boil an egg and burn the toast for breakfast. I burn the toast every morning."
Back in England, there's more bad news for the Duchess in Wednesday's Daily Telegraph newspaper. Writing in its pages, the Michelin-starred chef Gordon Ramsay describes her recipes as "ghastly".
Instead of the diet-friendly vegetable and fish dishes Mr Ramsay had expected, he finds only "low-calorie versions of what are usually rather fattening concoctions."
He adds: "Several of the recipes seemed rather unsophisticated, plenty of salty and sugary tastes but little to challenge the palate. But they were surprisingly hard to cook, even for me, and the instructions were perfunctory."
For the moment at least, most Britons are spared the efforts of the Duchess and her team of four recipe developers and a nutritional consultant. Publishers Simon & Schuster have not yet decided if it the $25 tome will be published in the United Kingdom.
Fergie stays away claiming she was cold shouldered
(21 Nov 97 | UK)
WeightWatchers
Tea with the Duchess live online
Simon & Schuster
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