Lynn, I know what you mean. Few things are more exhausting than a meal with a whole bunch of procedures and steps and techniques. I only go all-out with anything even remotely complicated for the holidays. I just can't deal with elaborate meals very often.

I'm very much a barbarian at heart when it comes to how I cook. I do a lot of chopping and shredding because I like to use a lot of potatoes and veggies, but if I had me a food processor, my prep time would usually be about 5 minutes for the veggies, which are the bulk of my concoctions. A bunch of chopped stuff, a pound of lowfat sausage or other meat, maybe a couple of crumbled bouillion cubes and /or a can of stewed tomatoes... some appropriate herbs and spices... voila! It's all good. And it all does its thing in the microwave or the oven, while I put my feet up for 20-30 minutes.

You can do the same thing with chicken parts or turkey parts, too.

You can vary the stuff you cook this way according to what you have on hand. No two meals ever have to be exactly alike. And you don't have to be a culinary master to do stuff like this. Just a practical, smart person <patting self on the back>.

Anyway, I hope I haven't bored y'all with all this food and cooking talk. I swear I don't spend all my free time trading recipes... although I found out something really peculiar tonight. Y'all know about numerology? Heh heh.... I found out from this website that my life path number is 6... which is the path of the nurturer, the caregiver, regarded as the most highly domestic of all the life path numbers. I never would have thought that, not before I actually wrote the cookbook and sort of distilled together all my domestic experiences. It's a pretty weird thing to see in myself. Guerilla Tactics... life path 6... who'd uh thunk?

Anyway, I guess I'm rambling again. Sorry to stray so off topic!

Hugs & Blessings,
Lil