Oh no! What a horrible thing to break this time of year! I can just imagine Nancia fumbling around in the kitchen and coming out with a marvelous 4 course meal. :D At my house, that might consist of triskets with havarti cheese, a can of fruit, weird pasta from the back of the pantry with that last jar of sauce the man's boss brought us from from St. Louis and some dried & vacuum packed ham that Delta sent us in a we're sorry we screwed up basket that we weren't sure what to do with, and finally some weight watchers raspberry ice cream dipped in chocolate on a stick.

i used to love cooking! now it hardly seems worth it for just the 2 of us. fortunately, dh loves manwich sandwiches! and frozen pot pies, and frozen enchiladas, and cheese and crackers and other junky but basically ok for you types of food. he stops on the way home and has a snack. i usually don't eat till he gets home, usually around 8. i have at most one meal a day, and about 3 desserts. the other day roast beef was on sale. i seasoned and cooked it in the oven. then? he just ate it. all gone! my husband once complained there was no point in buying apples. the kids just ate them!! heaven forbid! i suggested he get chicken liver pate' if he wanted something to last! lolol just for the record, any of the aforementioned frozen foods are cooked prior to ingestion.

Sounds like my house. My ex-husband used to expect a meat, 2-3 vegetables and some form of bread (even just Sunbeam) every night, and it better not be something fast. I used to make this dish Dusty called goulash. 2 boxes of mac n cheese made to box directions, 1 lb of browned ground beef, and 1 can of tomatoes which have been through the blender. Mix it all up & you have dinner for 3. He let me get away with it for dinner a few times, then said "that's not dinner" and wanted to fight every time I mentioned it as an option. I could make spaghetti, but I wasn't allowed to actually make sauce the way my dad taught me to cook. His mother used Ragu's plain old regular sauce with nothing done to it & to him, that was the only kind to eat. Boil the noodles, brown the hamburger, drain them both & dump it all in the pot together. That was the closest thing to fast dinner I was able to get away with, even when I was stressed out and driving to Atlanta (90 mins each way) every day when I was an assistant project manager for a sports field construction company. When we divorced, I lived on ($1 each at the time) Michelina's frozen dinners & Hot Pockets, because it was super easy and I was alone most of the time.

One of the biggest things in this house now is frozen pizza. The man is into the french bread pizzas and Dusty & I prefer the cheapo Totino's party pizzas. He'd love for me to buy those California Pizza Kitchen pizzas, but he's the only one who's impressed by them. Left to his own devices, he'd eat Chinese or open-faced sandwiches every night or stop on the way home at Smoothie King. I'd probably stock up on cheap frozen stuff and canned soup, just like the single days.

I'll way in on this one - I love to cook and most nights it's just me because Brian works the second shift. I'll make whatever I'm hungry for - a lot of nights it's some sort of stir fry, fajitas, or a meat/potato kind of meal. I love chicken alfraedo without noodles - just broccoli cauliflower carrots and chicken w/sauce - I make a mean homemade taco pizza ( I worked at Godfathers Pizza years ago and learned the secret). I like to eat and all that prepackaged crap they sell in the store is just not good food; I used to buy 45 calorie a slice bread until the loaf sat in the cupboard for over three weeks and it never molded or the texture never dried out - for bread that's just not right - now I stop at the local bakery on Monday and pick up a loaf of caraway marble rye - it's the best. I try to have dinner with my kids at least once every other week and will usually make something they like - my daughter's boyfriend grew up having dessert after dinner so I make certain we have dessert for kid meals. Now with the temps being so extreme (HOT) I grill more often. Each person/family is different in what they like to do.

I cant have canned food unless I can it. I should never eat frozen foods they are way to high in everything I cant have. extra salt is a no no and potassium and phosphates. Pretty much means you can't eat a lot of food prepared already. So I cook. I love the cooking channel. I love searching for new and interesting things. I make veggies for me forget Steve he doesnt do veggies much. iceburg lettuce does not count for veggies in my book. I also have to eat often. like every 2 to 3 hours. my meds turn my stomach a bit if I don't so well food food food. Tonight I had left over pasta. I love left overs. Or a dish you make and get two meals out of I can go for that. If there is only one serving I give it to Steve if its something he liked and whip up eggs for me or vice versa. Oh and I have to tuck in 70 plus grams of protein a day. small feat that is! your right we all eat differently for different reasons.

dustysmom when I got seperated from my childrens father there was a money struggle at first. I was so limited for a couple months that I had steamed rice with a bit of parmesean on top for dinner when the kids were not home. a granola bar for breakfast. That was the budget. feed them well and well its only 3 days a week you can eat rice. hungry at lunch? rice. lost a lot of weight then. course got my budget up to reality huge reality lol and well 20 lbs came right back on. there is something to being incredibly poor. I spend a lot now on fresh fruit and veggies. as much as my meat and other foods cost for two of us. I love fresh! ps I love to cook so if you can handle cats come on over I will gladly cook for all of you!!!

queen of 2802: I can't wait for my swap item! I am positive it will be absolutely wonderful with all the time and work you have put into it. Definitely worth the wait. :)

I don't mind cooking, even though making a big meal wears my back out anymore, but the expectation of an elaborate meal every night for 15 years wore on me, especially since my ex-husband was a picky eater. If it wasn't perfect in his eyes, straight in the trash, a big fight, yada yada yada. The man isn't as picky in some ways, but he is in others. He'll eat most vegetables, except the ones I really want to make the most for a meal alone, like cabbage and dried beans. When I was in junior high, mother and I and my middle brother could make a meal on a pot of dried beans for several days, and David was 18-19 years old. I did find a quick beans with sausage & ham that the man likes though. Dusty said he hated it the first time, but now he asks for it. Go figure. Growing up in Denmark where everyone vacations in Italy, when I want lasagna, the man wants me to leave out the ricotta (or cottage cheese) and use jarred alfredo sauce instead, and the flat noodles instead of the ones that most American's use. Well, that's out. He doesn't like pork chops, which my ex-husband calls my signature dish that will "make you wanna slap your momma." He'd rather have a pre-seasoned pork loin. I'd love to call it a Tuesday & throw some steaks on the grill, but he's so picky about how the use of the grill goes that there's not enough time after work on a weekday. (Clean outside, clean inside, cook, clean inside, clean outside, eat, re-cover before bed. Sometimes he's such a d**n engineer!)

If I'm wanting to try a new ethnic dish though, 95% of the time, he's all in. I can surprise him with something new that I know he already likes all the ingredients of and he'll thank me 5 times for cooking and give me an honest opinion on what we should try different or tell me if it's perfect. I make this Thai cashew chicken, which my ex would never have eaten, that he loves. Sometimes I want good southern comfort food though. I made country fried steak the other night. I didn't tell him I was going to, I just started cooking it before he got home. When I've mentioned it before, he's always said it's too much trouble, let's go to Chili's & get it & let them clean up the greasy mess.

I have a bread machine, and I try to keep fresh bread in the house most of the time. When there isn't, and he gets home from work early, he'll sometimes make two of the Danish bread mixes we got in Denmark & we'll freeze half of each loaf for later. Speaking of that, one of the guys at work is begging me to make him some dinner rolls. He's single & has nobody to make bread for him at home. I promised I would for Thanksgiving & he said that's too long to wait. :D Another guy's wife is recovering from a fall that broke her ankle and back, and I offered yesterday to make him a pot of chicken & dumplings, but he said that wasn't good for you. Then he proceeded to tell me how much his wife loves them, followed by how much he loves Swedish meatballs, lol. I think I'm going to make both & take them half, since I always make enough for us to eat for 2-3 days.

lol he can eat out she has a broken ankle and back. lol give her the dumplings she loves them thats all that matters and that is sweet of you to do btw.

I also have no one to make bread for me. I suck at bread making even in a machine. My sis who does everything makes their own five grain bread. they love it. she is in Georgia guess I wont be getting her bread either. Now I can't even eat a whole grain bread seriously bad for me. go figure all my life we ate pumpernickle or rye or wheat with other grains but now its sourdough, french or white. period and not much of it. sigh.. it is so good. anything with bakingsoda in it I cant eat in any quantites. I am a bread lover to the core too. sigh.

ok onto exciting things. I love your little bunny dustysmomma. so adorable. I say that as I mentioned I want a jackalope for my wall. love them stuffed too apparently.

He hates eating out, so much that he'd rather go to Burger King & get 20 cheeseburgers (literally) & put them in the fridge & then they have food for the weekend. They were having pizza last night. He was having it delivered to work right before he left for the day so he didn't have to go anywhere. I figure every grown man deserves a home cooked meal here & there, but more importantly, she won't have to hobble into the kitchen and try to cook like she did that roast she put in the crock pot the other night, broken back/ankle and all. He's used to her cooking every day, and she loves doing it, so it'll take some stress off them both for a few days, so it's worth it.

So is it the gluten free recipes you go for Linda? I have a friend in Maryland who is allergic to so much that what she's allowed to eat fits on a single sheet of paper. She moderates in limited amounts of what she is allergic to and lives on Benedryl half the time.

No, you can't put my bunny on your wall either! :D

everybody knows bunnies are for jackets, muffs and dusting under the furniture. we have had several housebunnies. i could never put one on my wall ! our last bunnie, baxter, died in his sleep while we were all gathered together watching a movie. our little sable cocker, ashley-jean, saw him and started barking. when baxter didn't react we were quite surprised to find him dead. he travelled across country with my dh, ds, 2 dogs and him. quite q carload! dh had reservations at places that allowed pets and didn't read any of the fine print, he just smuggled the bunnie in. the only problem with baxter was he loved me......obsessively! and when you totally belong to a male rabbit, they mark you, by spraying you. get the picture? very unpleasant!! he's the only one who ever did that.