Texas_Gem, great QOTW! Kudos for teaching your kids to cook, clean, do laundry, etc. My parents also did that with us and I did it with my two boys and girl. About a decade ago, I was in the market for a new tool kit and Sears had a basic one on a great sale. I ended up buying one for my son too, who was about 22, and added in some things it didn't have, such as a hammer, duct tape, picture hangers, etc. I sorta swelled with pride, when Joe told me about a year later that it was one of the best presents he'd ever gotten and that he used it on a very regular basis. OTOH, neither he nor my daughter ever mastered my clean as you go cooking technique. When I cook, by the time dinner is served, the counters are clean and cooking dishes at a minimum are rinsed and stacked neatly in the sink. When they cook, it looks like a category 5 hurricane has swept through the kitchen, lol! :-) Depending upon your definition of "cooking," I cook almost every day. It was just myself for the past few years, but now my daughter (age 30) lives with me. I do really enjoy cooking and puttering around in the kitchen, but it's hard to cook for one, and even two is not as ideal as cooking for a larger family. So I categorize a lot of what I do as "heating up" or "assembling" a meal. Breakfast is cold cereal, juice, and coffee most days, and something like eggs and hash browns and toast about once a week. Joy and I both work mostly from home. I'd say we heat up or assemble lunch 3-4 days a week--sandwiches or canned soup, a simple salad, maybe some tortilla chips and salsa. Another 2-3 days we eat breakfast really late and skip lunch, or we skip breakfast and do brunch. The other day or two we eat lunch out while running errands. We cook dinner, on average, six nights a week. Sorry Texas_Gem, but Hamburger and Tuna Helper do count as entrees, but only once a week. Mainly due to time and budget constraints we cook simple meals. Once a week or so we do something in the crock pot like chili, a chicken, soup, etc. We probably do tacos once a week. One or two meals are more elaborate, such as eggplant Parmesan, lasagne, spaghetti with either home cooked marinara or Alfredo sauce, babooti, etc. One to two nights are leftovers, and one day is either take out or a "lazy day," which means a frozen pizza or frozen dinners, lol. We steam veggies every day with dinner and rice when the entree isn't pasta. We make salads every day with dinner too. Fruit lives in the fruit bowl or fridge, and is our go-to for snacks. Now that I've bought the house, we are going to have a veggie garden! We're very excited about that! Although our cooking isn't gourmet, a well designed kitchen would be really, really helpful. It's not so much the design, as it follows the ice, water, rock, fire flow, it's simply the lack of counter space, because everything is packed in so tight in this small eat-in kitchen! I don't need a "chef's kitchen," just some basic, hard working appliances and a decent amount of prep space. Ample storage and pantry space would be icing on the cake! I think I've got it figured out, but it will be a couple of years before the kitchen remodel, so lots of time to change and learn! Great question! I enjoyed reading everyone's answers! Have a great day! :-)

Hmm. Dogs. We had a medium small poodle named Tappy growing up. Once while dining Sunday dinner, something came on the news in the other room. The 5 of us, for some reason, hurried in there to hear whatever. Came back to find Tappy on the table, actually standing on the roast chewing as fast as she could. We laughed so hard even the dog was confused. Me: You know those chocolate covered espresso beans? Well, about 25 (or more) years ago I decided it would be totally cool to have chocolate flavored espresso. I should have known it wouldn't be wise when the beans clogged up and stopped the blades in my little bean grinder. Nonetheless, I packed them happily into my little Krupp's espresso basket and fired 'er up. As I was doing dishes next to it, I noticed steam coming out of the top of the machine. "Hmmmm..." I thought again. I heard a noise out the window and turned to look out. At that moment, my espresso machine exploded, blowing the screw top up into the bottom of the overhead counter, and the grinds basket down through the carafe and the little espresso machine bottom to put a bull's eye slammed dent into the counter below. Cats ran everywhere and my heart about stopped. Minutes later, as I was wiping up the water and crap from the kitchen, picking glass shards out of my sweater, I was on the phone to BB&B to tell them I needed another machine because mine had just exploded. I left out the chocolate covered coffee bean part. Ironically, just this morning I was making espresso (you can tell I've been devoted for years) in the replacement machine, and I realized it was probably 25 or so years old. No planned obsolescence here! - - - - - - - - - - - -> Another good one is my former SIL. Speaking of Joy... Her DH didn't like soap bottles on the sink, for some reason. Fine. Everything else in the house was covered with ... stuff ... but he didn't like the soap bottles. She put the soap in some nice bottle thing by the sink. One day, she made her wonderful homemade bread. Warm and crusty, a perfect loaf came out. Her family, however, actually spit it out on their plates at dinner. Evidently she'd grabbed the soap bottle rather than the oil bottle and made bread with liquid dish soap. She bemoaned that it was the best loaf she'd ever made. She did, though, tell her DH he could stuff it and went back to safer plastic, labeled bottles for soap. He evidently did stuff it, because a few years later, after being together for 30+ years, he realized he was gay. Left her, their 2 adopted daughters, quit their church, moved to another state (nearby enough to commute) and lives with his boy toy. I wonder if he makes bread?

stillpitpat, I'm rather upset with you {grinning hugely} as I've just looked up a lamb stew recipe and will look for it today if I have to go to 3 grocery stores! Prep space? What's that? : ) Toronto Veterinarian, no where can I find it's code to have a kitchen. I'm not the one who posted that, btw, just was curious. However, I'd think it remarkably dumb not to have one in any home, whatever the reason for not having one. I tend to keep up with home sales in our area, and some of the higher end homes which boast 'gourmet kitchens' have newly installed 4" granite back splashes, islands that are added in and definitely obstacles (even saw one today that's 2' x 3' in a high end home, and is still an obstacle), no under cabinet lighting... I could go on. They are selling, not cheaply either. So I think what one does, or needs to do largely is regional also. Clearly 'gourmet kitchen' means something very different in some areas (at least according to realtors and home buyers). I would never say our future kitchen is 'gourmet', but then again, I may change my tune! Frankly, when DH and I discussed moving as opposed to staying here, our kitchen update would have been minimal, a fraction of the cost, and we'd have sold quickly even so. Every day I am grateful to all those on GW!

Amylou, I used to make a half (longwise) loaf of Vienna bread slathered with an olive, cheese, chopped egg, onion & can't remember what else spread. It really wasn't very appealing looking, but oh was it good! Now I have to see if I still have the recipe and make it again! I bought a gyros kit at Aldi and made that yesterday & shared with my DD. Not nearly as good as the local shop, but way less expensive and decent - I used cherry tomatoes (my last), red peppers, thin sliced zucchini and arugula on the side. Today I started using the ham that I found on deep discount that has been taking up space in the fridge. I sectioned it up, will keep some in the fridge for the next few day's meals, and freeze the rest - including the bone for bean soup later. I am going to make that apple pie that I have been wanting tomorrow - my incentive for getting all the blinds in the house wiped down and the fridge cleaned (I finished washing the windows yesterday). Making good progress on the fall cleaning.