Patti, you should have come over... we had way too much!! I am just thankful DH loves taking leftovers for lunch the next day so he just puts it in a plastic container and it's gone! Chubby_rat I have ground beef thawing for tomorrow's stuffing casserole and have a steak soup in the pantry so all my bases are covered! Thanks for also giving the hint to use less water... I don't like things "soggy" so that will guarantee my success tomorrow night! Love all the suggestions, sometimes I get so bored of cooking the same old thing! Thanks Rosie

Another fun topic. Well, until recently we did meatless main dishes a couple nights a week and the rest of the nights could be most anything like pasta, stir-fry, roasts, casseroles, tacos, pizza, typical meat/potatoes dishes, yada yada. We had been working on having more meatless meals and adding more fresh veggies but weren't fanatical about it. A recent health scare in the family has made me a fanatic so we are in flux on our meals and I feel like I'm learning to cook again from scratch as we move more fully into meatless, plant-based, whole-foods, low-fat cooking. I'm not claiming or striving to be 100% vegan. We still eat seafood. Our freezer is too full of the yumminess of salmon, halibut, clams, cod, crab, shrimp and tuna. So we're limiting seafood to 2-3 meals per week, and eliminating dairy (except a half butter/half grapeseed oil spread that we use sparingly). I feel like I'm learning to cook again. I have always made a lot of soups so now I'm just doing them without meat and using beans/lentils/dried peas instead. This means I'm playing with different seasoning blends and flavor profiles. I'm also experimenting with different bean-based fillings for things like tacos/burritos/wraps and faux-burgers/loafs. I've never been much for buying processed foods so I'm avoiding the store-bought faux-meat items and learning to make healthier versions of things like that myself. And I'm not trying to get them to taste like meat. Just as a well flavored, non-meat protein. I really don't miss meat. Wasn't that much of a fan of it anway. DH is having more of a problem with the adjustment but he's the one that needs it most so I just keep trying to find things that satisfy him. I was making a lot of our own bread before so now just bake more to eliminate store-bought and have been experimenting with how much I can add in the way of things like ground up nuts, seeds, steel-cut oats, bulgur, etc., to increase the nutritional value of the bread while still getting a nice bread for sandwiches or toasting. So my baking center isn't getting as much use as it was before for sweets but it's sure handy for getting the bread done! Breakfast is always a green smoothie, packed with greens and superfoods. DH usually also has some steel-cut oats, bulgur, muesli with nut milk, or similar to fill him up but the smoothie satisfies me until lunch. Lunch and dinner are kinda interchangeable and can be salad, soup, stir-fry, sandwich/wrap, taco/burrito, "meat" loaf, seafood dish, veggie pastas with veggie sauces (thank goodness for my spiralizer), veggie chips, hummus, etc., always with some kind of veggies whether the salad and/or a side as well. Desserts tend to be sorbets made with 100% fruit/berries but I'm ready to branch out. I made my first black-bean brownies a week ago. Pretty good but I think Laughable's suggestion for the non-baked ones sounds even better. Will try that next. I'm trying out a lot of different types of vegetables that I've never bought before. I've had to laugh at myself when I've gotten home with something I can't identify. Seriously. I need to take photos of the sign at the store to help me remember. Menus vary depending on what veggies I have on hand, what looks like it's starting to turn and needs eaten NOW, and such. I read recipes online like crazy for ideas but I rarely have all the exact same ingredients so I do a lot of substituting and experimenting to see what works and what doesn't. I don't think I've ever made anything the same way twice but I'm having fun with it Fearless in the kitchen, that's me, lol. Side benefits. I just plain feel better eating this way. I used to have a lot of heartburn and other gastro-intestinal problems. Gone. Nada! No odd headaches out of the blue either. I've always been one that has to practically starve myself to lose weight. Yup, even when I'm training for long bike rides and alpine scrambling. And now all my clothes are getting loose without me starving myself or even being hungry at all. I'm quite satiated. And I don't have any cravings for sweets which is crazy because I have always had the ultimate sweet tooth. Go figure. Love the side benefit of losing weight without even trying. First time in my life that has happened. LOVE!

The only place I can cook is home, and I never get bored at home because it's the only place I can do whatever wish. I get bored waiting for the bus but I can"t cook at the bus stop. If I get dejected at home and need to pick myself up I do something that would deject me anyway. The logic is that if I,m already in a bad mood I might as well do unpleasant tasks like sorting and filing documents or cleaning, which is necessary but boring. Sort of fight fire with fire. It works for me. Once I,m through with whatever burdensome task I feel better. I,d never cook when in a bad mood. Cooking is fun.

Mustard flour is fluffy dry mustard. The kind they use to prepare "prepared mustard". I've been making herb bread, and thought the same type of bread with mustard and onion might taste really good. The only thing is that mustard loses its flavor very quickly when combined with water, and it might be blah after sitting through the rises. If I had mustard seed, I could roll it in, the way Cloud Swift described above. I think I'll try dampening the mustard with a little vinegar first since the flavor holds in vinegar. So I really don't now how it'll come out, but I think it's worth the experiment. :)