As Jim says, look to economic explanations. The mass market producers in the US until quite recently were interested only in producing and promoting modern bush roses and climbers. Very small companies, motivated by love as much as anything, took up the role of propagating old roses, shrubs, and little known varieties. It takes less room and less skilled labor to produce roses from cuttings. If it's an old wives' tale that grafted roses are short-lived, it's also false that roses generally do better grafted. Modern bush roses, perhaps so, and some other varieties, but many roses grow strongly on their own roots.

I'm a whole foods person and consider whole foods the original "FAST FOOD". Why peel, boil, or "cremate" it when all you need to do is wash, slice and serve. I'm more likely to be found in the kitchen baking bread and other baked goods, so between a large variety of homemade breads (fresh and stored in the freezer), cheese, an assortment of fruit and veggies, add a meat or meat substitute, and you're ready to eat. I like to use a lot of whole grains and legumes in foods. The freezer is my friend. Cook once and freeze in user-friendly size containers. Take out the night or morning before it's needed and thaw in the refrigerator. Heat and eat. I use a loosely structured menu pattern for the evening meal only. Breakfast and lunch generally don't take a lot of planning at our house. I can switch up any one night for another without upsetting the whole thing, but it gives me a general idea for meal planning and grocery shopping. MONDAY: Big Meal (this could also be during the weekend when you have more time). This includes a large portion of meat (roast beef, turkey breast, meat loaf, etc. and all the trimmings. From the leftovers, I provide for other meals during the week. The meat is sliced, ground, or shredded to be used for sandwich meat, added to salads, casseroles, soup, etc. TUESDAY: Leftovers from Monday. It may or may NOT look like the original meal. Roast beef may become hot beef sandwiches, bbq beef, hash, etc... Mashed potatoes are made into potato patties, etc.... I also freeze dollops of mashed potatoes for easy fixin' for another meal. WEDNESDAY: Stir-fry. This can be a good way to use bits and pieces of veggies and leftover meats. Cook extra chicken or beef and use it in salads and wraps later in the week. THURSDAY: International. How about tacos (with taco meat from the freezer), or taco salad... Meaty Spaghetti sauce from the freezer. I cook ground beef stroganoff and freeze the stroganoff in small containers. All you need to do is prepare the pasta of choice for spaghetti or noodles (I also like penne pasta) for stroganoff and heat the topping. FRIDAY: Vegetarian. This can be everything from a great salad with beans to breakfast-type foods. I make bean burgers and keep a stack of them in the freezer and they make a great vegetarian meal served on a homemade multi-grain burger bun (found in the freezer), a tossed salad or sliced veggies and Ranch Dressing Dip, plus fresh fruit and cheese. SATURDAY: Soup and/or Sandwich. I keep a variety of soup/stew/chili in the freezer in single servings so we always have a variety. They make quick suppers or lunches. Top a baked potato with chili. Chili can also be used in a taco salad (similar to Wendy's). Use tortillas for a wrap. Good old tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches.... SUNDAY: Homemade pizza (I use a simple whole wheat sourdough dough recipe for the crust) or a salad meal. This is a good way to use up small amounts of veggies, pre-cooked hamburger or other bits of pre-cooked meat. We also have "scrounge night" on Sunday. That's another way to clean out the leftovers in the refrigerator and freezer.... Eggs are also a Sunday night choice. If they are already hard-cooked and in the refrigerator, use them for egg salad or sliced eggs to top a salad. Toast and boiled eggs or toast points and poached eggs, scrambled, veggie omelet or fritta. Add some tomato slices (or other veggies) and some fruit and you've got a meal. -Grainlady

Terry, you remind me of myself when I was first married. My mother did not want anyone in her kitchen except to clean up or to make an occasional batch of cookies, so I didn't know much. Poor DH ate so many flops! Looking back, I would give you several pieces of advice. The first is that you invest in some tools. A portable mixer, a food processor, a nice marble rolling pin, some silicone mats, some nice heavy cookware (I use cast iron skillets and a dutch oven. For my saucepans, I use nice heavy ones that I bought at a flea market. For bakeware, I like those insulated pans.), measuring cups and spoons, and a good set of knives. The mixer can be an inexpensive one. It needs to be lightweight enough that you can bring it to the stove and use it to mash potatoes and make 7-minute frosting, if you want to someday. I had a big MixMaster for years, but I found it too cumbersome and heavy. The food processor can be an inexpensive one, too, but get one that has a big bowl if you can. I use a Cuisinart. It was killer expensive and if I had it to do over again I would've bought something else, due to the fact that once in awhile the blade gets jammed down onto the bowl and it has to be shipped to get it repaired, and they take their sweet time. I have Cutco knives, simply because I was suckered in when I was 18 and not very consumer-savvy (something ELSE I had to learn on my own!). They have served me well for 40 years, but I've broken a couple things and the manufacturer will not make good on the "Lifetime Guarantee" because I lost the certificate somewhere along life's way. There are lots of brands of knives that are still good that don't cost as much. They should feel balanced in your hand when you grip the handle in a cutting position. I use my food processor a lot. I make my own chopped and shredded vegetables, "Shake'n'Bake, graham cracker crumbs,and lots of other things. When a recipe calls for the sugar, eggs and fat to be creamed together, I just drop them all in and turn on the motor. So also when the flour and fat needs to be "mixed till the mixture resembles corn meal". I find I hardly ever use my blender unless I'm making smoothies, and I bet I could make them in the food processor, too. I like wire whisks for when I make gravy, puddings, pie fillings. Christmas is coming up, maybe you can put in a request to Santa. I almost forgot, I use my crockpot a lot, too, and it's one I bought at a thrift shop. I have a microwave I bought at WMT on sale, but mostly I use it for heating up things, melting butter and thawing frozen things, and baking potatoes. I think I could probably do without it easier than some of the other tools I have listed here. The second piece of advice is that you learn certain skills, such as how to cut up a chicken and how to roll out a pie crust. Yes, you can buy cut up chicken and rolled-out pie crust. If you want to cook for your family in order to cut your grocery bills, you'll notice these things are more expensive. The third piece of advice is that you start with casseroles. There are lots of variations, each calling for a pasta, rice or potato ingredient, a meat ingredient, one or more vegetable ingredients, and usually something that binds them together, like tomato sauce or canned soup. Men and kids usually love a good casserole. If you go to Allrecipes.com and do a search on "casseroles", it will return any number of dishes. These are all rated and critiqued, and these are worth reading. No, I'm not connected to Allrecipes in any way, and there are other sites where you can do the same thing, it's just that it's my "Go to" site usually. They even have a section of "How-To Videos". Here's something I make and use a lot. I think I got it off Allrecipes.com. You can use it on chicken, fish, pork cutlets. Pop these in the oven, make a nice salad and bake some potatoes in the microwave: Shake n Bake an 18 oz box of cornflakes yields about 5 cups of fine crumbs. I mix this recipe up and keep it in a quart canning jar in the refrigerator. When I'm ready to use it, I put only about 1/4 cup on a plate and dredge the meat in it. You can always add a little more to the plate if you need to, but this way you don't waste, because you need to throw out whatever comes in contact with raw meat that doesn't get baked. 3-1/2 cups corn flake crumbs 1/4 C all-purpose flour 2 teaspoons salt 2 teaspoons paprika 2 teaspoons sugar 2 teaspoons garlic powder 2 teaspoons onion powder Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and stir to combine. Prepare chicken following the same technique as described on the box of the original mix using 2 1/2 lb. of bone-in chicken (6 to 8 pieces, with or without skin) or 2 lb. boneless skinless chicken breast halves Preheat your oven to 400º, then moisten the chicken with water. Use a large plastic bag for the coating and use the same steps as described on the original package: "Shake moistened chicken, 1 to 2 pieces at a time, in shaker bag with coating mixture. Discard any remaining mixture and bag. Bake at 400º in ungreased or foil-lined 15x10x1-inch baking pan until cooked through --BONE-IN: 45 minutes/BONELESS: 20 minutes" Sorry this is so long! --Ilene

Your compote sounded wonderful. I've had the one-of-a-kind experience a few times. Like you, it was with fruit, except I made fruit roll-ups with the combination of fruit that could not be duplicated. I use fruit roll-ups to make a quick fruit sauce by melting them in a small amount of water. Another time I insisted on taking the turkey carcass home with me one Thanksgiving (my MIL was going to throw it in the trash - such waste......). It made the most wonderful broth. I've made bone broth with a LOT of turkeys since, but that one was unique (probably because it was FREE ;-). Most recently, I made a loaf of gluten-free Life-Changing Loaf of Bread which is full of expensive nuts and seeds. The bread was too crumbly to use sliced, so I made it into fresh crumbs in the food processor and am using the crumbs to make "crumb pancakes" - delicious! When the crumbs are gone, I doubt we'll ever have pancakes like them again, but at least I didn't waste all those expensive ingredients.