Yeah...I have rye flour too....and a good recipe for rye bread that is beyond yummy and makes 6 loaves.....and is a total PIA to make. Icky sticky heavy bread!
I also have a big yen for cabbage rolls....very labor intensive....separating out those leaves and rolling the meat mixture and then cooking low and slow for 4 hours...ugh!
I love making veggie stir fry. I love chopping and arranging on a platter and adding in proper order to the hot wok.....but in truth I would rather eat a grilled steak and a quick salad.

I cook for the results - I really do not enjoy the process most of the time, but it has to be done. I would love it if someone else did the work instead of me.

As it is, I generally prepare too much food - imagine if I liked doing it! I worked in a restaurant (making desserts and pastries), and I did not love doing that either, but I was good at it, and so it was a job. As a child I liked making cakes, bread, and cookies - now not so much.

If there is anything I do enjoy making, it would be deep-fried foods, such as tempura, hush puppies, empanadas, etc. I also sort of like making sushi.

Dough with rye flour in it is characteristically sticky to knead and handle, so understand that going in. Due to that stickiness, people often keep adding flour even with the correct hydration, and they end up with a dry/heavy loaf of bread.

The easiest remedy is to place the dough in a large freezer-style zip-lock bag, press out the air, and knead the dough from the outside of the bag. You can open the bag to adjust the hydration, as necessary, and still keep your hands clean. When done, move the dough to one corner of the bag, open the bag and turn it inside-out. This is a single-use bag, so toss it once you are done. Oil your hands to handle the dough, or wear a pair of "dough gloves".

"Dough gloves" - http://www.shopnational.com/p/Cotton-polyester-House-Coat/120201?mr:referralID=80da0459-efa6-11e5-94ab-0050569451e5

The one-size-fits all gloves don't work well for people with small hands, so I recommend the freezer zip-lock bag.

What do I dislike.... Recipes where you end up dirtying every measuring cup and measuring spoon and a number of bowls. I have a few favorite recipes that do just that, so I will hesitate to make them if time is of essences because of the time spent on clean-up. Give me a nice recipe where I can measure most of the ingredients with a 1/2-cup measure and a teaspoon ;-).

-Grainlady

A simple pasta dinner, uuuggh. I decided to make a big tom sauce using up 4 big flat-packs in the freezer, the the dicing of carrots, celery, onion...sweat those...so far easy...then decided to make another batch using some roasted/smoked tomatillos and mixed peppers. DH wants pasta. The stove-top is crowded, counters are full with this and that. 4 big dirty pots and everything else filthy waiting to be cleaned. Should be an easy meal but never is.

I don't mind meals with lots of prep if the dishwasher can run and all is ready ahead of the cooking process and the kitchen clean. Then easy cleaning after the meal.

One of our favorite meals is a Vietnamese Pho. Have tried to simplify it many times but it just prep heavy and many steps.

Why i have so much in the freezer to pick and choose from for quick healthy broths and chowders. Making a bone broth today and most will be frozen. Dinner will be easy using a 1/2 pint of the spicy tom sauce with a pint of the bone broth for a soup with leeks, asparagus, maybe a small diced potato. A salad, i should make a slaw....see, here i go making it difficult.

I spent two years working on my sprouted rye bread. No touching and uses the DanishDoughWisk. Very easy and freezes well.

For me it's more the boredom factor, combined with sometimes not feeling very well. I love making new dishes just because they're new. Luckily, I'm fairly good at knowing if they'll be good. I have some go to, no specific recipe items that are good for getting whatever I bought cooked already with minimum fuss, but that's how a lot of chickens I've bought thinking of Cuban style garlic chicken have ended up as plain steam roasted chickens. My quick and easy chicken is very good, and very very easy. The Cuban chicken recipe is fiddly, and takes all afternoon. It's VERY good. But it requires special ingredients and willingness to bother. And often enough it ends up just as dinner already.

I know what you mean by the bread. I've gotten my whole grain and seed bread down to a pretty easy (if long) process. It's not fun, it's food. I make it for daily bread because it's good and healthy. Making challah, with it's puffy white gluten flour, aromatic saffron and double rise, is fun. And a bother. And religious. :)

I was thinking along these lines recently, too. I'd had the most delicious salad - chock full of a variety of julienned vegetables, with grains, baked tofu and fresh dressing - from an upscale independently run lunch place that features all things fresh and organic.

I thought, this is the kind of food I relish and what I'd choose to eat daily. IF I didn't also have to feed other people (who wouldn't want it regularly) and IF I didn't have to source all the ingredients and always have them on hand for every meal. IF I didn't have to wash & store all the varieties of greens & vegetablesI love, and not feel bad about waste. So, it's rare that I go through the expense and effort of making meals like that.

I thought, if I were the Queen of England, I would eat salads like this every day!

Now that you mention it, I do enjoy making challah because I like the braiding process. The empanadas I make could also be called quesadillas because I basically make them with masa, cheese, and some sort of vegetable that is left over, or more frequently mushrooms. I had them a lot on the street in Mexico City, where they were often make with huitlacoche - my favorite filling.

I also like eating salads much more than making them, and I should make them more often. I have a lot of fruit in the fridge now and need to make a fruit salad.

Mimi, I'm kind of like that too, if I spend a day or more than a day preparing a holiday meal, I'm happy with eggs or leftovers the next day, I just am too tired of cooking. Or maybe I'm just tired of looking at food, by the time I cook that meal I often don't want to eat it.

I've given up cabbage for cabbage rolls since I found out how well collard leaves work. They're available in my garden for several months and easily accessible the rest of the year, and are just so much easier than cabbage leaves. They aren't exactly the same but they are very similar and by the time I add the tomato sauce, well, it's hard to tell they aren't cabbage.

I love to bake. I like handling bread dough but my carpal tunnel has made it pretty much impossible, so the bread machine does my kneading and I do the shaping and rising and bake it in the oven, so it seems kind of like I'm still baking bread.

I also enjoy decorating cookies and cakes, playing with fondant is much like working with play-doh, but edible. Ashley likes that also, she says it's an artistic outlet for her.

I used to take vacation days to can. I actually enjoy canning, although making jam in January is so much more pleasant than making jam in July. I like the whole process, and I like setting the jars on the counter and seeing the colors, like jewels on my pantry shelves.

What do I avoid? Salads and stir fries with their endless prep (although I very much like stir fry) , recipes with more than 20 ingredients and anything that includes phyllo dough!

Annie

That's the basis on which I have turned to sous vide turkey. After Seder I'm lucky to be walking and I don't want to deal with the carcass, etc. Last time, I made the housekeeper take it home. :)

Annie, if you can find Fillo Factory fillo dough, you could try it again. The best known brands are pretty awful to work with, but Fillo Factory, while it's ever so slightly thicker, is also much more cooperative.

I tackle phyllo dough only if DH is helping. We've made baklava for the holidays, for the past few years. I love the stuff, but it's not very cooperative.

I'll see if any of my stores carries Fillo Factory.

I've never used collards for stuffed cabbage, but might give it a try since I love collards. I try to use Savoy cabbage if I can find it, but regular cabbage is just fine, too.

Generally, I enjoy cooking with the exception of: washing and prepping salad ingredients, frying, handling raw meat, especially chicken, seafood and liver. I love to knead bread. I hope my arthritic hands don't get too bad to do it anymore. I also enjoy canning but the heavy pot is getting very hard to deal with. I've also used large collard leaves for cabbage rolls, the taste is very similar to stuffed grape leaves.

I enjoy making simple comfort foods. Meatloaf, burgers, turkey breast, ribs, potato salad, coleslaw, etc. Oh and a nice porterhouse and baked potatoeson the grill.