"What's for dinner babe?"

That pretty much sums up our dinner dilemna right there. Hello my name is Lacie and I am a 'lazy' cook. My poor mother tried desperately to teach me how to cook and bake, and she did a pretty dang good job! She was an amazing cook herself, and RESOURCEFUL! She bought ingredients when she needed them, meat on sale ect. When she got really sick (I was a teenager), I took over the kitchen many a nights and whipped up...something! Then I went away to college where I could get away with making a pot of spaghetti, stretching the jar of sauce for two weeks, and peanut butter sandwiches. I became entralled in the fact that I didn't 'HAVE' to cook anymore! My poor mother is probably beside herself saying 'I taught you how to make white sauce from SCRATCH' why? oh why?

I eventually thought I'd have to dust off my cooking skills (DID my mother pass them off to me- did the cooking skills skip a generation? Meh who knows?) when I got married but NO! I married a wonderful man who came from a family that went out to eat every night! FABULOUS! With me working 50+ hours a week, taking 24 credits to finish my degree and enrolled in an advanced program for my Montessori certification SIMULTANEOUSLY I often asked the question to the hubbs- hey I'm at Jacks' (Jack in the Box) need anything? We also went to Outback/Chili's/Red Robin every weekend. I never had to cook. I loved it. We didn't even have proper pots and pans for a year after we were married, when our amazing cook/friend was appauled at our ahem 'juvienile' lifestyle...Now? Well, now when it's me and our daughter Hailyn, we just figure something easy out, one year olds are simple to please. When Ryan's home, we look at each other around 4:30 (we are preparing ourselves for the early bird specials at Denny's in 40 years) and ask- what do you want to do for dinner?

DISCLAIMER:I do LOVE to bake- as in my mother often said I couldn't feed my husband cookies and brownies for dinner- (we have done that on occasion) that comes from my sugar addiction more than anything...

I should also point out that my husband has the palete of a 5 year old. He HATES spagehtti (Italian is like my favorite food!) and my one year old daughter has taken to his tastes. Now that Ryan's job requires him to cook- and to cook WELL (firemen like to EAT!) we are learning recipes that are SIMPLE (cus we both have ADD when it comes to cooking, and if it takes longer than 15 minutes to prep, forget it!) and we are passing these AMAZING recipes on to you- delicious, healthy SIMPLE (not too expensive) recipes. Recipes that fit our lifestyle! Ryan also needs to expand his file of recipes- as we rotate through the same 5-10 things constantly. We're bored, and so are Ryan's co-workers. They are crazy good cooks! So the bar is set high, espcially for us cook underacheivers as we are...

So we are TRYING to find healthy(ish), inexpensive, easy recipes to fit our lifestyle right now. Ryan has learned some mad skills so far, and I am the lucky recipient who gets to sample them, also I get to pass them on- most importantly we get to expand our skimpy recipe collection.

May you fabulous foodies (yes, I am promoting us all to that standard now- congratulations! My closest attempt to be near Top Chef status)

May the great cook off begin!