Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

My personal favorite vegetarian cookbook of all time is Passionate Vegetarian by Crescent Dragonwagon. Her recipes can be time-consuming, but the book is wonderfully expansive and full of a lifetime of experience cooking vegetarian (and tips for people who have never seen amaranth or mustard greens before).

As for online stuff, some of my favorites:
http://consciouskitchen.blogspot.com/
http://letsgetsconed.blogspot.com/
http://www.urbanhonking.com/hotknives/
http://www.veganyumyum.com/
http://veganfeastkitchen.blogspot.com/

Best find was definitely a barely used salad spinner, retail $35, for $5. And the brand new espresso maker for $5 (wedding gift, never used) was pretty awesome. I think that model retailed for about $50. Most of my other appliances have been gifted or handed down to me, but I definitely keep an eye out at yard sales!

I shop once each week, in theory on Saturdays, and make my llist over the course of the week as we run out of things or I have an "inspired" thought about what sounds good/fun/interesting to make the next week. I generally plan three or four meals per week and we eat leftovers or make sandwiches or salads the rest of the week. Also, I attempt to cook seasonally and locally, at least with regard to produce.

I'm a bit more flexible with meats because I just can't afford the boutique meat markets, even though we only cook meals with meat about once a week in summer and twice each week in winter. I grew up on a working cattle and sheep ranch and we grew our own poultry and goats as well, so I know good meat when I see it. I've found a big box grocer, Food Max for those with one near them, that sells choice meat and that's worked out well.

I've been trying to convince my son to take up salmon fishing, though. Living in an agricultural area, we won't eat bottom feeders (catfish) or any fish that don't migrate because agricultural fertilizers and pesticides run off into streams and rivers.

Read these two very good blogs. They have tons of very good ideas on cooking both for vegetarians and just really good food:
http://glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/
http://orangette.blogspot.com/

Both of these bloggers have just recently gotten married so there is writing about all of that-really sweet-but go back and look at some of there recipes. They are incredible.

A used, but perfectly functioning, waffle iron for like $5. We've used it at least 20 times in the past two years, and it never fails us!

Ah, glad to see there are other planners out there. I started just a few months ago when my husband and I were reviewing our credit card spending. Ooops...too many restaurants, that newlywed thing I think. So now I do a big shop (either Fresh Direct or Whole Foods mixed in with the Union Sq. farmer's market) on Saturday and plan at least 4 meals (which gets us 5) for the week. Idea being we won't head out to eat if there's a nice steak or hunk of lamb in the fridge.

Been working swimmingly I might add as a budgeting method. We always marvel how these gorgeous dinners usually cost less than $7 a person when you break it all down. Yay for knowing how to cook! ;)

A glass lemon juicer, the kind with an attached bowl, for about fifty cents. :)