Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Rachael Ray's "365 Days-No Repeats". Boring, inaccessible food that requires lots of shopping and pre-planning, and only takes thirty minutes if one pays the extra money for bagged lettuce and the like. I find that, although R.R. is a bit over-exuberant and under-trained for my tastes, often, at least on the show, her recipes seemed at least 70% yummy to me. Not so in "real life". The cookbook (that I've had for a year and a half) has yielded all of ONE decent, edible, repeatable recipe. Ick. I have a dang Weight Watchers cookbook that I like better.

The tomatoes are starting to arrive at the Farmer's Market...Caprese salad, yum!
Also maybe a cold salad made with a quick cooking grain, like tabbouleh?

I think they deal breaker for me would be if that certain someone DIDN'T eat or DIDN'T read. I'm a voracious reader, but I don't expect everyone to have my tastes. However, I do immediately suspect someone of ignorance/stupidity/mind-numbing boorishness if they don't ever read, or worse yet, think I'm stupid for having my nose in a book.
As far as eating goes, I'll admit it's difficult to deal with someone with crazily stunted appetites or limited diet, and I know from experience that it's also tough to be in a relationship with someone who is really blase about food (luckily my friends are foodies, so that helps). However, the one deal breaker for me was in college when I dated a wrestler. I mean a real one, not that WWE crapola. He had such a bad, BAD relationship with food, as the scale always determined which weight class he would compete in. He was always either starving himself or gorging on horrible food. If I ate when he was in a "starvation" phase, he made disparaging comments all the while about whatever I was eating. If I was in the mood for a salad while he was binging on 6 deep-fried twinkies, I was accused of "not being a team player". I couldn't hack it.
Yup, gotta read, gotta eat (among other things, like don't bump uglies with other girls and such).

@Brownie: That's so funny I'm telling my MoveOn.org peeps about it.

I don't really care how old a candidate is...it's the political views that do it for me.

Move On.org has a funny test about how McCain is different than Bush...hint, hint...the answers are "not much".

I do all manner of soups and stews in my slowcooker. Just be sure to brown any meat you're going to use the night before, because nothing browns in a slowcooker, and there isn't nearly as much evaporation, so the amount of liquid may have to be adjusted in your favorite recipes. Knowing that, basically any soup or stew can be made in a slowcooker...set it to low before you go to work and it's done when you get home. Especially wonderful for bean and grain soups that benefit from that slow heat and get really, really tender (split pea, beef and barley, beans and hamhocks...yum). Which brings me to the other selling point: One can use a far less-expensive cut of meat when one is willing to cook it "low and slow". Things like hamhocks and lamb or beef shanks do really well. The only thing I tend not to put in my slowcooker is pasta, because it just gets gummy and disintegrates...if you want to make something like a minestrone, just add some pre-cooked pasta when you get home.
And as far as pre-cooking things, pasta is a good place to start. Without sauce on it, it keeps really well in the fridge, and one can easily heat a sauce really quick when one gets home. Precooked rice is also good for that..do some cooking on the weekend and stock your fridge.
As far as make-aheads, you can't beat the "lowly" casserole--and it's frugal. Just assemble the ingredients on the weekend, cooking any meat, and put the casserole together. Pyrex bakingware makes a glass casserole dish with a plastic lid especially for freezing/refrigerator storage...when you get home from work, just remove the lid, replace it with foil, and toss the whole works in the oven for an hour.
Sorry for the wordy post, but I was a bartender working odd hours for years, and couldn't exist on fried bar-food, so I started slow-cooking and pre-cooking out of self-defense...lost 15 lbs. doing it, too...and the wonder of casseroles and soups and stews and such is that, generally, they make the best leftovers, so don't worry about making too much...just take some into work for lunch the next day.

Most chefs I know give portions that are really too big for one person to eat at one meal. However, I have encountered the ones you're talking about. Given a choice, though, I would rather leave a meal so memorable I would like more, but satisifed so as to not eat more.

As long as I don't go home hungry (which I never have been from a chef's tasting menu e.g per se, daniel, ramsay, eleven madison park, bouley) I'm fine.

There are times when small to very small portions are fine and expected (chef tasting menus).

And then there are times when it's just haughty, snobby, off putting, and a rip-off (the only place that comes to mind is TAILOR).

in the summers my mom used to make this great salad with just cucumbers, tomatoes, dill, lemon juice and some salt and pepper...so light and refreshing! good by itself or with some cream cheese or yogurt and pita.

back in the day my parents liked to celebrate special occasions at this fancy-pants hotel by our house. the restaurant opened with a tapas menu, and everything was exquisite. the chef said that was his favorite way to cook, because after a few bites, you're no longer tasting the food but just eating to be full. but if you keep eating different things, you get to still enjoy tasting new things.

This is so funny bc just this morning my husband said, "What are you doning--trying to memorize every recipe?" (I was reading The Joy of Cooking) I had to remind him that I like to read my cookbooks like novels sometimes. Other times I use them for reference and/or inspiration.

My least favorite cookbooks have all been gifts: RR's stuff, "A Pocketful of Rice," Wine Lover's Cookbook (or something like that). Years before RR became a marketer's dream, one of my girlfriends raved about RR's cookbooks, I must have said something to indicate a desire for them bc the next week when she & her hubby came over for dinner she presented me with two RR cookbooks. I "read" them like I read all my cookbooks and while her voice is very evident the recipes didn't really appeal to me and so I've never drawn inspiration from nor referenced her work. I didn't get rid of them during "The Great Cookbook Purge of 2007" prior to my "Big Move to Indy" bc they came from dear friends (who I miss terribly). So, for sentimental reasons I will keep them.