@Yamakawa
I like food very much but, being a bachelor, am into simple and fairly quick (less than an hour) foods. This doesn't mean I like poor quality or junk food. This also doesn't mean that I won't cook longer or more complex dishes, but I think others in the same position will recognize that sense of futility one gets when cooking for him or her self a meal that should be shared with a group (or girlfriend, poor me (that's sarcasm, and an example of my overused parenthesis)). For this reason potlucks (which were common at my school) and holidays with friends are quite enjoyable. I consider instant rice, dehydrated mashed potatoes and pancake mix to be poor substitutes considering that the real products are fairly easy to make (ok, I've been known to use pancake mix, but I'm trying to change). Also, I can't understand why you would use instant or canned gravy if you're cooking a whole bird. Don't take any of this pretentious sounding talk to mean that I'm an excellent cook. I'm probably sub-par, but am quite proud of coming up with my own recipes or using a cook book to get the structural elements of something down (cook times, temperatures, etc.) then altering it and adding my own ingedients. Unfortunately I haven't been writing these down, even when they turn out well, and have only just started to document my successes. My infatuation with food is really a fairly recent development and after looking at all of these recipes I fear I'm liable to become a glutton (luckily this hasn't happened yet). Also my mother was vegan and now I feel that I like meat perhaps a little too much, which in this town can be something you might feel slightly guilty about. Is it odd to see a goose fly overhead and wonder what it tastes like? Such a long description is rediculous for someone who will probably only post a couple of recipes, isn't it? That's an English major for you. Oh, I forgot to mention that I learned most of my cooking from my father. He grew up in Hawaii, although his ancestry is Japanese. My mother's a decent cook but I lived with my father from the ages of 15 to 18 and consequently picked up more from him. I also didn't really like a lot of vegan foods when I was a teen-ager.