Most of last week and this one (and I think part of next also) I've been working on assembling a recruiting presentation for my daughters Civil Air Patrol Squadron. She shet up the outline, focus and we collected together a bunch of movie clips and stills, and the text. I got to assemble it all together so that it made sense and had flow.

Anyhow this brings to point, my point, you need to have something to eat on busy weeks that does not take hours to make, and tastes good. We love tacos and burritos. You can quickly heat up shells or steam wraps. Dispatching a tomato or slicing some lettuce, quick. So where is the time, well good meat filling. Yea, yea, taco packet and brown some meat, but that misses the point of great south of the border food. You have some fresh ingredients, tomato, lettuce and maybe some avocado. You have a simple starch product like shells or four wraps. So what carries the taste? The meat! So here is my recipe for making Taco Meat. Yep it also works for burritos, tostadas, etc. but you got to call it something.

How does this relate to a busy week? Well when I make this up I do so 4-5 pounds at a time. Then I freeze it up in sour cream containers. Then on a night when we need a quick meal, out of the freezer, into the microwave, minutes later its taco time!

Ever notice that with some groups, when they have pot lucks, almost all the dishes you see is meat free and way too healthy. My daughter's school(private) graduation parties were that way. Cold salads, cheese pizza, vegee platters, oh my! Science says we are omnivores, some folks claim to be vegetarians, so to balance the universe some of us must declare, we're carnivores.

This recipe for oriental meatballs is one of my favorites to bring to a pot luck. They say warm in a crock pot without becoming dry, and most folks love them. These meatballs are very rich, so even one or three hits the spot. My daughter and my friend Bill agree, a couple of plates full hits the spot. Because you can make them ahead and finish at the last minute, means you can spread the work over a few days. This is really important if you need to bring multiple batches.

At the last foray for 2008 of our mushroom group SVMS I wanted to bring a hot soup. The weather had cooled and soup seemed to be the thing to bring. Being a mushroom club foray, wild mushrooms would have to be involved.

As a child I always hated sweet potatoes. They would invariably make their appearance around holidays, stuffed into a casserole dish, loaded with sugar and topped with marshmallows. I am not a big fan of sweets, never have been. last year my father made us a sweet potato pie that tasted more like a pumpkin pie. Hmm, I like cooking with pumpkins. Maybe a sweet potato based soup with chanterelles?

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