I don't know where else to post this, so if a moderator deletes it, I get it.
One of the specific things I've doing is using this thread (thank you so much, @Toliver) to buy on-sale books, with an emphasis on Italian cooking, that were of the few ingredients cooked well variety. I've made several meatless main dish pasta meals from them this year.
In the St Cuthberts kitchen at the Northern California Renaissance Faire, one of the offerings on the menu I inherited is Trader Joe's Tortellini. We cook up 2 pounds and immediately pour a jar of sauce over it. The carry-over heat is enough to heat up the sauce. One Sunday this year I discovered that we were out of sauce. A year ago I would have panicked about how to sauce the tortellini. This year I calmly grabbed a sauce pan, melted 2 sticks of butter, added some parsley then put in a generous cup of Kraft Parmesan cheese (something someone else brought which we lovingly call parm dust) and sauced the tortellini. It tasted just fine. I am glad that I still like to learn new things.
