My daughter is 2.5 and enjoys measuring for pancake batter or yogurt cake (yogurt cake is a ridiculously forgiving recipe; if you don't want to dirty a bunch of implements, there are instructions online for measuring ingredients using the six-ounce yogurt container), cracking and beating eggs, cutting bananas for smoothies with her "sharp knife!", actually an Ikea plastic children's knife, snapping the ends off green beans, kneading dough, spreading sauce on mini pizzas and then sprinkling the cheese... about the only thing she has freaked out over is the act of separating eggs. For some reason, the process fills her with terror.

If you are a hardline teetotaler, you can reduce some good cider by about half to get a sort-of-equivalent sweet note and color. You may also just want to use sauce Mornay instead; it does the creamy-gooey-rich thing properly, and will brown nicely. It is an easy sauce to make as long as you pay attention to the saucepan. :)

Mornay sauce:

3 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
2 c milk, kept warm but not bubbling
salt, white pepper, and fresh grated nutmeg to taste -- a generous pinch of each for me
1/4 c shredded gruyere cheese

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat until just foaming and melted through. Add flour and stir constantly until the mixture is even and lightly golden -- not browning at all (it will bubble). Slowly add the warm milk to the flour-butter mixture (more bubbling) and stir or whisk until no lumps remain. Don't stop stirring until the sauce boils (2-3 minutes). Reduce the heat and add seasonings; keep cooking and stirring until the sauce is as thick as you'd like, then turn off the heat, add the cheese, taste and correct the seasonings. Pour over seafood and broil/bake as for Newburg.

Your husband is annoyed that you don't cook dinner every night? Please purchase him a wooden spoon, a simple stockpot, a map leading to your faucet, stove, and refrigerator, and a clue. This is not just about marital roles and expectations: everyone of every gender should know how to cook well enough to get by for themselves. Or, you know, you're in NYC; he could pick up takeout on the way home.

Forgotten ginger notwithstanding -- I don't see how you could make this particular recipe without it, so maybe swap it up with some other chicken recipe on your meal plan for the week -- I applaud your choice of a quickly-prepped meal with a short list of ingredients. Maybe go with the citrus instead and swap out orange juice -- or even apple juice -- for the orange in the pan sauce?

Nope, just follow the standard instructions in your crust recipe (or borrow from, say, an apple pie recipe) for a two-crust fruit pie. :)

It would swap in for the salted butter. Grate clean, hardened rendered suet, melt it down, and stir it in. When you chill the mixture, as you must to prevent icky rancid suet taste, you'll get truly disturbing white flecks throughout, but they go away when you bake. If you don't like the flavor of animal fat and just want the rich mouthfeel it provides, up the cinnamon a little bit and use fresh nutmeg (actually, do that anyway!)

100g salted butter, melted
250g sultanas
100g dried apricots
1 medium apple, such as Gala or Fuji, peeled and grated
175g brown sugar
50g chopped toasted almonds (toast in a dry pan under constant supervision)
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tbsp brandy
2 tbsp golden rum
Zest and juice of 1 orange
Zest and juice of 1 lemon

Combine all ingredients in a non-reactive bowl and leave covered, at room temperature, overnight. Store in the refrigerator for up to two weeks before use. This makes enough for one large two-crust pie, two tarts or about six of those old-fashioned pattypan tins.

Try Master's Baker in West Chester -- (610) 436 9888. Kind of a drive -- about 40 minutes from Media.

I would go with a poundcake recipe made parve (use nondairy margarine) and grilled, with pears in honey syrup alongside. No one will miss the whipped cream.

I'm a supertaster and I find I vastly prefer 'umami' tastes to vegetal ones, if that helps. So if there's tofu, it needs to be smoked, marinated in a sauce which has a lot of 'low' flavor notes -- something that gets rid of the high, more acidic edges. (I also have synaesthesia, which is why writing these comments was difficult for me -- tastes have definite shapes and colours for me. It makes trying to describe fish and chips very interesting.)

Have you tried the Hillbilly Housewife website yet? Works great when it has to.