I dunno, you may have figured out that I am not really a recipe guy. In fact, I frequently decide that I’m going to make something and I go to the store to get the ingredients for it only to discover upon returning home that I’ve forgotten an ingredient or two. With a recipe, that’s a big problem. But guess what? No recipe, no problem! It’s just going to be a little different this time.

Which means… while I cannot easily recite to you an exact recipe, I CAN tell you about how to be sure you have several basic elements that you can use to build a dinner you’ve never made before (and if you’re like me, you will probably never make it exactly like that again).

I am going to assume you already have a few basic tools: a knife or two, a spatula, a whole drawer full of useless or single-use gadgets, a stove, an oven, a refrigerator and freezer. Wow, that’s pretty basic — like AirBnB basic! There are also some other tools that I use that I would like for you to consider.

And then once you have tools, I may have a few words about how to use them.