Looking at Facebook the other day, I saw no less than three recipes for what people described (in summary) as "the best easy dish ever".  One of these recipes was for buttered spaghetti noodles with parsley.  Is this the kind of food people typically eat?

Buttered noodles is what I have when there isn't anything else in the house.  That is to say, I consider the house empty of food when all that is left in the house is your "best easy dish ever".

Yes, it is easy to make food.  Maybe that's what you were trying to suggest with your recipe -- that food doesn't need to be complicated.  But come on.  We must have seriously different ideas about what "complicated" is.

This is evidenced again in the recent cub scout father-son cook-off.  Riley and I were the only pair to make something with meat.  We made meatballs.  Granted, some of the other dishes (all but the popcorn mix was a dessert) were multi-step recipes, but were for the most part boxed desserts.

Our meatballs were part ground pork, part sweet Italian sausage.  There were spices mixed in.  Egg, cheese, and breadcrumbs.  We mixed the meat by hand.  We rolled the balls by hand.  We (both Riley and I took turns -- yes, he participated in every step) sautéed the meatballs in a pan, then slow-cooked them in a crock pot.  We made tomato sauce from scratch for them to simmer in, with tomato paste, canned crushed tomatoes, and spices.  There was no box, no frozen meatballs.

I'm puzzled by what passes for typical homemade dinner in a local household.  Sure, there are nights when reheated frozen chicken fingers see our dinner table, but we also have nights where the kids help cook salmon.  Berta's beef barley stew is pretty tasty.  I can make some mean, flavorful wings from a pack of whole bulk wings.  I am not trying to convince anyone that my sriracha-covered frozen chicken fingers are a delicacy on Facebook.

Berta went to a Tastefully Simple dinner night with a bunch of meat recently.  They were set to make meals out of the meat using the Tastefully Simple products.  Well, it went ok, but the recipes were a bit... bland.  Not just bland, but lacking imagination.  With such great spice products, you'd think the recipes would try to make use of that flavor.  Instead, the focus seemed to be on how you could use only their spices to make meat not-too-plain to eat after simmering in a crock pot all day.

Berta had to add vegetables to their inexplicable "Italian" beef stew.  What made it "Italian"?  Maybe the parmesan cheese they said to add to the bowl?  There was also cream cheese in it, which I've never heard of in a stew.  Maybe I'm missing something, and that's what stew is supposed to be like?  Based on the flavor, I think "no".

Yes, the lack of vegetables was curious.  In their last recipe we tried last night, the chicken was drenched in some flavorless cream-ish concoction.  We put it over plain mashed potatoes (which I don't think were part of the recipe), and the potatoes had more flavor.

We were not impressed.  And I am left to wonder, if this is what people consider "great recipes", what the heck garbage were they eating before?

I don't begrudge you your attempts at making food in your own kitchen.  More power to you.  But don't think that taking a jar of Prego (ugh, please) and adding some chopped onion to it makes your spaghetti recipe fantastic enough to mention.  Ok, maybe it's a stepping stone for you to greater things, but at least be cognizant of that.

My suggestion: Grab yourself a cookbook and learn to make quick meals with real food.  It's not as hard as you think, and the rewards are great.