The Jazz Cooking Cast of Characters

I am La Cocinera ("the cook;" not fancy enough to be a chef) and I cook for a family of three:

• myself: female, somewhat north of optimal BMI (okay, approaching fluffy), middle-aged, with a family tendency toward high cholesterol and high blood pressure. Reasonably adventurous when it comes to food but with a distressing tendency to fall back on high-fat comfort foods when things are not going well. Love savory foods and vegetables, could do without desserts forever if need be, and don't like chocolate. I could live on soup of a thousand different kinds, three meals a day. My biggest no-nos are kiwis, mangoes, refined sugar, and yeast breads (I'm allergic to the yeast but can eat flatbreads or soda breads made with wheat flour). I'm also very careful about sodium because of the familial history of hypertension.

• my husband: slightly more middle-aged than me, seriously overweight Type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetic with high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Absolutely NOT adventurous about food; his taste buds are stuck in the 1950s, where mac-and-cheese-with-hot-dogs-chopped-up-in-it is a favorite meal. Insatiable sweet tooth. Loves fruit, hates vegetables of all kinds; won't eat anything with any kind of spices or peppers. If it has tons of cheese in it, all the better. Likes a couple of my soups but none of those green things in it. An ideal meal for him is about a pound of plain roast beef and mashed potatoes with butter and brown gravy. And salt. And bread. With dessert to follow, please.

• our son, attending college and still living at home: Big, solid, linebacker-style guy, 6'5", weighs somewhat more than he would like and is working on ditching the excess. The most adventurous of the three of us, foodwise – he loves southeast Asian and Mexican really-hot-and-spicy stuff. More than anything else, wants low-fat food with lots of flavor. Hates soup. His secret weaknesses are Krispy Kreme doughnuts, Little Debbie Nutty Bars, and fried chicken.

My mission:

To feed all of us fresh, healthy food without cooking three separate dinners every single day.