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It showed up at church potlucks under domed foil lids, in school lunch trays beside pools of canned peaches, and on our weeknight table with unfussy regularity.

It featured the Hommemade Cafe, which was serving a meticulous espresso martini, and the Hommemade entertainment console and professional studio on wheels — complete with a projector, microphones, snack dispenser and rolling tray.

But your homemade meals don’t have to resemble a frozen TV dinner, with its segmented tray of meat, an amorphous sauce, a scoop of peas or rice and a mysterious, saccharine lump of... jello?

One of my culinary school exams was where two soon-to-be-obsession — frico and fennel — collided, on the same sheet tray, by pure accident.

She scrubs all manner of kitchenware: trays, pans, cooking sheets, plates, skillets.