I've been traveling a lot, and the classic problem when eating out all the time is that you can eat healthy, filling, or cheap: pick two.

To help solve this, here's the app I want to exist:

1. You choose a restaurant you want to go to. Say, Applebee's (stay with me here).
2. The app asks you what size meal you want: small/medium/large, or maybe by total calorie count. I'm eating dinner, so I want an 800-calorie meal or so.
3. The app sorts through the menu and the nutrition facts and gives you a series of options that combine menu selections in a way that get close to your "fullness" goal but also have a balance of fruits, vegetables, relatively low fat, etc. You can swipe through the options to find one that looks appealing to you.

Please say this app exists!

(Or barring that, how you handle this problem.)

I'm considering visiting the Maine Ave. wharf area next weekend with family, and I'd like a few questions answered before I go, so as to stand around looking confused as little as possible.

When I checked out the area earlier, I noticed that everything had prices, except for the live crabs. Are you supposed to haggle with the sellers over the price?

Will they sell a couple dozen live crabs, then cook them for you on the spot?

I saw a covered eating area on the east side of the fishmongers, do you take your food and bring it over there? Do they have utensils, napkins, newspaper, etc.?

Will they cook fresh non-crab for you too (fish, shrimp, etc.)?

I've read that the actual catch comes from places like Jessup; is there a similar area over there that would be even better to try, assuming enough time to drive?

Thanks from a confused transplant.

I'm currently on a kick where I'll make a lot of one thing and eat it day in and day out until I can't stand it any more. It helps with time and I get to perfect it instead of making an attempt at a different thing every night.

So right now, my go-to dinner is homemade tomato soup with grilled cheese sandwiches.

Tasty, satisfying, inexpensive, quick to prepare, and you get a full serving of vegetables in there as well.

So the only thing I'm missing is a protein. Sure, there's a bit in the cheese, but definitely not enough to make a good weeknight dinner. But that's the problem: what (inexpensive) protein source goes well with tomato soup and cheese? Some sort of bean preparation? Chicken?

I have a handful of cookbooks stashed near the kitchen that I pull out again and again for the same old recipes (for variations, or because I forgot a temperature or a quantity).

I used to search through them every time I looked. Then I bought a small notecard box and copied down my favorites onto index cards, but that turned out to be rather annoying (writing out instructions by hand?). Maybe instead I'll buy some sticky tabs and label each page directly in the book.

So if you have a lot of cookbooks, and several recipes you go back to again and again, how do you keep them ready and convenient?

I know there are people that have lots of cookbooks (read eGullet sometime, there are numbers in the 6 figures). But how many of those have you actually cooked from? Do you try to cook your way through a new book you buy, or just flip through it for inspiration?

I have about 10 recipe books myself, plus a Cook's Illustrated magazine collection. My biggest success has been Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, but I'm sure I've only made 1% of it by recipe count.

I have sort of a latent fantasy to cook every recipe in every one of my books, but I know it's hopeless. That's the kind of thing people make movies about, apparently.

I'm confused about the role of regular (not extra-virgin) olive oil in the kitchen.

I've always understood that extra-virgin is a delicate oil, the fine wine of fat, intended for lightly-cooked sauces, drizzling, and dipping. Cook's Illustrated has a few articles mentioning this, and advocating regular olive oil for sauteing, pan-frying, etc. They even said the regular stuff has a slightly higher smoke point.

And yet, every CI recipe I've seen calls explicitly for extra-virgin.

Same with Bittman - his "about oils" chapter in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian says that fine extra-virgin has delicate flavors that are wasted when cooked, but all his cooked recipes call for it anyway.

And to add to the confusion, at least in my local store, extra-virgin and regular oils are exactly the same price.

So what's the role of regular olive oil? Does it have one?