By Lisa Messinger
Food and Cooking at Creators Syndicate

Perhaps your family clamors to go out to barbecue joints due to a hankering for the kind of high-flavor pulled poultry and meats that are often the specialties. There's no need to spend the extra cash, though, since it's easy to replicate results at home.

Many of us only have been treated to the saucy delicacy, served between soft thick sandwich buns at restaurants. However, it takes just a few minutes at home to shred meat and cook it up with barbecue sauce and seasonings in a pot.

You can season and prepare your own meat. But, it's even more convenient to purchase an already cooked product inexpensively at the supermarket, like a rotisserie chicken.

Whatever type of already seasoned and fully cooked poultry (remove skin before shredding) or fully cooked meat you are starting with, simply let it cool and, as the title implies, with clean or latex gloved hands pull it apart and it will be shredded.

Then place the meat in a pot and combine with barbecue sauce (store-bought jars can save time here, too), and dashes of water, spicy brown mustard and vinegar variety of your choice. Heat thoroughly and serve over whole-grain hamburger buns or other thick round rolls.

Following are some equally quick sides to round out the saucy meal.

Fun fare like all of this proves innovative food preparation can be easy, nutritious, economical, entertaining - and fast. The ideas take just 10 seconds each to read and are almost that quick to prepare.

The combinations are delicious proof that everyone has time for tasty "home cooking" and, more importantly, the healthy family togetherness that goes along with it! Another benefit: You - and your kidlet helpers - effortlessly become gourmets, since there are no right or wrong amounts. These are virtually-can't-go-wrong mixtures, so whatever you choose to use can't help but draw "wows."

A Honey of a Potato Salad
Carefully quarter cooked and cooled golden potatoes (smoother tasting and lower in carbohydrates than many varieties) and gently combine with honey, orange zest, black pepper, salt substitute and a dash of cayenne.

Sling this Tangy Slaw
Julienne unpeeled green and red apples and gently mix with halved red seedless grapes, raisins, a drizzle of fresh lemon juice, curry powder and low-fat mayonnaise.

More than a Hill of Beans
Thoroughly heat and drain canned black beans and gently mix with molasses, Worcestershire sauce, finely minced fresh ginger and a dash of red pepper flakes.

Not a Corny Ending
Mix two parts sugar-free or regular ketchup with one part hot sauce and one part spicy brown mustard. Brush onto cooked corn-on-the-cob just before serving.

QUICK TIP OF THE WEEK: Usually, take-out delivery food comes with plastic silverware. When eating at home, use your own silverware instead. Put shoeboxes or other containers in your pantry, marked "forks," "spoons," "knives" and "combo" (meaning the wrapped ones that include the trio all in one) and make a habit of tossing the unused utensils in there. You can then use them for picnics, potlucks, long car trips and other such occasions and may find you never have to purchase - often expensive - plastic silverware again.

Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food and nutrition writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the National Council Against Health Fraud and author of seven food books, including the best-selling The Tofu Book: The New American Cuisine with 150 Recipes (Avery/Penguin Putnam) and Turn Your Supermarket into a Health Food Store: The Brand-Name Guide to Shopping for a Better Diet (Pharos/Scripps Howard). She writes two nationally syndicated food and nutrition columns for Creators Syndicate and had been a longtime newspaper food and health section managing editor, as well as managing editor of Gayot/Gault Millau dining review company. Lisa traveled the globe writing about top chefs for Pulitzer Prize-winning Copley News Service and has written about health and nutrition for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, Reader's Digest, Woman's World and Prevention Magazine Health Books. Permission granted for use on DrLaura.com.