Oh boy here ya go putting me on the spot.  Okay then here's my dilemma. For the one who wants to open a book and memorize say three different easy meals. (For starters)

"Alright, I get say . . some chicken breast, dice it up, cook it, serve it to Sash. Add a sprinkle of catnip? Top with some kibble bits? Perhaps a splash of diced tuna? Sprig of parsley? Whipped Cream?

Real ambitious and imaginative huh?  Kind of something like . .   AHHHHH! Chapter 11. The Lazy Persons Guide to Cooking for your pet. (Quick recipes for dummies?)

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Well, after finding out I'm probably severely overdosing my cats on the fat soluble vitamins in their commercial canned food, I'm not worried as much about me not getting the balance just right.  In fact I feel a lot safer with the home-made recipe than the canned at this point!

Right now dogs & cats are on half home-made and half commercial.  I would love to switch to home-made completely and hope to do so this summer when I have more time to cook large vats of meat & veggies and do the processing for the cat food.  Time is probably my biggest block at this point.  I would like to try my hand at raw food too.

Does anyone know of a large capacity food processer?  I bought the biggest one out there and could use one twice as big!

I would be interested in that! In fact, I am already giving them an occasional raw meal 1-2 a week, depends when I find something "fresh" enough (i.e. still partly frozen, since I would only consider feeding Australia or New Zealand imported meat).

I am not entirely happy with feeding commercial, and not too worried about balancing, though I am worried about safety of supplements, since they often contain quite a few fillers and are similarly risky to good commercial brands of food. However, I don;t think that I have any other option, since if I would regularly feed home-prepared, it would have to be with local sources of meat, and considering my location and that practically all meat which is sold as fresh comes from mainland China, frankly I don't think this is a good idea. So I can feed them commercial Almo Nature or Applaws cans which are EU organic chicken in chicken broth with 1% whole rice (i.e. you can see couple of rice grains in the can), or china chicken pumped full of antibiotics, additives and who knows what. That is my biggest reason against feeding home-prepared, mine are definitely not interested in cooked food, thy are willing to eat raw and I simply cannot find raw that is safe to feed often enough.

I think it is entirely possible also to feed home-made food without artificial supplements like multi-vitamin and mineral tabs, taurine, B-50's etc. by feeding whole uncooked or carefully prepared cooked foods. For example, taurine can be got from sardines, clams, chicken hearts... arachidonic acid from animal fat... calcium from eggshells, yogurt, tofu... omegas from fish... b's from probiotics that ensure kitty gut is healthy enough to produce adequate amounts "in-system" ...  Balance can be achieved over time. 

At present I also feed all three modalities to Cato: raw, home-cooked and commercial (cans and kibble).  he's a spoilt little boy!  Some readings have convinced me that if we possibly can, we should try to get a young cat to recognize all these as "food" and becuase I believe variety is really healthy.  Not just variety in kinds of food, but variety in presentation.  Of course, nothing beats freshly killed prey.

Went and did a search for what nutrients/vitamins/etc. a dog needs and did find a site that gave you the equivalent in human food. So I just cook our dinners that we both eat as I do not have the time nor funds to make a separate dish of chicken with veggies for her since I'm cooking anyway she eats the same as myself with the required nutrients and the other meal she has is organic pet food that was never on a recall list. Plus just about everyday she gets a small tsp. of cottage cheese for the probiotics it provides for healthy intestines. Good for hoomans too. So I'm home cooking only its for both of us.

Another factor that keeps me from making much cat food on my own is the limited availability of suitable meat at a reasonable price.  I don't mind paying somewhat more, but except for chicken, the prices are way out of line.  I don't want to waste my time using hormone-filled supermarket meats, but the price of organic meat is out of sight!

And there's nothing more discouraging than spending the time and money to make something and have the cats reject it.  I once found some locally-raised frozen free-range, no hormones or additives whole pheasants on sale.  I bought a few (not cheap even on sale), cooked them, boned them (not easy either), and whipped up a batch of cat food.  None of the cats would eat it at all!   (I envy people who have healthy young dogs that will happily eat most anything.)

I do agree about starting them young on a variety of different types of food (raw, home-cooked, and canned) so that they will recognize it as such.  My most food-adaptable cat is Linley, who was only 1 1/2 when I got him.  He's the only one who will eat raw food.  The two that I raised from kittens eating both canned and dry food also accepted some home-cooked, and are fairly adaptable even though they are now almost 12.  But the two rescues adopted as adults are kibble addicts, and it's very, very hard to get them to eat anything wet.  They were probably raised on dry food.

Not an option for those of us who do not eat meat.  Which brings me to another factor to put on the list, one that stopped me for quite awhile:  The yuk factor for many vegetarians.  It was difficult for me to overcome the revulsion of entering a meat department, purchasing meat, and the horrible smell of cooking it.