Nope. I can take teasing and good advice in the same thread.
{smooch}
You just answered some question that I didn’t even know I had! 
Thank you, Veb, and thanks to everyone for the great tips!
If you make any amount of asian food, just break down and get a rice cooker. We make a pot of rice a few times a week, and a rice cooker makes everything easy. Measure in the rice, rinse off, pour in water up to the mark, and press down the switch. You’re done, you get perfect rice every time. You can often find used rice cookers at thrift shops or garage sales, we got ours that way. They work for years and years and years without breaking down.
Just remember when you cook brown rice it takes twice as long, it won’t be ready at the “ding”.
Oh, and every time you roast a chicken or turkey, throw the bones, skin, leftover onions from the cavity, etc into a stockpot. Pour boiling water into the roasting pan and clean up every smidgen of browned bits and add to the stock. That stock can be used to make almost any savory recipe better, by substituting stock for water.
I’d also recommend Cooks’ Illustrated and their cookbooks. Every recipe is preceeded by an essay where the cook explains what they wanted to accomplish, how they developed the recipe, the experiments they did (sometimes dozens of iterations), and why the recipe works. Really great reading, they’ve spoiled me for regular cookbooks.
In the spirit of the OP:
Browning. Browning is a key concept in cooking. Unbrowned gravy is listless and pasty. Unbrowned meat is lifeless. Unbrowned baked goods are soggy and gloppy. Not EVERYTHING has to be browned, but browning is a key source of rich flavors. If a recipe isn’t creating browning, you have to ask yourself “why not?” Even soups should have browning…you brown the onions and vegetables and meat before you add the liquid. You use the browned bits left over from cooking meat to make a pan sauce. Just understanding the key role of browning in making tasty food will improve your cooking tremendously.
I would not throw the skin in the stock pot. It adds virtually nothing that the meat and bones can’t add, and it creates a huge amount of fat to skim off.
Re: roasting (not browning) bones, veggies, etc. This is the basis of what is called a ‘brown stock’. A ‘white stock’ just means that you don’t do the roasting first. You can make either a brown or white stock out of any bones; it has nothing to do with the type of meat.
Roast the bones and veggies in the oven until well browned, deglaze the pan with liquid and put the whole thing in a soup pot with additional water. Bring to a boil and reduce it to a slow simmer (as discussed above). Simmer uncovered for 8-12 hours, periodically skimming off the fat and adding water as needed. Voila - brown stock that is nearly clear. Reducing it even further will result in a demi-glace, but we ain’t going into that now.
You should always rest meat after cooking (steaks, for example, maybe five minutes, a whole roasted bird could go up to twenty). It keeps the juices in, lets the meat relax and will give your steaks a uniform pinkness rather than a cooked outside and a red middle.
Rather than having a cocophany of knives I recomend one or two really good quality knives that are a size you are comfortable with - I used to work the line so naturally I have a huge knife.
Presentation really changes how people will percieve your food, pile it up and apply sauce artfully round the edge for some ‘wow’ factor, less neat works when serving rustic foods like a stew for example - slap it in a bowl with some parsley scattered on top and a bit of bread.
A few really good quality ingredients work far better than a lot of inferior ones. Simplicity is usually the key to good food. A sauce made from fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes and fresh basil takes two ingredients and a couple of hours slow cooking but will taste better than if you add loads of dried herbs and tomatoe paste.
Get your ‘mise’ ready before you cook - basically get all the ingredients you are going to need in the dish prepped and ready to go into it before you start cooking. This really helps cooks who are not so fast at chopping as you have all of the ingredients prepared, weighed and ready to go into the dish. Simply stand and stir and pour in ingredients as per the recipe, simple! Remember to tidy up as you go along as well, this is the cardinal rule in a restaraunt.
Fresh stocks made from the left over roast are second to none and can be kept in the freezer. I also juice limes and pour the juice into those freezer bags for making ice cubes, that is really handy as a bulk of limes costs a lot less and lime juice is great in food and drinks.
Grow fresh herbs, I cannot stress enough how much better fresh herbs are.
I can’t remember what everyone else has said so I apologise if I have repeated previous advice given.