Ok, I took a crack at it

Here's what I did:
1) Downloaded and installed gourmet recipe manager on my host pc
2) Downloaded a bunch of MM format (Meal-Master) files and imported them into gourmet
3) Exported all recipes from gourmet to .xml file and scp'd it to my n900
4a) Ran pyrecipe from osso-xterm, imported file (which will not work at first)
4b) SSH'ed into my device and opened the .xml file in nano
4c) Removed non-latin1 character(s) specified in osso-xterm's error, using host pc (and then saved changes), re-imported file via n900

***line and column #'s for non-latin1 chars are printed by xterm (n900), so it's best to use a program that can move cursor to specific location using short key-stroke/command (on host pc)***

4d) Step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c, step 4c

So, after ~30min of, you guessed it, step 4c, I now have ~500 recipes in pyrecipe and counting!