Every time I make Beef Stroganoff I think Shannon likes it, and every time she eats it she says she doesn't like the seasoning, that she doesn't like the beef and doesn't really want to eat the noodles. More stroganoff for me, then; I love the stuff. The simple creamy sour cream and beef sauce combined with egg noodles is absolutely delicious.

Apparently there is a little confusion over what should actually be in a stroganoff. As long as there is beef, sour cream, mushrooms and some noodles, I think it's fair game. I like it with just a little bit of caraway and sprinkled with paprika, but I've seen quite a few pictures of stroganoffs that are brightly colored like butter chicken, presumably from much more paprika. I came across a few recipes that added sherry too, so I incorporated that. I didn't notice any taste difference from the sherry addition, so I would likely just leave it out next time.

However you cook it, beef stroganoff is essentially a meal in itself. It's not exactly ideal food for scorching summer weather, but that didn't stop me from making it when I had a craving. It rained today, isn't that close enough to harsh Canadian winters?

Typically my grandma, Shannon and I go out for brunch on Sundays. Today grandma and I were going alone and I suggested we do something different. We ended up going to the Golden Star, a Chinese food restaurant downtown. This was my favorite place to go as a kid because in order to enter the restaurant you have to walk over a bridge overtop a large koi pond. Grandma was picking out which one she wanted to have for dinner as we sat down at the table.

I had an egg roll to start, since how can you not? The waiter was really awkward; polite, but only in a stifling hatred sort of way. It took a while to weed through the menu, but we settled on a few dishes. Since it was just the two of us, we ordered half orders of everything. Even still, there were plenty of leftovers. The dinner plate is as pictured when I ate some of the leftovers at my computer.

The first plate consisted of ginger beef and special chop suey. I think somebody forgot to add the sauce to the ginger beef because it was simply the deep fried battered bits that make the base. I ordered this mainly because it's Shannon's favorite and I could bring some home for her, but she wasn't into it because it was missing everything that made it tasty. The vegetables weren't really crisp, which I like, but the sauce was a little salty.

The second plate held a large portion of Chinese sausage fried rice and scallops in black bean sauce. The Chinese sausages I'd never had before. I liked them, they were little and sort of sweet. The scallops were delicious on their own, but the black bean sauce was so ridiculously salty I had to take a drink of water after every bite of the vegetables. I quickly just stopped eating it altogether. I don't remember what my fortune cookie was; perhaps "A close relative will buy you dinner."

I've been a little carried away with buying noodles lately. They're just so quick and easy to prepare and I'm so time pressed that they work wonders. I stewed the remaining Bison from the other night and wasn't really sure what I was going to use most of it for. I decided to combine a few recipes to create a Shanghai Bison Stirfry.

Having large chunks of stewed meat was the only real difference between this and typical Shanghai Noodles. Usually stirfrys have such thinly sliced pieces so they can cook quickly, but since the meat was already cooked it could just be added and warmed as a last addition. It's a nice little comfort food dish, eating basically like a stew with noodles. It was also a good way of using up my leftovers, which is as good of a reason as any to cook something right now. This didn't just use up leftover vegetables, but a bit more of the sherry sitting in the cupboard that I don't want to go to waste. The pantry is really starting to look bare. Look for "6 rice soup" or "18 bean casserole" in upcoming recipes since that's basically all that's left.

I haven't done much cooking with fish at all yet, so I decided to pick up some cod and try an entirely different recipe. I named this Calcutta Cod because I thought it had a nice ring to it. The original dish was technically supposed to be steamed in banana leaves, but such a thing is not available here, thus the use of tinfoil. I would've just put the fish directly onto the steamer, but for some reason I thought the fish would not be infused with as much flavor this way. Perhaps I'll be able to verify that some day. This was frozen cod, so I thought that the amount of moisture in the fish sort of took away from the seasoning. I tried to pat it dry, but there was still a fair amount of liquid in the foil afterwards.

The chillies were pretty, but I mostly scraped them off because I didn't want to hurt myself. My mortar and pestle isn't the greatest and didn't break up the mustard seed very much. Perhaps this would've imparted much more flavor, but as it was there wasn't much other than fishy heat. The addition of another spice or two, or maybe a squeeze of citrus, would've easily made this from ho hum to quite tasty, I think. It's worth experimenting.

Whether or not people in Morocco would actually eat something like these Moroccan Potatoes is beyond me, but they're basically roasted with cumin, chillies and lemon. Somewhat surprisingly the cumin really took a backseat on this one and the lemon flavor was deeply infused into the potatoes. The chillies were edible by themselves, but coupled with the chillies in the cod I was reaching for a glass of milk before dinner was over. I'm definitely coming around to spicier food now though. I wasn't so sure if it were possible to grow accustomed to the heat, but apparently so. It's a good thing, too, because I can finally actually taste the differences in peppers and spices now, rather than just have it singe my tongue.

I wasn't really completely satisfied after eating this meal, so I polished off another pound of blueberries. To suggest something you might actually want to fill up the plate with, perhaps Indian Spiced Chickpeas or for something less starchy, maybe this Cabbage, Carrot and Apricot Salad.

I'm not entirely sure why, but I've been craving fried rice lately. It could be in regards to a conversation that ensued about fried rice the night before the Curried Goat. Whatever it is, I finally decided to make some. I used to make fried rice a lot when I was a vegetarian, but quite differently than this recipe. I would fry the rice by itself before adding liquid and then continue to fry it until it was dried out to nothing. My favorite was with canned shrimp, but this crispy, dry version of fried rice is probably my favorite.

In hindsight, instead of making this Mushroom Fried Rice recipe, I should've just done something like that. It's not that this recipe was bad, but it didn't seem to be lacking something. Luckily there are so many variations of fried rice that I'll likely work this into a full meal again some time in the future. I did like the fried egg addition though. Normally I would beat the egg and throw it directly in with the rice, but being able to have a forkful along with it instead was good. Again with the sherry, only this time I didn't really notice any presence by it whatsoever. Of course, this was only a few tablespoons amongst several cups of rice, so that stands to reason. If I had any scallions I definitely would've thrown them in this, too.

It seems as though cilantro ends up in my fridge almost as often as parsley now. It was even somewhat enjoyable in this dish. Perhaps all that work to grow to enjoy it is finally paying off. All those torturous meals of cilantro infused dishes will have not been eaten in vain! That or I'm getting better at disguising it with other flavors. I'm not sure yet.