Italy, you've done it again. I've heard people talk about Italian Bread Soup before and I've always thought, "How could that be good?" What was I thinking? This is the greatest soup ever! I'll never make my old Tomato Soup recipe again. The parmesan and bread take place of a Grilled Cheese Sandwich and you'll never need a single cracker, if that's your thing. It's thick, it's delicious and it only took me maybe 15 minutes to make. Now the world is just begging me to try this whole "bread salad" thing I've heard about.

What other wonderful things can I say about this soup? It made use of a baguette that's just been sitting half eaten on my counter all week and had dried out to nothing. The torn crust pieces were the best part because it still had a bit of chew to it in the soup. I imagine that would have softened by the time it was to eat leftovers though. If you can somehow get hold of a bunch of baguette end crusts, perhaps by eating a bunch of baguette middles, then I recommend using that. It's also healthy! Tomatoes, garlic, onions and beans are super nutritious. Alright, I'm off to have seconds.

Since the only vegetation I still have in my fridge is bok choy and mixed greens after spilling chicken juice all over the place a couple of days ago, I made another bok choy dish. This one was the best of the lot so far, though still not particularly impressive. Basically, it's just Bok Choy with Sauce and the sauce is just thickened chicken broth with soy sauce. It's salty and thick and much more like something I've actually eaten in a Chinese restaurant.

After the Tea Marbled Devilled Eggs, I wanted to try a few more recipes with tea. The tea recipes don't seem to be turning out nearly as well as all of the coffee ones, which were definitely favorites. Technically this didn't really work out because I ran out of propane on my barbecue and couldn't get it hot enough to fill it full of all that much smoke. The Tea Smoked Chicken was more like grilled 5 spice chicken with a sort of odd smoky flavor that left my tongue a bit numb. I couldn't really eat very much of it at all before throwing it all away. I thought it tasted sort of like a dry licorice spice tea. Here's hoping I get a chance to go grocery shopping soon so I don't have to make a mixed green casserole tomorrow.

One of the last time my mom visited she bought me a Bison Roast from the farmer's market. It's been thawing in the fridge for the last couple of days and tonight I finally cooked it. I didn't really want to do anything too fancy to it, but still do something different than just a simple salt and pepper rub, so I used up a bunch of my herb garden with some mustard and gave it a bit of a crust.

Bison has to be roasted at a comparatively lower temperature than beef; 275 degrees versus 350 degrees. This is what the handbook that came with the roast told me. It's kind of fun getting a cut of meat that comes with its own handbook, even if it most of it is an order form and catalog to buy more meat. The roast was perfectly cooked. It was tender enough that I could cut it with my fork and eat it like butter. The only difference being that I'd rather not just eat butter. The rub made for some flavorful juices as well, which I used to make Yorkshire Pudding.

Yorkshire pudding is typically made with beef drippings, but I don't think it's really that forbidden to substitute in this case. I've actually never made a Yorkshire pudding with beef before. I used to make it somewhat often when I was a vegetarian, just using butter and loading it with carrots and broccoli. I suppose it's sort of a guilty pleasure to me now. I've made this particular recipe quite a few times with much success and it turned out well yet again. I had to use half butter in place of drippings because I didn't have enough. I still found that there was some extra flavor imparted from the roast rub. If you've never had this before, it's a very simple dish to make and a very nice roast accompaniment to take the place of biscuits or bread. The remainder of the plate is filled with some mixed greens with a bit of Ranch Dressing.

The best pasta I've ever had was when Shannon and I stopped at some place in Montreal where Dickens apparently penned the outline of A Tale of Two Cities. They served me some carbonara dish and it was the most delicious thing I've ever tasted. If I could match that in my own kitchen, I'd become fat and Italian. Instead, my pasta skills have waned miserably after low-carbing and I can barely make a pot of spaghetti to save my life.

I have made carbonara a few times in the past, but apparently I've never properly prepared it, since I've always thought it was nothing more than Alfredo Sauce with bacon. This is not so, because true carbonara is prepared with egg yolks and pasta water and not with cream. Now that I know this and have prepared otherwise, I will still continue to cook alfredo with bacon since that just seems so much easier.

My Linguine Carbonara may have failed slightly since I prepared it at 1 in the morning after a few drinks at a birthday party. Shannon and I both agreed it was "just okay". Carbonara and spaghetti appears to be the typical route to go, but since I had linguine in the cupboard and not spaghetti, I went the linguine route. My egg curdled slightly and threw off the sauce and it failed to have any sort of wow factor. Since the ingredients are so simple, I imagine my lack of carbonara skills attribute to the outcome and not the recipe itself. Not using pancetta and substituting it for American smoky bacon probably didn't help much either.

I assisted in a horrible black forest cake yesterday, for the birthday outing I briefly attended tonight. His girlfriend and I spent over 4 hours preparing this thing, only to end up with a lopsided and inedible cake separated by layers of whipped cream that was more like churned butter because it's been so ridiculously hot lately that I couldn't keep things could enough to whip up properly. I've never had a problem with whipped cream before! It was unreal. Anyhow, since I had some whipping cream leftover in the fridge and chocolate shavings we were going to garnish the cake with, I made Strawberries and whipped Cream for dessert tonight. Such a simple, yet delicious dessert.

Previously on A Food Year, I attempted to make Sweet and Sour Pork with poor results. I decided to try a completely different recipe with a mostly different preparation method that was recommended to me back then when I failed. Unfortunately for me, I'd lost that recipe over the months between then and now and I was once again winging an attempt at sweet and sour pork. The only part that I remember is that a slice of cucumber was wrapped around it after cooking, so I went with that.

With the Sweet and Sour Pork Tenderloin the results were much better. I also like the idea of using ketchup to turn the sauce red instead of food coloring, which was what I had in the original recipe which made it more pink than anything. I suppose that tomato paste, vinegar and sugar could be substituted for ketchup with identical results, if you were looking to use up a half used jar of tomato paste or didn't happen to have ketchup for some reason. The sauce nicely combined both sweet and sour and really, that's about all you can hope for when making sweet and sour sauce. My only complaint is that I didn't make my cucumber slice long enough and therefore had much difficulty wrapping it around my pork.

The Stir-Fried Bok Choy was not very good. It was sort of spicy and bitter and bland. Bok choy is a really difficult stand alone vegetable, I find. When thawing chicken in the fridge the even salmonella juices escaped and ran into my vegetable crisper, so I'm at a loss for vegetables right now and likely for the next couple of days. This makes for a difficult stir-fry, unless I'm going to make one of soy sauced apples and bananas.

Beforehand I made Marbled Devilled Eggs. I was reading about marbling eggs using tea a bit ago and had to try it out. It did not work as well as I expected, since most of the marbled pattern ends up on the shells, but you can still see a decorative shading on the outside of the eggs. I can see myself doing this again just for kicks, but it doesn't impart a single bit of flavor on the egg itself. The rest is basically just a devilled egg recipe with sesame seeds and green onions. The sesame seeds really didn't add to it at all, but I thought that they'd look pretty.

My grandma took Shannon and me to Earl's for dinner. I find that it's so difficult to take decent photographs in a restaurant. Every restaurant photo I've taken so far has been awful. The lighting is so different and I feel like an ass taking multiple pictures in a restaurant, so I usually end up with something I think will look half decent and it's really flashed out or blurry. This would be the second time we've done dinner there this year, the first being when we got back from Edmonton and had the Blurry Bento Box. Blurry, like all my restaurant pictures, you see. Usually the food is decent and the service is horrible. This time, the food was sub par and the service was surprising.

I ordered the cedar plank salmon with a curry sauce, which came with goat cheese mashed potatoes and seasonal vegetables. The vegetables turned out to be about 1/4 of a tiny beet, 2 slices of zucchini and 2 extremely dried out roasted carrots. The mashed potatoes were very good (how can you go wrong with mashed potatoes and goat cheese?) but the vegetable side was just sad and the salmon wasn't really doing it for me. When our waitress asked how our food was, I simply said it was "just okay." Then, she went away and took my whole entree off the bill; a 100% discount. Considering that my dish was basically half the bill, that was quite a surprise.

After messing around a bit with Plantains in both savory and sweet dishes, I figured I'd try bananas as well. I prepared an African Banana Chicken for my main entree. Combined with bacon, corn and beans, it was very much like the sum of those ingredients. Every bite contained a mouthful of mushy banana and bacon and although this wasn't entirely repulsing, I can't imagine it winning any culinary awards. I finished it without feeling like I had just punished myself, but it's not something I'll ever consider making again.

The African Cauliflower Salad was a decent accompaniment, being both light and flavorful. I think as a substitute, a sort of curried banana side might've worked better. As it stands I'm not interested in making any curried bananas any time soon though. I like the flavor of honey used to sweeten the curry flavor of the salad, which sort of gives it a flavor reminiscent of Mango Chutney.

For dessert I made a very simple Banana Bread. I wasn't particularly happen about the results because I only had a single ripened banana and tried to cut the recipe into thirds without much success. I ended up with a tiny loaf that had to much baking soda, which further backs up my suspicions of why the Mititei Sausages were so bad.

I have been thinking of making a White Chili since I started this project. I just thought that the idea was intriguing and I've never had a white chili before. I used a modified version of the recipe from Simply Recipes, where I first heard about it. They describe it as tasty and mild. I'd say that this is an accurate description. Since it lacks chili peppers and there's only so many jalapenos you can add before it'd be a green chili, it's hard to make it all that spicy. Perhaps white pepper could be added for those looking to scorch their taste buds.

Since it neither has chili peppers nor chili powder, I suppose it's not even technically a chili. What it is, however, is delicious! I was actually wholly surprised at how much it tastes like typical red (note: the color, not communist) chili. I mean, eerily so. Perhaps even more than some other chilis I've made in the past that involved chili powder. No beef, red kidney beans or tomatoes, no chili powder (though really just paprika is missing) and no chili peppers, yet big chili taste. I'm downright surprised.

It was recommended to use cheese, guacamole, salsa, cilantro and so on to garnish it. I made a couple of large garlic croutons, canapés or crispy garlic breads (whatever you want to call them, I don't really know the difference) to go with it. Shannon said this was her favorite part. Actually, it's the only part she really ate, other than a few bites before asking me to wrap it up before she could eat it later. She did say she liked what she had though. Since it's big on cumin flavor (one of the dominant chili powder flavors) and loaded with garlic, I'm surprised I even left any behind.

In scanning the globe for regional fare that I am completely unfamiliar with and can actually recreate within my means, I came across a couple of interesting Lebanese recipes. I know next to nothing about Lebanon and even less about their cuisine, so I figured this would be a perfect region to choose. Some of the recipes involved cooked yogurt, which looked interesting, and I'll likely try at a later date. However, since I really don't know whether I'd be doing anything right or not, I started with something simple.

Ever since making the French Onion Soup I've been tossing around recipes with caramelized onions. Well, M’jadrah, a Lebanese rice and lentil dish tastes basically like the French onion soup of the starch community. It has a simple but potent flavor that is very satisfying, both hot and cold. I imagine it would be pretty underwhelming just cooked in water, so I added vegetable stock since I figured it'd go better with the onions. I can only assume that I was right.

On top of that I laid a few Lebanese Chicken Skewers. Again with the paprika, I imagine they'd be better if I had waited for the good stuff. They were spicy with a lemon garlic flavor with a pleasant lingering aftertaste that seemed more worthwhile than the actual chicken itself. Perhaps that has something to do with my somewhat rushed marinating time. As far as I know, no one's ever gone wrong with lemon and garlic, so the Lebanese at least know not to mess with a good thing.

Since the majority of my dinners are actually eaten at lunch or breakfast time lately, I figured I'd make something breakfasty. Going on the theme of bacon and eggs, I came across a whole new spectrum of egg recipes called stratas. From what I gather, it's just a crustless quiche with bread in it or a sort of eggy bread pudding. I made a Bacon Strata and I actually really enjoyed it. It was lighter than Quiche, which I typically find kind of dense, almost like a Soufflé, puffing up and filling full of air.

I served the strata on a bed of mixed greens and topped it with Hollandaise, with the addition of a bit of basil. I've never heard of basil hollandaise before, though I would be surprised to find out that I'm some sort of pioneer of this because it's actually very good and lemon and basil are such a natural compliment.

The next time I make strata (and there definitely will be a next time) I’ll make sure to put in more ingredients. For example, cheese would be great. A few vegetables wouldn't hurt either. Layering in some more meats or using crumbled sausage would make it even better. It's definitely going to take the place of quiche in my life – what little place that actually is – since I'm not particularly fond of having the crust.