There are some days when I'll ask Shannon what she wants for dinner and she can't think of anything but pepperoni pizza. There are other days where she's full of suggestions and we can just play off each other until we come up with something I might have not actually made before. Something I've been meaning to make for a while and never got around to it is Corn Chowder. The temperature's starting to cool off and some nice chowder is just the thing to warm us up. It's also quick, which is good, because we were starving. So much so that we were planning on eating this with ham sandwiches, but they are not pictured because we were so incredibly hungry that we ate them too quickly. I think that corn chowder and smoked pork products are a natural pairing, so anything with bacon in it or maybe just a big old sausage would go great with this.

I had a second large helping of this chowder not because I was still famished, but because it was delicious. It's a very simple and hearty soup with the typical vegetables, but those are the best kind. I like the skins on my potatoes when they're in soup, so I left them on. I also like my corn chowder with a whole lot of black pepper. These 2 things do not really affect the recipe significantly whatsoever. The best part about it is that it is much like the Split Pea Soup in being a good base for additional seasoning to keep the leftovers from getting boring, such as tomatoes and Italian herbs or Cajun spices.

There is a depanneur (convenience store) down the street that is run by an Indian couple. They have a tiny makeshift sign in the window advertising homemade samosas. Well, somewhat surprisingly, I've never had a samosa. I've had a mimosa before, but I assure you that's a different thing entirely. So, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, I decided to make some.

The hardest part was deciding what kind of samosa I wanted to make. Typically I think that samosas are filled with spiced meat, but I chose the meatless route and made Vegetarian Samosas, which are stuffed with potatoes. There are also sweet samosas that are glazed with syrup after being fried, which I can imagine being like something you'd eat at a carnival. In hindsight I should have made all 3 samosas so I had a better scope of them, but I was still quite happy with the results.

Historically I've had a bit of problems getting my dough to work with me, but I think I've since overcome that. The dough is similar to that of a Dumpling, but is rolled thinner so that it flakes up beautifully when fried. I do not have a rolling pin here, so I used a wine bottle with the label removed. I call this the student's or po' man's pin, it works fine for something like this. I had a bit of difficulty making my samosas into decent triangles at first, but it didn't take too long to get used to it. The dough is pretty forgiving and can be rerolled to perfection, but I am not that patient.

I thought that the potatoes gave it a really nice contrast in textures that I don't think would really be accomplished by meat, so I suppose I'm going to have to try it some day and find out. The filling is spicy and has a very fresh flavor of green onions, cilantro and chilies. I think that the starchiness of the potatoes mellows the heat a bit though, as well as the yogurt I served with it that had a crushed garlic clove added to it. These were delicious while hot out of the pan, but as they started to cool they sort of became mushy and the leftovers were horrible like a cold potato turnover. I served the samosas with some plain cooked white rice, steamed green beans and leftover Cholay.

I'm not Muslim, but apparently it is Ramadan, so I decided to scout out some Ramadan recipes. Pretty much everything I found appeals to me, but I made to narrow it down to something, so I picked Shami Kebabs. To me a kebab is a skewer of basically anything, but this kebabs are actually more of a deep-fried patty, like a Falafel. I had a bit of a problem cooking the split peas in this recipe, which acts as a binding agent for the meat patties. I had all of them forced into these pretty diamond shapes and then I had to have half them and watch them sort of fall apart when I was frying them. If I had a food processor and had cooked the split peas longer, I don't think this would've been a problem. They have a nice spicy curried flavor and go great with some Raita on pita bread.

As a side to the pitas, I asked Shannon if she thought she'd like a recipe called Cholay, some spiced chickpeas in tomato sauce. She said that she was sure that I'd made something similar to this already. This stands to reason, because I did make a chickpea and tomato dish, but it wasn't cholay, it was a Chickpea Curry. This was surprisingly different, despite having some similar ingredients. The sauce is incredibly simple, but intensely flavorful. Browning onions can add so much to a dish, just compare French Onion Soup to a bowl of pureed sautéed onions. If it weren't for browning the onions and frying the cumin seeds, this dish would just sort of be a watery, flavorless mess, I think. Instead, it was something I enjoyed for dinner, as well as cold as leftovers.

I learned two things today. The first is a wonderful thing; I've discovered that I really like halibut. I've had it a couple times before, but I'm assuming it was always overcooked, like most fish I've had in the past, because there was never anything particularly special about it. It really has a wonderful texture and flakes apart quite easily, plus there's only one main bone to worry about. Unfortunately, the second thing I've learned is that fish just isn't cheap. Unless I move to the coast and start fishing myself, I have to accept this. For a single halibut fillet, I had to shell out . For me, that's way too much to spend on a single serving of anything.

I made Apricot Glazed Halibut, which is perhaps a little similar to the Apricot Glazed Pork Tenderloin, but really not at all. The flavor was a little sweet, but it was easy to brush away the excess preserves and truly savor the fish itself. I would really like to go back in time and prepare it some other way, but I can't. No time machine. So I am now truly regretful that I cannot afford to eat more seafood, but I'll learn to deal with it again, I'm sure.

The rosemary plant that I bought is not looking well. It appears to be dying from the inside out. Unfortunately I think it is because of lack of sunlight and there's really no way to remedy it. Also unfortunate for me is that dead rosemary is not at all similar to dried rosemary, so I've basically wasted a large portion of deliciousness watching it die and hoping it will get better. On the positive, a little rosemary goes a long way, so I stripped some to salvage for my sides.

I had decided to make string beans, but neglected them until the last minute and then changed my mind. Instead, I roasted some carrot "chips" in the oven and prepared a little rosemary vinaigrette to go with them. The Roasted Carrots with Rosemary Vinaigrette would have made a nice component to a salad, which was sort of my intention with the string beans. So I'd recommend adding basically anything to make this a salad; such as some cooked root vegetables (even just potatoes), some string beans or basically anything autumnal. That or serve it with couscous or polenta or something that will make use of the flavorful oil. Of course your other alternative would be to not make it at all, but then you're no fun.

My second rosemary side dish was just Zucchini with Rosemary. They go together and there's no fancy operations here. They would benefit from a nice grilling. Zucchini would also go good with the carrots. I suppose I mean it does go good with the carrots, since they shared the same plate. I'm babbling, time to put more food in my mouth.

I was looking up recipes to use up my sour cream and my interest was piqued by a Lithuanian potato recipe. So I started looking into Lithuanian recipes and discovered that they actually like some pretty gross things, like dishes involving stomachs and pig ears and jellied fat and such. That, pickled stuff and beet juice. I guess it's the typical Eastern European fare that I come across quite often, but it just wasn't doing it for me. However, it did get me thinking of other recipes I'm actually familiar with for Eastern Europe, and I can't believe I haven't made Goulash so far this year!

My momma used to feed me goulash when I was a kid. What I grew to know as goulash was basically ground beef with noodles and sour cream, I think. The goulash I made tonight was nothing like that at all. This used braised stew meat instead of ground beef and I omitted the noodles in favor of rice. This was also somewhat spicy and very flavorful with paprika. The Hungarian sausages I picked up made a nice additional as well, with a little hint of caraway. I was really, really happy with the way this turned out. Enough so that I was happy to have skipped out on visiting the two Hungarian restaurants within 5 minutes of here. It's hard to avoid the temptation to eat at all these wonderful restaurants, but I'm depriving myself as much as possible until the end of December.

I ended up making Lithuanian Potatoes with Mushroom Dill Sauce, which did not use any sour cream at all. Basically it's just roasted potatoes with a mushroom gravy and dill. Actually, that's exactly what it is. Mushroom gravy is far from my most beloved food, but it was complimentary of the goulash and went well with the potatoes, so I don't regret making it by any means. You could possibly even thin it out and pretend it's a soup.

It's 4:30pm in Montreal and you're a little bit hungry. You could wait until it was actually dinner and make something suitable for your amazing food site, or you could go down the street and see if Schwartz's still has an enormous line-up because you want to see what all the hype is about. You order an entire pound of smoked meat to take home and be split between yourself and your girlfriend, knowing full well that you'll try to shove the entire thing into 2 sandwiches and that you're more likely to take a larger portion and attempt to finish it because you're a little crazy like that. Then, of course, you expect to be able to cook yourself a dinner for the aforementioned amazing food site and eat like a normal person at around 6 O’clock.

But oh wait! You just ate over half a pound of delicious smoked meaty goodness and you don't really feel like doing anything that even involves moving, much less get up and cook yourself some more food, especially when you'd actually have to think about what you were going to make, because you hadn't thought that part out to well either. So instead you finish off a bottle of delicious apple cider and watch television, neglecting to update the site at all.

Oh wait, that's me, not you. Then I wake up and curse myself for actually falling behind on this site at all while I'm unemployed in a city where I only really know 1 other person who I spent nearly 24 hours a day with and really have no excuse for not making dinner whatsoever. Then I make up for it by treating myself to another restaurant dinner at another place I've wanted to check out.

Now that the long winded introduction is out of the way, we went to Buddha Buddha. It's a cute little Thai place that has cool signage and a decent amount of good hype surrounding it. The favorable atmosphere sort of ended there though. The service was not particularly good and the waiter gave me the wrong dish. We didn't have proper utensils and I put my hand in something sticky.

I ordered the red curry, which I've never had before. My camera hadn't experienced it either, since it sort of squinted and horribly distorted the picture I took. To my knowledge, Green Curry is green and Yellow Curry is yellow, so I expected red curry to be red. It's more pink and orange. It's also not a fiery blend of chilies and smoky flavors like I expected, it's more like the Coconut Thai Soup I tried to replicate. This would be fine, except it was nothing like I expected and my entree came with an appetizer soup that was incredibly similar in flavor. Of course it is not their fault that I did not know what I was ordering. Though, for the record, I googled "red curry" and found a bunch of pictures of things that are both curries and red, so I must say I'm a little disappointed in that.

An online friend of mine was talking about a smoked turkey pea soup that she made and it made me want some. I set out on an epic 2 hour journey around Montreal in search of a smoked turkey piece. Back in Grande Prairie I would always see smoked turkey legs or wings and no one ever seemed to buy them. No one bought them, but they were there. I found plenty of smoked turkey deli meat, but I could not find any smoked turkey pieces. I found what I think was at least 50 different kinds of smoked pork and beef products including smokies, at least as many types of smoked fish, cigarette smokes and I may have even seen a smoke signal; but no smoked turkey. I found frog legs, marinated horse kebab and whole rabbits, but I can't find a turkey leg anywhere within a kilometer radius, it's ridiculous.

Instead of taking the logical route and going with ham, I skipped the smoked part altogether and just bought a non-smoked turkey leg. I wanted something that was not only different in principle to the Split Peas and Ham I made, but at least somewhat dissimilar in ingredients as well. This worked well for me because I'm sort of into bland food like mushy peas and beans, especially with a nice hunk of crusty baguette. I think it has something to do with putting a whole package of saltine crackers in my soups as a kid or really enjoying the taste of white bread or something. Never the less, this has opened up my eyes to a whole new world of Split Pea Soup.

Now, I still find it hard to fathom that people could actually love split pea soup. I'm actually finding it hard to consider ever remaking it, even though I did enjoy it. As far as waiting time and cost of ingredients, I'd much rather make something like the Mexican Black Bean Soup I made last month. However, split peas seem much more adept at picking up flavors. This is the perfect base for at least 3 different and equally delicious soups off the top of my head, which makes it one of the most versatile soups I can think of. Make the base and add curry powder for a curried split pea soup. Add chili powder if you're looking in the fridge in the mood for a chili but too lazy to fry beef. Stir in some Old Bay seasoning and some crab if you're looking for a tasty and filling New England dish! Okay, maybe that last one is a little disgusting, but you could add virtually any seasoning you wanted to mould this to your liking.

We've been eating a lot of late lunches lately, which has made it difficult to want to make much of anything for an actual dinner. I know it's sort of repetitious, but there are many different noodle dishes that all vaguely seem the same to me, but all have different names from different regions, so I'm trying to figure them all out. This is similar to my curry dilemma and when this project is over with I can actually dedicate a week to trying a bunch of very similar recipes without worrying about accidentally repeating myself for this site. When I repeat myself, I'm going to do it on purpose!

Shannon wanted a noodle dish and made her recommendation. Since we haven't had it yet, I tried to figure out what makes Chow Mein chow mein. This is a really bare bones version as I really didn't have much of anything to add. In hindsight, one of us should've trekked to the grocery store and picked up some mushrooms, broccoli and chicken or something to really make this worthwhile. Still, it made a good base for all of the rooster sauce I squeezed all over it. I know it doesn't seem like there are any vegetables in it at all by the photograph, but I swear they're buried beneath layers of bean sprouts and noodles.

So, what makes chow mein? To my knowledge, it's the thin, fried noodles. This is going to be obvious to someone other than me, but I'm just figuring this stuff out. I was never a really big fan of Chinese food and now I'm quickly trying to familiarize myself with all of these dishes at the same time, so it's all kind of a blur. Having a wok really would've paid off again, because I ended up getting noodles all over the stove. There is an exceptionally large non-stick skillet that came with the apartment, so I used that to fry the noodles after I boiled them. This seemed to get the right texture and the sauce was simple enough, but again, I did miss the added vegetables and meat. I'll include a recipe with those, even though I excluded them. If nothing else, noodle dishes are always simple, quick and cheaper than take out.

Completely unrelated, I made some delicious Chocolate Chip Cookies for dessert. Since I think it is dangerous to keep a few dozen cookies in a studio apartment kitchen (unless of course you're into eating them all), I came up with the brilliant idea of giving some to my landlords. 4, to be exact. At least Shannon and I only ate 10 each in 2 days instead of 12. Ahem.

A pretty simple, quick dinner tonight. I was browsing through recipes I'd saved on the computer for future use last night and stumbled upon one for Beef Yakitori. This is essentially a marinated beef skewer that I assume would be better suited for the grill, but I made it under the oven broiler. This is quite an effective way of cooking meat, though I usually only do it for pork chops. This is the kind of recipe that Shannon really enjoys because it has a bit of sweetness, citrus and soy sauce. I thought they were very good as well and the marinade really helps to tenderize the meat, which is a bonus. I served it with some plain white rice.

I recently learned that Edamame is actually nothing more than steamed soy beans. I've always had an aversion to all things soy, but I really, truly enjoy edamame. There's just something about the plain salted pods that I can't get enough of. Shannon, on the other hand, does not care for them at all. I had to eat the entire pound to myself, but I'm not complaining. I'm just worried about when all the estrogen is going to change my chemical makeup. This is hardly a recipe, since it doesn't involve anything more than steaming and salting them, but I figured I'd include it anyway.

I already made a Fish and Chips dinner with Trout and Homemade Potato Chips, but I was feeling a little ambitious and decided to make a more traditional version with French Fries and Beer Battered Cod. There's a fresh fish market just down the street, so I just went down and picked up some fresh cod. Ah, it's so nice to be in the city.

Fish and chips used to be one of my favorite things to eat as a kid, but I haven't had it in forever. I've sort of grown accustomed to only eating things that are good for me now. I'm fully aware that healthy food can taste good and find it hard to eat anything solely for taste alone. I find it hard to rationalize eating, say, pepperoni pizza, when I know I'll enjoy a Nice Curry just as much, if not more, and feel better about it, both mentally and physically, afterwards. I mean, part of the reason I like to make my own meals now is because I know exactly what goes into them. Despite this, it's still nice to indulge now and then and I find the whole idea of deep frying things quite fascinating.

The only thing I've ever deep fried in my life was doughnuts with my grandma. I've shallow fried a few things in my time, but it's not nearly the same. There are some things you just can't do with a half inch of oil and a skillet. Plus, an entire pot of near-boiling oil just has a risqué element of danger to it. I mean, if that catches on fire, you're in for it now! Even those tiny little splatters that occasionally hit your arm makes you feel like you're really alive! Or maybe that's just me, because I don't get out much.

Enough babbling. This was actually one of the most expensive dinners I've made, since I had to buy a whole bunch of oil and I also bought a proper thermometer because, despite the facade of danger and excitement I'm known for and display on a daily basis, there's no way I'm making fries in my apartment without a thermometer. Since the fries had the highest oil temperature to register, if we made it through with that, then the fish would be a cinch.

On the first batch of fries the oil was bubbling so close to the edge of the pot that I turned the heat off, then back on, then off, then on again, with huge amounts of hesitation on whether hot oil was about to pour over the edges onto the red hot element and send me to the hospital with a really bad lawsuit. Did I mention that Shannon burned down her apartment once? She was handling this better than I was. Then everything was fine. After a few batches, I was actually somewhat confident (the other 5 beers from the six pack helped) that nothing bad was going to happen. Then I started to become worried that my confidence would inevitably lead to something bad and hot oil would spill over while I watched television or something. Ah, drama.

The fries sat warm in the oven while we made the fish. After the first dip into the batter, as soon as it fluffed up and started to brown around the cod, I felt like a magician. It made me realize that no matter how much I've actually learned about cooking, there are still a billion little things like frying battered fish that are still so new, foreign and exciting to me. After finishing all of the fish, I bit into the first one we cooked and it was not good. The inside was still doughy. So we just threw all the pieces back into the deep fryer and made them even more crisp and brown. Crisis adverted.

I made a Basil Mayo Dip to go with the fries and Tartar Sauce to go with the fish. Who knew tartar sauce was so simple? Why would anyone buy commercially prepared tartar sauce unless they eat fish sticks on a daily basis? I also wanted to make Coleslaw, but since I've made the basic, creamy coleslaw so many times, I made a different, Lemon Dill Coleslaw. Basically, it tasted like sweetened Tzatziki with shredded cabbage. Neither of us were big fans. We did eat all of the French fries, but could not finish the fish. I am typically not a fan of tartar sauce and basically just made it for the site, but actually ate it with almost every bite of the fish. I am a big fan now.