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.