Open faced sandwich with Pancetta Americana, heirloom tomatoes (Cleverly Farms), and an egg

So the first time I made this, I had intended to use some chèvre and to warm it up on the toasted bread. I bought plain chèvre from Reichert's Dairy for this purpose. However I forgot what I intended to do, not only that, I forgot the egg. So here's the first try (with a side salad):

La Mie Ciabatta, heirloom tomato and pancetta americanaCertainly not how I intended this to work out. Anyways I declared that I should do this again. So for lunch on Saturday, I made lunch for my wife and I and I actually went through the whole process. I could not, however, use the heirloom tomato from Cleverly farms or buy another at farmer's market (the are done for the season). So I bought one from another vendor. Though you can't really see it in there:

La Mie Ciabatta, chèvre, heirloom tomato, fired egg and pancetta americana

This turned out much better, the wonderful taste of the warm chèvre combined with the rest? Delicious lunch.

Pumpkin Enchilada Casserole with Red Chile Sauce (p84 October/November 2010 Fine Cooking)

I had a whole lot of pumpkin already prepared, so I didn't have to break down another pumpkin. So I started making this. This required many pans. It wanted me to use my blender (was currently washing in the dishwasher) and the cheese grater (also washing), so I petite diced the cheese and used the food processor to make the sauce. I started making this around 4:30 and finished a little after 7. This actually turned out well, but it called for optional roast turkey (or chicken) and frankly I think it would've been better with it. It's not that it was missing something, it's that the filling just was a little lacking. The top looked great (combo of sauce and cheese) but the bottom was...well..not exactly pretty. Maybe I didn't let it cool enough (did wait the five minutes the recipe asked for), but it didn't come out fo the pan in nice little pieces. Taste was it was good, but not so good that I'd go out of my way to make it again.

Pumpkin Soup with Sage and Gruyère Croutons (p83 October/November 2010 Fine Cooking)

After leaving work later then I should have (~6:30 PM) on a Friday, I rushed home, updated my iPod and started to prepare dinner. Excluding the preparing of the pumpkin, this didn't take a whole lot of time to do. But taking the big pumpkin, slicing it into manageable pieces, then cutting of the skin, then chopping it down smaller, I was able to get dinner done in an hour and a half or so. The whole thing turned out pretty well, but the soup itself was a bit bland. Should I have made sure that I had gotten a non-carving pumpkin? Probably. However with the Gruyere croutons, together they were quite good. Weve got quite a bit of the soup left, but none of the gruyere left to make the croutons. I have the feeling that the soup is going to end up going down the drain.Pumpkin soup with sage and gruyere crutons

Iowa Grass Fed Beef burgers

So I forget the name of this place, but they are a stall or two down from Juan O'Sullivan's Salsa, and I have bought beef from them before. But the purpose here is to find a beef vendor. These burgers turned out really well. I was pretty happy.

Iowa Grass Fed Beef burger

Ground Chicken spiced up into a sort of sloppy joe type of thing.

I had intended this to be similar to something that I had recently...and it wasn't, but it was sloppy joes and it was still pretty good.