Chicken, Vegetable Soup with Fresh Herb Dumplings (p124 October 2010 Bon Appétit)

I used chicken stock that I made to make this. Which was good. Though it still had quite a bit of fat in it, so when leftovers got refrigerated, it was gelatinous until it was heated up.  I mad a lot of soup, there are still some leftovers.  I skipped a number of the instructions which, I think, were meant to up the flavor of the stock, because, well, I already had a flavorful stock.  Which shortened the cook time by a bit (if you skip the 8 hours or so it took me to make the stock in the first place).  Anyways.  It turned out well, everyone was happy.

South Indian-Style Vegetable Curry (p33 October/November 2010 Fine Cooking)

I woke up with a start on Saturday (yesterday).  It was dark out, I saw the kittens napping.  I knew Shannon was upstairs napping (she told me that Gracie was napping with her).  My first thought, was I slept through he cooking window and I was a bit put out by this.  I pressed info on the remote and it showed me that it was just a bit after five, so I pushed down my startled state, and headed upstairs to make dinner.  I had my doubts about it.  One of the main ingredients was cauliflower, which I don't think that either of us are a big fan of.  But everything turned out well.  I skipped the step to add spinach at the end (I didn't think that it would really add, but more would detract for the texture).  This tasted pretty good, though I think with the cinnamon stick soaking in there almost the entire time it kind of overtook all the other spcies in there.  And I have to say that my cinnamon stick was at least a year old, so it wasn't near the top of it's potency.  I served this over rice

Moroccan-Spiced Roasted Hanger Steak with Carrots and Warm Lentil Salad (p72 October/November 2010 Fine Cooking)

The steak was good, the carrots were good, the warm lentil salad...I may have added too much lemon, because that is pretty much what it tasted like. It made for a nice well balanced dinner.

Quick Chicken Fricassee, (p20 Cook's Illustrated November/December 2010)

This was quick, I halved the recipe (to server 2 instead of 4).  I actually like this.  Even though there was a half pound of mushrooms in there.  I served this with some peas, and had some toast with the mushroom gravy.

Classic Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese

mmm...this is a classic dish.  I was feeling lazy so I didn't take the extra step to puree the soup at the end so that it would've been smooth, I can't remember why now, but whatever.  Anyways, it made for a classic combination on a chilly night.

Stuffed Blue Cheese Burgers (w/o the wine sauce) and Oven Fries

So the blue cheese burgers turned out very well.  I liked them (I even used more blue cheese then the recipe called for).  The oven fries on the other hand, didn't match the effort with the outcome.  If I was making them in mass quantities, it would make some sense, I suppose, but just for two, it didn't make a ton of sense to dirty a pot to parboil, then a pan to cook.  Overall the dinner was very good, but this wouldn't override my standard of frozen fries from the freezer section.