goes 60 to 0 in 24 hours

One of the best phrases for laissez-faire I-don't-care attitudes toward anything is,

You win some, you lose some.

While I don't like to overuse that phrase and I certainly wouldn't want to be accused of cliche, it's probably the best way to summarize the last two nights of dinners.  I'm noticing a theme - first I did my curry dinners back to back, and now I've done my brothy dinners right in a row - both times with mixed reviews.

Last night, well yesterday in general, was kind of cold and miserable.  Although it seems to me that just about every Winter evening is the perfect one for a soup/stew dinner, in the Spring one must really grasp for justification.  Most of the time this involves cold rain, but yesterday I pulled it off with just wind.  I made Classic Lentil Stew and it was hearty and warm and just what I wanted after an afternoon of clothes-shopping-failure.

{Quick aside: Does anyone remember that horrid Britney Spears song, "Not a Girl"?  That's kind of how clothes shopping makes me feel, despite my age and growing smushiness proving I am very much a woman.  When I go to Macy's, the size 4 pants are just a little too big for me, but when I go to H&M I can't even pull the "same" size over my womanly hips.  Talk about knocking the wind out of your thirtysomething sails...by the way, I never looked like Britney does in that video, and if I did, I still would have worn more clothing.}  

Back to the soup/stew.  It was delightful!  The potatoes made it nice and hearty = substantial and the herbs added a nice earthiness to the French lentils I used (I actually didn't have any of the $.79/lb brown lentils you can get at SuperFresh).  I think the two bay leaves also added a depth of flavor that might have otherwise been missing.

That was 60.  Now for the Zero.

This is one of those times you really can judge a "book" by it's "cover" (or a star by her implants) - the Quick Moroccan Tagine was exactly as bland as it looked.  I had no idea you could actually simmer all of the excitement out of kalamata olives and nothing else tasted like anything either.  This is the first time in a long time (that I can remember with my old lady brain, anyway) that I actually added salt at table.  I had to - it didn't taste like anything!  That was really disappointing.  It smelled so good when it was cooking, but it was really not very good.  Fortunately for Vegetarian Times I have two cookbooks that prove they do actually know their stuff.

Who knows?  Maybe my tastebuds are still burnt out. Stay tuned, kids - this old dog has some new tricks coming soon.