This past week, Hungry Bear and I hosted Sunday night dinner. I love pulled pork, but I don't like most BBQ sauces. They are usually too sweet and tangy for my palate. Instead, I decided to make pulled pork with all of my favorite Vietnamese flavors. The entire menu was...

• Curry Cauliflower Soup with Honey
• Vietnamese Pulled Pork Sandwiches
• Fumi Salad (Asian Cole Slaw)
• Pumpkin Loaf

The Vietnamese pulled pork was fantastic with great flavors from the caramel sauce, lemongrass and chili peppers. Although I was very pleased with the results, I want to make it one more time and tweak the recipe a little bit before I share it with you.

However, I will share our curry cauliflower soup recipe. We first had this soup last year at Chapeau!, which is our favorite neighborhood French restaurant. It was served as an amuse-bouche. We loved it so much that we had to try to replicate the recipe.

What do you get when you win a bet against a Hoosier fan? The answer is chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies, if you make the bet with Hungry Bear. My Penn State buddy, Jeff, made a bet with her on the Penn State vs. Indiana football game last month. Since Jeff lives in New York City, they agreed to wager on homemade cookies, which are easily shippable. Despite a valiant effort by the Hoosiers, the Nittany Lions narrowly came out on top and Hungry Bear was relegated to baking cookies! One batch for Jeff and another batch for us to enjoy.

We don't have a tried and true oatmeal cookie recipe, so Hungry Bear used a recipe from The New Best Recipe cookbook, which has our favorite chocolate chip cookies recipe. She followed the recipe with one minor change for the first batch. Instead of using semisweet chips, she used Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate chunks for a more rustic look and a richer chocolate taste. The second batch contained half bittersweet chunks and half butter toffee chunks from chopped Hershey's SKOR candy bars.

One of my favorite ingredients is hot Italian sausage. Hungry Bear loves sweet petite peas. Add some mushrooms, garlic, orecchiette, a sprinkle of Parmigiano Reggiano and you'll have a tasty pasta dish that can be prepared in 30 minutes.

Hungry Bear likes pasta dishes without tomato sauce because the individual flavors of the ingredients are not dominated by a tomato taste. Recently, we've made most of our pasta without tomato sauce. Our current favorite pasta is an orecchiette with hot Italian sausage.