These recipes are all from either the "America's Test Kitchen Complete TV Show Cookbook," or from ATK's "The Best Simple Recipes" cookbook--which has become a Dooley and Doolia FAVORITE!!!

Before going grocery shopping, we sit down together and look through our cookbooks to see what appeals to us that week. Then we write down the ingredients we need to buy, along with staples like milk and eggs. Then I go shopping. I must confess that this cuisine costs more than eating out of convenience boxes, but oh, it's so worth it!

Before our cooking adventure, we ate primarily pasta and rice dishes with frozen vegetables, and a lot of hot dogs. Now we feast on dishes like Chickpea Cakes with Cucumber-Yogurt Sauce, and Strip Steak with Ginger Butter Sauce. We had friends over to lunch yesterday and we served them a Dooley and Doolia Mardi Gras meal of Pork Cassoulet, and Muffuletta Panini sandwiches.

Our stated goal of this project was "cooking and healing together." I can say wholeheartedly that we're succeeding. When we cook together, we're united, happy, enjoying each others' company, and in the end we get to share a fabulous meal. Partly as a result of this project, Dooley is a changed man. He's been working hard toward his recovery in many other ways too, but our cooking together is part of it. I believe that our "project" has subtly morphed into a "way of life" now. And it's good!

When I got home from work a little after 4pm, the condo smelled wonderful! I put some rice in the rice steamer and when everyone else arrived home, we served up this delectable roast--that was literally falling off the fork as I tried to pull it out of the pot to slice. It was so tender that I couldn't really slice it--it just fell into shreds with the least pressure. We served it thus: a bed of rice, the meat, covered in the sauce, and topped with fresh chopped onions and tomatoes, plus a tad of shredded cheddar cheese. It was fantastic!

Then for dessert, Doolia made another apple crisp (from Cook's Illustrated September/October 2010 issue) made from giant Jonagold apples our neighbors had given us. We invited the neighbors to join us in dessert, and we had a merry time celebrating Dooley's birthday.

We used our deep dish pizza pan instead of two 9" cake pans, and added ham and onion toppings. Working together, it wasn't too difficult to make. But in the end, the family unanimously agreed that the ATK Deep Dish Pizza recipe is better tasting than the Chicago-Style Deep Dish Pizza. We actually prefer the fresh tomato slices over the tomato sauce. The kids thought that having the cheese under the sauce (Chicago-style) was too weird. And we all preferred the chewy bread of the ATK pizza over the biscuit-style crust of the Chicago style pizza. So we're glad we tried something new, but in the end, the ATK cookbook triumphs again.

This recipe calls from bone-in, skin-on split chicken breasts, and medium-sized red skin potatoes. You basically brown the chicken in the skillet before putting it in the oven to cook the rest of the way, and then cook the cut up red-skin potatoes in the skillet. The final step is to whip up a dressing of lemon juice, olive oil and spices to serve atop everything.

We steamed some farmers market cauliflower to serve alongside, and everyone put the lemon dressing over that too. Another winning recipe, and worthy of a celebratory dinner! Mmmmm!

You may see our daughter's wonderful sculpture on Deviant Art.com. She won a "Daily Deviation" award for this piece.

In this recipe, you prepare the coconut frosting first, although you don't mix in the toasted pecan pieces until just before you frost the cake. It's pretty simple, although you must cook it in a saucepan before adding the coconut, and then you must refrigerate it for a couple hours.

The cake calls for both dark chocolate and Dutched cocoa powder. I used Ghiradelli 70% chocolate. The Dutch process gives cocoa a much richer flavor and darker color than non-Dutched. None of the regular grocery stores I shop have Dutched cocoa so I bought Dutch cocoa powder from my bulk food store in town, "By the Pound."

The other ingredients are typical cake ingredients--flour, sugar, eggs, salt, and leavener. I used my two spring-form pans to bake the cakes so they came out with vertical sides. When the cakes were cooled thoroughly, I sawed each layer in two with a Wilton Cake Leveler tool. It helps you cut perfectly even, level layers.

The last simple steps are to mix the toasted pecan pieces into the frosting, and spread the frosting between each layer, and on the top. As soon as it was finished, we dug in and had ourselves a party!

This German Chocolate Cake is a gastronomical delight.

But guess what? He ate it, and so did youngest daughter who said, "I like everything except the cucumbers." (Hee hee! There are no cucumbers in it.) And Dooley requested that we make it for dinner again the next evening. Now that's real proof if the fabulous flavor of this casserole.

This dish requires a lot of slicing. I just used my chef's knife rather than a mandoline or the slicing blade in my food processor. It's not as quick, but when you factor in the clean-up time for either of these tools, I think it's a wash. A knife cleans up in 5 seconds--either of the other tools take quite a bit longer.

Anyway, the recipe is primarily zucchini and summer squash, onions, tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese, and a slice of white bread, shredded. The end result is out of this world delicious. I just know it's going to be a family favorite. And a healthful one at that!

One of the secrets to success to this recipe is to parboil the peppers before you fill them. That way they're partially cooked before they go into the oven, and there's no bitter overtone to the peppers when they're done. And because of the shorter baking time, the tops toast, rather than burn.

We substituted ground turkey for ground beef--a new kick we're on to reduce our fat intake. And it was fantastic!! This recipe is a real winner. So much so that we're going to make them again tomorrow night instead of pizza! Do you believe it? Well, actually, our youngest will be eating pizza, but I swear the rest of us would rather eat these delicious stuffed peppers. Wow.

Now I've made gazpacho before in a food processor. It turned out tasty but not very pretty. There's no picture for this recipe, but they assert that it's worth the effort to hand-cut the ingredients for this cold soup. So after 15 minutes of dicing everything in quarter-inch dice, I put everything together in the serving bowl and mixed it up. ATK was right--it's so elegant looking! And fresh tasting and so yummy! I added a dollop of sour cream in the middle of each bowl, which was something they did with Gazpacho in my other cookbook. My vegetable-averse daughter didn't like it, but the rest of us ate it all up in a day. No leftovers for work tomorrow, sadly. But another first-rate recipe and a happy meal for Dooley and Doolia!

It is hot today--in the mid 80's--and on the way home from work Doolia ran a mile and a half and walked another half-mile in the heat. So I (Doolia) was overheated and didn't want to do anything for a while when I got home. Both daughters were away, and at 6pm, Dooley was hungry and ready to cook. He brought the cookbook in and we looked at recipes to see what we could make with ingredients on hand. The Skillet Tamale Pie exactly fit the bill. We read it over and it looked pretty easy to make.

So we defrosted some ground turkey and while Dooley cooked it up with the minced onions, garlic, chili powder, and diced canned tomatoes, Doolia mixed up the cornbread (from scratch, mind you). Since we don't have a frypan that can go into the oven, we used a casserole dish. Dooley mixed in the shredd chedd and cilantro, and we poured the cornbread mix over the top. And into the oven it went. Shortly thereafter, we were eating, and laughing over how simple and delicious this recipe is. It's definitely going on our 'repeats' lists. I think next time maybe we'll add some corn to the meat mixture.

This recipe, made entirely from scratch, surprisingly calls for an idaho potato and no tomato sauce. What kind of pizza is this, we wondered.

To add to our confusion, we had shopped at three stores and couldn't find a deep dish pizza pan anywhere. (Finally, we were able to order one at GFS, but it won't be in for 2 weeks.) So we looked around the kitchen to find a suitable substitute, and settled on using two traditional pie plates.

We boiled the potato, grated and measured it, then added to it the flour, yeast, oil, and water for the pizza dough. Even with the extra flour that the recipe says you may add if the dough is too wet, the mixture was incredibly loose and sticky. But we trusted the book and let it rise. And rise again, and finally we put it into the well oiled pie plates. On such loose dough, there was no hope of it hugging the sides of the pans or creating any sort of lip to hold the toppings. After a third rise, we "docked" the dough with a fork. Docking means poking a lot of holes through the dough, thereby preventing big air bubbles from forming on the bottom.

The crusts get pre-baked before any toppings go on. When they came out of the oven, we arranged over the top thinly sliced tomatoes that had marinated for a while with freshly cut basil and minced garlic (plus a little salt and pepper). Then shredded part skim mozzerella cheese, and because my family are meat lovers, we added pepperoni slices and some crumbled bacon. These two ingredients were not in the recipe, but ended up as nice additions. And finally, a sprinking of freshly grated parmesan cheese. And into the oven again until the mozzerella was melted.

They turned out utterly fantastic. So we'll make this one again. On the weekend, though, because it takes over 3 hours from beginning to end. But it's totally worth it!

We did progress in our other goal of improving Dooley's health especially, and Doolia's annual physical proved that we are both headed in the right direction. And the further goal of improving our relationship is very much on track too. We feel closer than we have for years!

So what did we cook this past week? The baby step was on Monday, Memorial Day: We grilled corn on the cob. It turned out perfectly done and was so sweet and had the beautiful grill marks all around. And was the perfect accompaniment to the grilled cheeseburgers. MMmmmmmmMMM!

We're still on our Sushi--California Roll kick, so we made those for dinner twice. They're quick, easy, and healthy!

And we revisited four favorite recipes, Cincinnati Chili served "Five Way", Simple Pot Roast, Chicken Tikka Masala, and Doolia made the multi-grain bread. Everything turned out picture perfect and so delicious!

Dooley commented to me that he enjoys cooking way better than eating out. The advantages, as he sees them are: 1) it makes our condo smell great! 2) If we're making something that takes a long time, we can do other stuff while it's cooking/roasting/baking. We're not tied to a chair in a restaurant. 3) It's much cheaper to buy and cook it ourselves. 4) No tipping is required. 5) If you're thirsty, you just go get something to drink! No waiting for the waiter. 6) You know just how fresh the food is, and that it's been handled safely and cooked properly. 8) You know exactly how much fat and sugar go into what you eat--and can trim those down to suit your own needs and taste. And 7) we're always happy and chatting while we cook. It's just so fun!!

So of all the recovery strategies we've tried over Dooley's 12 year illness, this one is the one that's really working. It's such a blessing!

In The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook recipe for Smothered Pork Chops, 'smothered' means covered generous amounts of onion gravy, and sprinkled with crispy bacon bits.

The pork turned out fork-tender, and even our finicky eater liked the onion gravy.

For the roasted carrots, we used half a pound of organic carrots which we peeled and left long, rather than using the short pre-peeled snack variety. The long carrots are more elegant looking. Everyone wanted a second helping so next time we'll make more. They're so simple to to make! There's no excuse not to have 'em with every dinner.

What makes them so good? It can't just the the fresh ingredients, because any old bakery (mom-and-pop, or big commercial ones) uses fresh ingredients. It must be freezing the butter and the delicate handling of the dough. ATK tells you just how much to mix the dough--they call it a "shaggy ball," before you dump it out onto your counter and then knead it--just six times. And then you fold it a special way that adds flakiness, and evenly distributes the blueberries without crushing them.

Dooley says this is hands down the best recipe in the book (so far)! And we have made dozens of spectacularly delicious meals already. I think this recipe alone is worth the price of the book.