Skinny BBQ Salmon

Recipe: BBQ Salmon

Source: Cook Yourself Thin Faster

Time: 20 minutes

Ease: 1

Taste: 7

Leftover Value: No leftovers!

Down the Drain or Keep in the Strainer: Keep it in the Strainer!

I don't ordinarily do the seafood cooking in our house.  The closest thing to seafood I ate growing up was fish sticks, so for starters, it is a foreign world to me.  In terms of cooking in general, it took a good year into our marriage for me to finally feel comfortable cooking chicken, something I ate frequently growing up, so you can imagine my fears of cooking seafood.

Those of you laid back, 'what's the problem?', type people, here is the problem.  Raw food.  Raw food smells strange, has a slimy texture, and constant warnings are made of what will happen if you should eat it.  When my hands have to touch and work with something of that nature, my mind goes a little wild.

But those are my problems, not yours.

Lucky for you.

As I've stated before, hubby lost quite a lot of weight.  I have been trailing behind him, and in my trailing I have been  looking for lighter recipes to use for dinner.  I found the "Cook Yourself Thin" and "Cook Yourself Thin Faster" books on a deep discount at Barnes and Noble and decided to buy them both.  This choice was mostly based on zucchini pasta that I saw in one of the books and was obsessively interested in.  It really was nothing based on the titles, because "Cook Yourself Thin Faster" confuses me just a little too much.  If I'm already cooking myself thin, I can't imagine how I could do that any faster.

Perhaps my thoughts are too limited.

The simplicity of the recipe is what gave me the guts to go ahead and try cooking salmon.  I know, it really shouldn't have been that big of an issue for me, but it was. 

All the ingredients, except for the salmon, are heated together in a small saucepan for five minutes.

I thought it made a very artistic picture.  We have the deep brown color of soy sauce and maple syrup in the background, swirled with the bright yellow of mustard, the island in the middle of the pot is non other than ketchup, which is sprinkled with the brown of cumin and the fiery red of chile powder.  A little garlic has made its way onto the island, while yet another clump has decided to try to cool waters of the mustard pool.

Sorry, that was the best way for me to incorporate that picture into this post.

After the mixture cooked, it was set aside to cool.  

The recipe said to either grill or cook the salmon in the oven.  Of course, hubby bought me a grill pan for my stove top after I made this, and I rebelliously didn't want to cook it the way the recipe said to in the oven, so I used my broiling pan instead.

It turned out pretty good.  The recipe says that the syrup "provides a rich sweetness" but it was just a little too rich for this pauper.  Next time I plan to use a little less syrup and just a pinch more of cumin. I served it with white rice (sorry, I still can't bring myself to make the healthy brown rice I have in my pantry) and kale.

Taco Party aka Birthday Party aka I Love My New Dishes Party

I've been slacking, I know it.  This blog post happened during the end of May, and I've made so many different meals since then.  Again, as is often my motto, I guess it's better late than never.

Every Sunday, my family has dinner together.  It's a nice tradition that we've tried our best to uphold throughout the years as our family has grown and changed.  Plus, it's very Italian of us to have a huge meal together in the late afternoon after we've been in church all morning.

It's very unItalian of us that we don't usually cook the meal ourselves.  

It is usually made by one of our surrounding pizza parlors or delis....and paid for by mom and dad.   (Note: If I didn't say it, they would have commented about it later.  I figure it's best to be open and honest right from the start.)

Hubby's birthday was on a Saturday this year.  I thought, as a way to celebrate hubby with the family and to reprieve my dad of having to buy lunch, I'd make lunch for the family.

I've done this before, as you might recall from this post: Chili Family Fun Day.  This was in the time before the Orange Strainer.  You'll also notice it was a time before I took pictures of every minute of my life.

Whenever I cook for my whole family I have to plot out my time table before hand so that my head will not explode from over thinking about what I need to get done.  I got smart this time and wrote my schedule on a huge post it note that I found the perfect place for in my kitchen as the madness began.

Before I tell of how crazy my kitchen was in the two hours before dinner time, let me start with the real reason for why I wanted to have my family over for dinner.  My hubby's birthday was a great facade for what this dinner was truly for.  Ultimately....and honestly, it was all about the dishes.

These beautiful dishes that I found at Pier 1 and absolutely needed to have in my life.
These beautiful dishes that hubby bought me eight of, then said, "Are you sure you don't want ten?"
To which I said, "No darling, eight is fine".  Then days later said, "Dearest darling, I think I want ten."
To which hubby then willingly drove me back and forth across the greater parts of Central Jersey in order to find stores that still had my number nine and ten dishes in stock.

I love him.

My appetizer for Taco Sunday aka Birthday Sunday (secretly named Fiesta Plate Sunday) was Katie's Roasted Corn Salad from Pioneer Woman's first book: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl.  I chose this because I could make most of it the night before and finish it off a few hours before dinner time and then not have to think about it any longer.

The hardest part about making this is cutting all the delicious veggies up into tiny scoopable pieces.

Scoopable.  Yup, it's a word.  I don't care what spell check says.

It's delicious, and super healthy which is a total bonus considering delicious and healthy do not compute in my brain.

I had a little under two hours to complete my main dish: Fried Chicken Tacos, also a Pioneer Woman recipe deeply loved by all that I have made it for.  The recipe is in her newest cookbook, but it's also on her website:  Click here and your thighs will hate me

I've made this recipe for a large crowd before all by my lonesome-ness and it worked.  This day I was fortunate because my big brother and his wife came by early and wanted to help.  I don't take an offer of help lightly, so after double checking that they really wanted to help I set them to right to work.

As I was chopping my chicken for the tacos, I had them shredding cheese, dicing tomatoes, scrubbing my kitchen floor....okay, maybe not that last one.

The most difficult part of Fried Chicken Tacos is the frying part.  Hubby is adverse to corn tortillas so that is the one substitution I make.  Typically, I will use the huge burrito style flour tortillas and go light on the chicken so that the taco can be loaded down with sour cream, cheese, lettuce, tomato, etc.  This time I used the tiny shells.

I created an assembly line with the servants, I mean helpers that I had.  Hubby was the chicken part of the assembly line.  He was a little generous with how much chicken he gave per taco and I think it through me off completely when it was time to fry them.

Usually they will come out perfectly crisp, utterly delicious, and simply fattening.  As I pulled them out of the hot oil, I realized they were a little on the softer side.  My time constraints and perfectionist mentality had a little battle and the time constraints won out.  Though I kept complaining that they weren't crisp enough, I didn't fret so much over it to force them to become crispier.

My sister-in-law was the third part of the assembly line (hubby=first, me=second).  After the tacos appeared close enough to done, I would grab then from the hot oil and plop them into a paper towel my she had laid out in preparation.  She was a good sport considering I had a blazing hot pocket of meat flying at her every four minutes or so.

My brother was the final step of the assembly line.  He would fill each taco with cheese, wrap them up in the paper towel, and then put them into a warm serving tray.

Deep fried chicken taco.

Warm, gooey cheese melted to perfection inside.  

I did not leave the kitchen without my share of battle scars.  The oil got out of control at one point and splattered all over, leaving my arms spotted with tiny polka dots of brown.  It was at that point that hubby grabbed my apron and made me wear it.

I always seem to forget that aprons are not pretty decorations for the kitchen walls but actually an additional cooking item.

When my dad arrived, he got to work blending up margaritas and pina coladas.  That blender in the background is my mom's from I'm assuming the year 1892.  I'm amazed at how all her appliances have lasted so long.  I lost my blender in the battle of 2012, when ice and a fork made mine magically crack.

I have yet to get over that loss.  

And no, I don't want to talk about it.

I'm all about serving up dinner buffet style.

While I was rushing around my kitchen splattering oil and tossing hot things at my sister-in-law, I also made two pounds of taco beef, rice and beans, and yummy cheese quesadillas.

It looks like so little spread out on my table, but it definitely didn't feel that way as it was being made.

Although I couldn't live with myself for the fact that my chicken tacos weren't the crisp crunchy delights that I know and love, my family put up a good front and said they were delicious.

I ate one and although my perfectionist side disagreed, my normal person side agreed.

I made delicious dessert, which aren't pictured so I will have to leave your imagination with thoughts of moist chocolate bundt cake, sweet strawberry shortcake trifle, and heavenly, creamy, and did I say heavenly?....Halo Farm ice cream.