Sweetest Day

Just so you know, I'm not always looking for the easiest, most processed way to cook dinner for my family. On Sweetest Day, I ventured to my favorite website for recipes in search of one for salmon. This is another one of those meals that we had a 'kid dinner' and then an adult dinner after they were in bed - in celebration of Sweetest Day (and the 13th anniversary of our first date!) The kids DO eat salmon, but they missed out on this meal.

I love this site because it is composed of recipes submitted by individuals, but also with a great system for reviews and ratings.

I selected a salmon and creamy dill sauce recipe. I'm not a huge fan of dill, but there were many recipes on the site that paired salmon and dill, so i figured they must know something I didn't.

So I followed the recipe (for the most part!) by putting the salmon fillet on a sheet of aluminum foil and sprinkling it with lemon pepper and garlic salt. Then I topped it with some thin slices of onion, lemon and some pats of butter and closed it all up for baking.

While it baked, I mixed up the creamy dill sauce - comprised of mayo, sour cream, dill, finely chopped onions, garlic salt, and a tad bit of horseradish.


After initial baking, the salmon was broiled for a bit to finish it off.

I served it with wild rice and green beans and it was INCREDIBLE. Hurray for another successful recipe search on the web!

Everybody loves pie!

And Shepherd's Pie is no different! This fantastic all-in-one meal is SO easy, it's crazy - and very tasty to the hubby and the yahoos. It hearkens us back to England and our pub-fare days (though we would typically order the bangers and mash or fish and chips, the shepherd's pie is good, too!)

So here's how i make it...

Many of the above pictured ingredients COULD be made from scratch - nice, creamy, homemade mashed potatoes...gravy leftover from last night's pot roast...and for that matter, last night's pot roast. I, however, VERY rarely cook like that. This meal is much more processed (and I'm sure high in sodium), but it's easy and it's not fast food.


So - a box (or two) of steak-um like meat things. Cook these up in a frying pan. I have made this with ground beef before, but we prefer the steak-ums.

This becomes layer Number One in your baking dish.

Layer Number Two is your frozen vegetables. I've used the carrot/pea/corn/green bean mixture, which is the most popular, or just corn and green beans. There's some out there with lima beans in them (which i despise) but I'm sure would be enjoyable to some of you.

Layer Number Three is the gravy. I have been known to add TOO much gravy, and then it ends up boiling over. Really one and a half of these jars would be perfect.

Make up the mashed potatoes according to the directions on the box. Sometimes I've gotten fancy with how I put Layer Number Four on there - with my Pampered Chef Accent Decorator, making pretty little swirls. Sometimes I just spread (and I use that term loosely) the potatoes on the top - it's not easy, I don't recommend that method. On this night, I used a scoop, which worked beautifully.

Now it's ready to hit the 425 degree oven for about half an hour, til it looks like this.

And because it's got your meat, veggie and starch all in one, you can serve with just a salad, or a breadstick and feel good about yourself. So that's what I did.

yellow

Sometimes it's fun to plan a meal that centers all around one color. My middle school home ec teacher, Mrs. Johnson, would disagree strongly with me, as part of our grade included whether we had a good variety of colors on our plate. But for meals with young children, it's fun to make them all one color sometimes, too!

So I present to you, our 'yellow' meal:

Our 'ingredients' - fresh pineapple spears, direct from Hawaii. Even Lilly, who doesn't eat a lot of fruit, and really doesn't like pineapple, ate several of these. Most of you reading this blog will probably have to settle for the Meijer version of this fruit...shameful.

Pork tenderloin - I make many of these, in a variety of ways. This particular one was a Meijer marinated version that I baked. The kids enjoy pork quite a bit, regardless of the flavor (though Jason's favorite by far is slow-cooked with saurkraut).

Our side dish tonight was "Cheesy Rice". I typically use Minute Rice because even though rice isn't hard to cook, Minute Rice takes just minutes...duh. For this recipe I mixed in several slices of processed cheese...you can use small cubes of Velveeta, too. Then I sprinkled it with parsley to make it look like I'm a fancy cook. A fancy cook that makes Minute Rice.

And finally, for our vegetable this evening, I present the ever popular corn.

What color will your meal tonight be??