Go Fish

When we got home with our fish I realized I was going to have to cook it.

Fish is one of those things I have no idea how to cook.

I make salmon the same way every time.  And that’s generally the only fish we eat in this house.

I read about 45659408 recipes for trout before I made dinner out of our catch.

Then I ignored all the recipes and made up my own.

It was a little garlic, a little wine, a little butter, a little lemon juice.

And honestly, it was fantastic.

I really like tarter sauce.  What I can I say, I’m 5.  We didn’t have any in the house though.  So I made some.  Turns out it’s basically just mayo and pickles.  Health food my friends, health food.

Most recipes called for chopped onion, but we were out, so I used onion powder.

(Wanna know a secret?  Since my husband hates onions I sometimes use onion powder in our dinners.  If he can’t see it, he doesn’t know it’s there.  Flavor obviously isn’t as good, but it’s better than nothing)

The cat was very curious about this.  Our cat loveeees tuna-when I open a can I pour out the water for her to eat.  But I’ve realized that since I put pickles with my tuna when she smells pickles she thinks she’s getting a snack

I made a turkey sandwich with pickles last week and poor little bear was pacing the kitchen trying to find the tuna.

After dinner I was craving dessert.

A normal person would go get something.

But I wanted a WARM dessert.  It HAD to be warm.

What did I do?

I walked down the street and found a blackberry bush.

Totally normal, right?

Blackberries are a weed here.  Which means there’s free fruit all over the place.  God wants Oregonians to have pie.

Or, in the case of this night, crisp.  Which is easier and faster than pie.

I cooked up the berries with some frozen raspberries from my parent’s house I had hanging out in the freezer

Added some sugar, added some cornstarch, and made the crumb topping.

And homemade whipped cream.  Totalllly normal.

I love crisps because this sucker took under an hour, including berry picking.  Almost instant gratification.

Do you cook fish?  I always feel like we ought to eat more in our house than we do.  But I have no clue what to do with it.

What’s an easy dessert you love?  I’ve totally been making crisps since college.  Or teddy bear toast (toast with butter, sugar, and cinnamon), not going to lie.

Home Grown

Hope you had a wonderful 4th!  We just got back from surreal america, doing some last bits of wedding planning because it’s LESS THAN TWO WEEKS till we’re married!!

Thankfully, we’ve got some good weather coming up, so I can distract myself with yard work.

If you look at my yard, you can tell I have a green thumb

Weeds are green guys.  They’re green.

I’ve never had a full real yard in Portland before, so I’m learning as I go.  One thing I learned-if you wait to try and kill the weeds till it’s not raining, you’ll have a weed JUNGLE to kill.

Also, next year we need to order bark sooner.  We were going to, which would keep the weeds down for the most part, but we kept putting it off and now…

Well, there’s a weed jungle.  I feel like bark would be no match for that.

Some of my yard is actually growing useful things though!

See these babies??

I grew them!  I’ve had strawberry plants for a few years, but this year there’s enough to actually make a whole dessert from them (as opposed to “oh look, two strawberries” thing I had going on for the past few years)

Also growing?

Peas!

When I was planting the peas (in February!) I was worried they wouldn’t sprout, so I planted a tonnnn.  My worries were unfounded, although I should’ve spread them out more.  Whoops.  Next year I’m planting more.

We’ve been cooking them up in their pods for stir-fry

And I shelled and boiled some for dinner recently, along with roasted fingerlings and a chicken sausage

See how there’s two?

That’s because I forgot what I was doing, and overcooked the first ones.  I wanted the fiance to understand the goodness of fresh peas, so I went out, picked more, and made those perfect.  Then salvaged the overcooked ones by adding tons of garlic and pepper.  If you can’t have the texture right, at least make ’em tasty…

(The fiance loveddd the fresh ones-they’re fantastic)

And my laziest gardening?

Basil.  Thank you giant plants at Trader Joes for $3.  But I’m keeping it alive, so it’s like I grew it, right?

Fresh basil is heaven.  I want it in everything.  Like Friday’s breakfast:

Strawberries from the garden + baby quiche made with fresh basil (there’s more inside, but I like the little pop of basil on top), bacon, and mozzarella.  Love it.

Do you have a garden?

A few of my favorite things…

I hope you’re having a good weekend!  Today we’re driving up to Mendocino County where the fiance’s mom lives!  If you haven’t yet, don’t forget to try and guess where I’m going for thanksgiving!

I love a lot of foods.  Sometimes, when I’m trying to find something to snack on, I look sad, and explain to my fiance “I just want to eat all the food!  I don’t want to choose!”

But there are some foods I love that I’ve realized I almost never eat… Here are a few, and why.

Butter Chicken.

Holy crap do I love this stuff.  But the problem is mostly I just love the sauce. On white rice.  What’s in the sauce?  Spices, tomatoes, a ton of butter, and lots of heavy cream.  Delicious death.  Death I could eat my weight in.

Olives

I adore black olives.  Love love love them.  But the fiance hates them, and I always feel like I waste half the can.

Artichokes

My problem here is that I only love them the way my parents make them.  They cook them with tons of yummy herbs and spices and they’re magically delicious.  I’ve had them made by other people and they suck.  Plus, they seem like a lot of work to make and, again, the fiance won’t eat them.

Raspberries

I grew up with raspberry bushes in my backyard. We’d get told to go eat some all the time, so that they wouldn’t get wasted.  (And my mom made killer pies with them).  But, apparently when you don’t have a raspberry bush they are crazy expensive.  I had no idea how good I had it as a child.  No idea.  And it bugs me like crazy to have to pay so much, so I don’t.

Reduced fat, Sour Cream and Onion Pringles

It has to be reduced fat, and it has to be sour cream.  I love these things.  But, how I eat Pringles is not cost effective.  See, I’m not a huge fan of the chips.  Don’t like ’em.  But I adore that powdery flavoring on them.  For some reason, I swear the reduced fat has more of it. So, when I buy them I will seriously lick the flavoring off, and throw away the chips.  This is problematic as I feel like I’m wasting, plus people judge when you lick chips and throw them away.  To avoid the wasting and judging, these don’t get purchased.

So, there you have some of my loves that I never get… What do you love to eat, but avoid buying?

Happy Friday

I’m glad I’m not the only mix user!  Some of you mentioned Mac and Cheese in a box…  I gotta say, I do homemade sometimes, but seriously some days those mixes are just so good!

When he got home the fiance promptly ate two cookies.  These babies are good.  The sea salt gives them a little something extra, you know?

We had enchiladas for dinner last night-the fiance’s were chicken, and mine were chicken and squash

I adore squash.  I don’t get what the fiance’s deal is.

Plus black beans with garlic, cilantro, and a little bit of sour cream, and salad with tomatoes corn and avocado.  I was in love with this salad.  Corn on salad is a wonderful thing

We had the dessert of champions

(That bottle if wine is ridiculously big.  Why we need 1.5 L of wine when the fiance prefers beer is beyond me, but he bought it…)

I ate one cookie.  I think the fiance had 3.

And now I’m munching on this

Plain chobani with blueberries, flax, and honey

I discovered somehow we have no clean spoons (Forks?  Knives?  Sure.  Spoons?  Not so much) so I’m using this huge spoon to eat with

And then I’ve got to go to ANOTHER interview.  That makes 4 this week.  And I’ve got one scheduled next week.  I hate interviews.  But I would like money… It’s a trade off.

Oh!  And I just found out one of my best friends from middle school is coming to Portland at the end of the month! I haven’t seen her in TEN years-she moved to Kansas, and now she’s in med school in Texas.   She’s excited for Portland.  As she should be.

Do you keep in touch with friends you haven’t seen forever?  I’m honestly terrible about it a lot of the time.

The view from my mouth…

Oh man I was productive today!

I crossed off my ENTIRE to do list!

And I found these beauties in my garden

And I had this deliciousness for lunch:  (the view from my mouth 🙂 )

Here’s what it was:  flat out wrap, black beans, taco seasoned beef, onion, tomatoes, olives, avacado, and a little bit of cheese:

With some sour cream (mmmm I love sour cream) and a side of grapes.  So tasty!  I left the tomatoes in fairly big pieces, which meant extra tomato-y goodness whenever they were in a bite.  There wasn’t a lot of cheese, because that’s all that was shredded, and I wasn’t motivated enough to do anymore!

I went out berry picking and got TEN cups of berries.  Check out these bushes!

And the thorn scratch on my foot…  don’t wander through thorny bushes in flip flops!

On the way to get the fiance, I stopped at Trader Joe’s.   I’m amused at my purchases:

Basil, wine, cheese, garlic, greek yogurt.  It’s about all you need to live, right?

Check out Tina’s cookie Friday post! So many good eats, I love it!

We’re grilling pizza tonight.  What’s your favorite thing to grill?