Fissues

Well seeing as it was tofuesday we got a little grief for not having the other, other white meat. However since the salmon was scintilating and the rest of the grub was great we managed to get away with it.
The Mrs. found a whole sockeye salmon at the store and decided to cut it up into steaks and fry it teriyaki style. Apparently there was some miso involved in this operation. I was not privy to all the details but the end result was awesome. There are also a lot of leftovers so either I make a pig of myself later tonight or we get a second meal out of it. The salad was lettuce, red pepper, and feta cheese with the red onion vinaigrette. Awesome. The miso soup was made with some special ice cubes the wife had made and had some of the chinese cabbage along side the sea weed. Great and Great. The white rice was a fluffy understated cloud from which the rest of the meal could be properly viewed. In total this meal was so great that I started thinking something. I started thinking we need a notebook and pen in the kitchen. After eating a meal which worked as well as this one I am even more disappointed by last nights mediocre curry. I have to start using the measuring spoon and writing things down so that when I hit on something that works I can remember it and come back and make it again. I really enjoy experimenting but not being able to retrace my steps when I want to is frustrating. A photographic memory sounds pretty good about now but I think I will have to settle for a notebook and one extra step while cooking. If it works out and I do manage to capture some lighting in a bottle (nothing like a cliche to hammer home a point, another one right there) then I plan to share on the blog in full cook book style. The most important word in that last sentence was plan. Don't hold your breath.

In other news I fed the little guy tonight. Mostly ended up on my hand as he is real big on grabbing the spoon and putting it in his mouth himself. Is it just me or is he looking much bigger these days. Hard to tell on a day to day basis but now that its on the blog it feels kind of alarming. Where did our little baby go?

Light eating.

Well with Miso soup and pan fried salmon you have to be feeling like a culinary king. Not to mention the steamed veggies. Yes I ate very well this evening. Only, I had most of a hollow chocolate Easter egg from my kids left over Easter candy right after getting in the door. Bad me.

Note to self. Next year buy the kids chocolate yourself and limit others to small gifts(under ten dollars per kid), not chocolate . Really though it was a great dinner. However, the picture could probably be recycled. I mean we have pan fried salmon with rice and miso, sometimes the veggies are steamed, sometimes stir fried, sometimes salad. The daughter was raving about the garlic slices that were fried up with the salmon. It was good. I'm just saying it wasn't inspiring. Maybe I am just feeling the second year blahs. Everything seems to be repeating. Didn't I already say that.

Two types of fish.

A friend of ours came over today to help us make Tai-Yaki. This is a classic Japanese baked treat. In the middle is a sweet bean paste. Our friend brought back this cast iron tai-yaki maker from Japan and came over to set it up today. It was a lot of fun.Then for dinner we had marinated salmon. The marinade was concocted from lemon, soy-sauce, dill and sugar. The wife kind of poached it in a fry pan with the marinade. It turned out very well. The salad had an oil and vinegar basic dressing and we nice and simple. The wife really enjoyed the straight up white rice. She usually makes a mixture of unpolished and polished rice but this evening she went easy living and made it with just white. Good times.

Finally we have a picture of the babe at a month old. Can you believe it has been a month. I can't.

The return of Monday

So I know things have been a little suspect as of late. Weak dinners with no thematic substance. Whole days missing off the calendar. But it was back to things as usual today. My son was playing with the camera so I ended up with a short video clip of dinner. Then the batteries died so I couldn't actually take a picture. However, things were back to normal in more ways than one. Dinner was a feast for all of the senses. From the heat of the miso soup wafting up over my face, to the succulent taste and smell of the salmon cooked with dill it was awesome. The squash omellete/quiche was exquisitely sweet, the wife actually said, "taste this its amazing," as I walked in the door. When you have a chance to leave a squash out in the cold I find it really brings out the sugars. The green salad was served with our old standby vinegar and onion dressing and the sharp sweet flavour offset the more muted tones of the rest of the meal wonderfully. We had frozen raspberries for dessert.

Interesting story related to me by my wife today. The Mrs. is starting to feel like she is seven months pregnant and has taken to having little naps downstairs by the fireplace. My son, with his new more highly refined reasoning skills, has taken to foraging for food up stairs when he figures she is trying to catch forty winks. His favourite targets are the frozen fruit in the freezer (right at easy grabbing level), apples in the fruit drawer (he is now tall enough to reach one of his hooks over the drawer) or candy from the cupboard (you know the chair as a ladder then standing on the counter routine), usually some of those mints the daughter bought a week or two back of some dentyne chewing gum. Between this new found resourcefulness and his increasing capacity to act like a marauding transformer from another galaxy he is a handfull, as the boarder puts it, "he sure is a boy."

Fisherole.

Its a casserole with fish. Tonights fish of choice was Salmon. It was baked with a white sauce, cheese and soy sauce as the dressing. The official word from the wife was , potato layer, turnip layer, white sauce and other seasonings, potato, turnip, white sauce, then covered in salmon steaks and more cheese. Right up my alley. The rice was a stir fried mixture which I also sampled at lunch. Mmmmm. The shot of summer on the left is greek salad. The amazing part is that the mini tomatoes are still from our garden. They have kept pretty well in the cold storage even though it has been over a month. The wife says the yellow ones are starting to get a little soft so we need to finish them up. However, the boarder said that they tasted like real tomatoes. Which indeed they do. Managed to get a run in this afternoon. Ah the endorphin rush is pretty heady stuff. I can feel the itch coming back. The question is whether or not I will have the energy to scratch it. Only so many hours in a day.
I hope you all enjoy your hump day tomorrow. I just got over mine this afternoon.

In other news the son was special helper today at his preschool. Very important stuff. We are so happy with the teacher at his pre school. She also taught our daughter and the teacher does such a great job of having good expectations and positively reinforcing them. We feel pretty blessed in that regard. I am sure there are thousands of great pre-school teachers, but we are really happy with ours. Money well spent. She should really charge more. People would pay it.

Dueling Salmon

So we had two salmon fillets this evening and we couldn't really decide what to do with them. So we did something different with each. One was salt, pepper, and freshly grated garlic. The other had dill and corriander. Tin foil pouch for each and then slapped on the bbq for 6 mins. The wife had whipped up some really creamy mashed potatoes. She had also stirred up some fried veggies. Nice light fare. We actually didn't need to bbq this evening because the wind storm today kept the temp down. Very pleasant. We walked down to the tasty treat after dinner and all had an ice-cream treat. A wonderful day to spend this the Tenth of July. Now the kids are in bed and soon I will be too. Ah summer.

Pickles?

This evenings dinner was salmon, corn on the cob, coleslaw and rice with pickles. The salmon was fried with garlic, probably our favourite way to do salmon, easy and tasty. The corn was done to perfection. Cooked yet still juicy and fresh. Our coleslaw was made with the fresh dill we have and man does that every bring out the flavour buds. But this evening I want to talk about the pickles. I always thought of pickles as those green cucumbery things. Some sweet, some dill end of story. However, in Japan they pickle just about everything. These little brown numbers are kind of a tangy sweet combination and they go just beautifully with rice. Which leads me to a gripe I have. When living in Japan I was often chastised for putting soy sauce on my rice. Rice is too good tasting on its own and the soy sauce spoils the flavour. Yet they have hundreds of different rice toppers, from pickles to something called furi kaki. How can I be the bad guy here. Everyone else is putting something on their rice to liven it up. Why was I, the soy sauce guy, left out. Perhaps someone can explain it to me cause I don't get it. I am away for dinner again tomorrow night. We have our Annual General Meeting. Can't wait to see what will be had.

She wanted them Saladized

So this evenings original plan was pan fried salmon, mashed potatoes, with stir fried zucchini and green beans. We (the parents) make these plans on a Sunday evening when the world is calm and the little ones are safely asleep dreaming of horsey rides (I always wondered why the knees are the first things to go). What we don't consider are the whims of the little people when it comes time to prepare the meal. And lets face it. If they want to eat vegetables in a certain way it would be parental suicide to try and force them to do something different. So we had potato salad, really a close cousin of the mash, instead. I noticed the zucchs morphed into cauliflower. As of press time we don't have any details, I am guessing it was a crunch time shopping decision. Dad loves zucchini, kids love cauliflower. Once again my wife made the prudent decision and I get the shaft. Wait. Did I really call coming home to this dinner the shaft? Sometimes I have to give my head a shake. I am living the dream. And yes, I try to say thanks for it everyday.

Staff meeting tomorrow but I want to make it home for dinner. Wouldn't you.

Pasta Casserole

Well I went with my own idea for a three cheese pasta casserole. The three cheeses were cheddar, emmental and romano. The wife whipped up her basic white sauce from milk, butter and flour and then we added in the cheese. The onions and tuna were fried up. The pasta was boiled. In the casserole dish she laid out the pasta, covered it with broccoli and cauliflower, the onion and tuna mix, and then poured the cheese sauce over the whole thing. The kids said that it was a little sharp for them, I think that was the emmental. For a first attempt at our own recipe I think it went really well. The accompanying vegetable was tomato and cucumber slices with a sprinkling of vinegar. Once the garden comes in this is one of our favourite dishes. From about mid July to mid September the kids probably eat this at least once a day. I am still way under the weather. I actually didn't go in to work today.

Tomorrow: BBq hamburgers with baked potatoes.

Roots of the Ocean

On a personal note, I am always a little surprised by how well I feel the day after having fish or eating vegetarian food. Although I invariably have a larger appetite the next day I feel more energetic and less heavy. (the scale likes it too) Last night we had pan fried salmon and spinach with garlic and an almost whipped potato salad. It was refreshing and light. The garlic spinach was out of this world. I think there may have been some soy sauce in the mix. The Salmon was relatively expensive for a single meal but as long as we only have it once a week it should be doable. As we ate dinner I commented that we should move to the West coast of Vancouver Island. We could fish and farm and be truly self sufficient. The wife said she would be the fisherperson until I mentioned that she always gets sea sick. So I will fish and she will garden. I wonder, can you grow watermelon in Tofino. My guess would be no. So that leaves us here in the GF. It could be much worse.