Macaroni Monday- Comfort Food

This might be the easiest Macaroni Monday recipe ever, so I will spice it up with a few pics of John cooking fresh sardines.  

First, the macaroni!!  We are going super quick, easy, and comforting with Pastina!

While it cooked, I put frozen peas in the steamer basket. 

Topped with lots of butter and Parmesan Cheese?  Perfect!

To go with it, John made sardines.  

He fillets them and removes the head.

Then, he bakes them at 350* until they are done!

Does anyone know if I can use the head and bones in stock?  I thought I could, then, I thought I couldn’t because they are too oily… Now I have no idea!  Thoughts?

This post was shared on Fat Tuesday!

Two Quick and Easy Meals

Lately I have been coming up with quick and easy meals…. Probably because I have been busy with these two!

One quick meal is really just another sauce for my home made fettucine.  I took leftover tomato sauce and added in sauteed mushrooms and raw milk cream.  

It was a great and easy sauce, especially topped with some cheese!

 The second quick meal I made this week was roasted asparagus with fish.  For the asparagus, I mixed together olive oil, oregano, sea salt, and thyme.

 I bushed it on the asparagus and topped it with sliced lemons.

I roasted it, along with some fish, and it was quick and easy.

This post was shared with Traditional Tuesdays and the Hearth and Soul Hop!

Fish Cake Salad

We try to eat seafood at least once each week.  It is usually a simple baked fish.  Sometimes it is a shrimp stir-fry or clams with macaroni.  I have been wanting to try something different, so this time I was aiming for fish burgers.  But I didn’t have burger buns… so…. I put it on a salad!

To make the burgers, I baked up a white, somewhat flaky fish.

When it was cooked, I broke it up and mixed it with bread crumbs, egg, celery, onions, and whatever herbs I had on hand. 

I shaped them into patties and fried them in coconut oil.

In the meantime, I boiled up some beets for the salad.  When they were cool, I sliced them up.

I stumbled upon some walnuts when I cleaned out the freezer, so I toasted them up.

The rest of the salad was arugula, cranberry-cinnamon goat cheese with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  

When the fish cakes were crispy, I put them on the salad.  It was one of my best ideas yet!

This post was shared on Fight Back Friday!

Salmon, Spinach, and Beet Salad

This was one of the easiest and most delicious dinners I have made in a while.  Check this out!

First, I sliced up 3 golden beets and 3 regular beets.

Then, I arranged them on a making sheet and sprinkled them with olive oil and sea salt.

They went into the oven at 350* until they were lightly cooked.  

While the beets cooked, I cleaned up some baby spinach. 

The last prep step I had to do was chop up some spring onions for the salad dressing.

The spring onions were mixed with a 3:2 ratio of olive oil and rice wine vinegar and some sea salt.

When it was time for dinner, John cooked up some salmon and we assembled the salad.

 It was so delicious and easy, I could hardly believe it!!!

This post was shared on Simple Lives Thursday!

Super Easy, Fast and Yummy Veggie Side

Here at Crest Cottage we tend to food shop once every 2 weeks.  This is fine for most things because we cook so much from scratch.  The only thing we haven’t been able to master is getting our produce to last 2 full weeks.  Trying to balance the items on sale with the items that will last that long, all while staying under budget, is challenging.  We tend to supplement our fresh produce with frozen toward the end of that second week.  This week, I came up with this CRAZY easy veggie side to have with our salmon.  Check it out!

First, I toasted some slivered almonds in a pan.  

When they were brown, I added in a box of frozen succotash and a box of frozen peas to defrost.  

When they were warm, I added in some brown rice I had made before (I always make extra to have on hand for the week), the juice of 3 small lemons, and sea salt.

When it was all warmed through, it was served with salmon.

It was that easy!  Minimal effort, maximum taste.  John even went back for seconds of the side dish!  He never does that!!!  He couldn’t believe that it was just lemon juice and salt.  WIN!

This post was featured on Midnight Maniac’s Meatless Monday!

Teriyaki Salmon with Noodles

So, this recipe?  Kind of a fail.  Not a HUGE fail, like this or this… or this, but a fail nonetheless.  Part of the problem, I think, was the marinade.

You see, I was sort of following a recipe and it called for marinating salmon in teriyaki sauce with extra ginger and scallions.  I was happy because I wanted to finish up the teriyaki sauce we had since it had some ingredients I wasn’t crazy about. 

So, I threw the salmon on a dish and covered it with teriyaki marinade, some grated ginger, and some scallion-ish things.

Then, since I didn’t read the directions, I cooked it just like that.  I baked it.  In the oven.  With all the sauce.  

Then, I read the directions and found out that the marinade was supposed to turn into the sauce.  Oops.  Lesson learned?  Read the recipe and retain it before you begin. 

So, I had to use more of the teriyaki sauce to make the sauce itself.   I added ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar, scallions, and some garlic to the teriyaki and brought it to a simmer.  

 Next, the yummy step!  I shredded up some cabbage and carrots and added it to the sauce with peas!

Yayyyy!!!!!!!  Hahaha, sorry I was just excited about something working!  Anyway, that deliciousness got mixed together with some macaroni.

Ehh.  It was okay.  The sauce was too thin even after I thickened it up with some corn starch.  

Maple Salmon, Carrots, Pecans, and Cauliflower

I have been wanting to make maple roasted carrots since we got a great deal on maple syrup late last month.  It was on the menu plan for this week, and I couldn’t have been more excited.  Maple roasted Carrots and Maple Glazed Wild Alaskan Salmon.  HEAVEN!

Until I started to cut the carrots.

Looks like lots of carrots, right?  WRONG!

THAT is the total amount of carrots we had in the house at that moment.  SOMEONE (me) didn’t plan very well.  I knew I was going to add pecans to the carrots, and I hoped that would make it enough to be a side for me and John, and then a full lunch tomorrow for him. 

HAHAHAHA. No.  Not enough.

 I tossed it with the sauce anyway (Butter and Maple Syrup).

I searched around to see what else we had, and found a head of cauliflower.  We love that roasted, so I thought it should work. 

Boy oh boy did it ever!  I added some more butter/maple sauce, along with some sea salt.

 

After baking at 425 until it was all cooked up, it was perfect in taste and amount.  Served with Wild Alaskan Salmon glazed with some maple syrup, balsamic vinegar, and butter, it was wonderful.

(Sorry, I forgot to take a photo before we dug in.  Bad blogger!)

This post is also featured at Tasty Tuesdays at A Beautiful Mess, Full Plate Thursday at Miz Helen’s Country Cottage, and Real Food Wednesday at Kelly the Kitchen Kop!