Eating Dinner With My Family

Well tonight's dish was no wow. However, I feel honor bound to round up 1/2 a star on pure healthiness.  So it gets 3 stars.  I used a wild salmon and I think that I should have broiled it, but I hate to diverge from a recipe the first time I make it.  I picked this dish for it's lightness as we are all heavier and bloated from all the food we ate on vacation.  The flavors were ok, but like I said, not a wow.  The thing we liked the best was the Lemon Chia Seed dressing for our salad!  It was really amazing, and it went well with the fish.  In fact, I think a plain piece of broiled Salmon with this dressing would be better than the following recipe.  Of course the dressing has oil in it where the fish recipe doesn't.  If you are looking for a decent low cal recipe, than this will fit the bill, but if you are looking for really tasty food, go with a different salmon recipe, eat less of it, and fill up on salad. Salmon With Sriracha Sauce...

For our meatless Monday, I thought we would try these Spaghetti Squash Cakes. I had plenty of egg whites in the freezer and a spaghetti squash from Front Porch Pickings.  (Whenever a recipe calls for an egg yolk, I freeze the whites individually). We thought these were alright; nothing a good dose of fat and salt couldn't cure, actually, was our estimation. ;)  All joking aside, for the amount of calories you get, these were great, I think they would be an amazing substitute for English muffins in eggs Benedict. Now, I know, that is seriously upping the calories and fat, but the squash cakes would be seriously lowering the calories of the Benedict;).  We didn't dislike them, but there was no wow factor on the taste buds.  If I were going on just taste, I would give them a 2.5-3 but as they are so low calorie, they get a 3. Spaghetti Squash Cake   2 egg whites ¼ cup whole wheat flour (30g) 2-3 cloves of garlic About 1 ½ cups of cooked spaghetti squas...

I love salmon and pickles, but this one was just 3 stars.  I think the butter had possibility; I think it needed more pickles and some more mustard or some sort of flavoring.  I kept wanting to put more on my fish because I didn't taste anything but salmon and butter.  The bites that had a lot of pickle in it were better.  Still, I can think of at least a dozen truly tasty incarnations of the wild salmon I bought, all better use of my dollars spent on the fish.  Keep in mind it gets 3 stars only because salmon is inherently tasty and the combination of it with the pickle was somewhat novel. Grilled Salmon with Dill Pickle Butter 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened 1/4 cup finely diced dill pickles 1 teaspoon minced tarragon 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard Salt and freshly ground pepper Four 6-ounce salmon fillets, with skin Extra-virgin olive oil, for rubbing Light a grill. In a small bowl, blend the butter with the diced pickles, tarr...

I found this recipe in the to try file and it looked good, and was quick and easy. Perfect for meatless Monday. Now that mushrooms aren't a veto ingredient for my son, I was totally psyched to have this.  I searched for the source of this recipe, and i found it on the olive garden website. This wasn't where I got it from, but it read identical. While this wasn't an omg dish, I totally dug the heavy mushroom content.  I said 3.5. The boy, who still doesn't like mushrooms, said 2.5. My husband started out at rating it a 3, but when I saw him scraping his plate to get the last if the sauce, he agreed it was a 3.5.  I'm fully aware that my love and lack of mushrooms skewed me in favor of this dish. I made sure to stir the mushroom/walnut mixture. I was afraid it would burn the nuts. I think next time, I would start the mushrooms for a bit before I add the walnuts.  And the dish felt like it needed salt, until the end where it seemed all the parm was lurking, so I gu...

I don't know what to say about this dish.  Ok I do, it was way too salty to start with!  I feared it would be when I saw that there was a Lipton onion soup mix and stock reduced a bit to make the sauce. Now I adore French onion soup, so I was super excited to try it and I do like salty so I tried to not dislike it, and while I didn't love it, I liked it way better than the boys did.  I am deeming it fixable, but as is. it's a 2.5-3.  To begin with I would either use water instead of stock or add a lot more cream to tame the salt monster. I used Swiss cheese instead of mozzarella as Swiss is what goes on French onion soup.  I also didn't measure the cheese, i just put a liberal amount of cheese over the top. I think it's a cool idea that needs a tweak. (Apologies to its creator!)  I would love to try this again because I think it could be outstanding.  I hate to say anything uncomplimentary, and it was still pretty yummy despite my soaring blood pr...