It could be worse

A friend posted this BuzzFeed article, 37 People Who Are Worse At Cooking Than You. I feel much better about myself today. (I love BuzzFeed for these kinds of lists they put together, especially ones about happy corgis.)

Valentines Day dinner

Last night, our house menu included: balsamic glazed roasted beets; mashed sweet potatoes with maple syrup; pork chops with blackberry port sauce; fresh cucumber salad; wine; and chèvre stuffed in raspberries for dessert.  

Beets ready to roast!

I started the beets early, and I'd say that part counts toward my goal of cooking slower, because beets take forever to roast. Then I stuffed the raspberries and put them in the fridge. Since hubby wanted to cook with me, I waited until he got home to start the rest. We got the sweet potatoes going, and then he started on the pork. He did such a great job making the sauce, and I think the pork was my favourite part of the meal! I used a quick dressing for the cucumber salad. We also had Tilia malbec wine. 

Our supermarket didn't have blackberry juice, so I bought a blend, but saw later that the pork sauce recipe recommends blueberry juice if blackberry isn't available. I don't think it mattered too much. The sweet potatoes added a Thanksgiving feel to the meal and were so delicious. I didn't put very much maple syrup in, but I think that can be added until desired preference is reached. 

Delicious!

The only part that we didn't perfect was the balsamic glaze for the beets. We either had it too hot or left it on too long because it turned into balsamic rock candy immediately after we poured it over the beets and it cooled. So, unfortunately, not much of it made it onto the beets. Good thing beets are delicious on their own! 

A display in honor of the day. 

We made the biggest mess our kitchen has ever seen, I think, and it was totally worth it (even the rock candy stuck to our pans). We've decided that port, onions and berries are some of our favourite foods. I'm so thankful for a great meal and a sweet, foodie, adventurous husband to share my life and love! 

Wine and candles to set the mood!

The opposite of slow

Tonight's dinner was happily thrown together. After a lovely meeting at Southern Sun with a friend of mine for Stout Month, I was a little late for dinner. But my husband, awesome as he is, got it started while I was on my way home. I had queued up rice, asparagus and salmon, so I already had a plan...sort of.

Growing up, my favourite meal was barbecued salmon, a fresh salad with avocado, and fresh baked sourdough bread. I would spread butter and smash avocado on the bread, and smear ranch dressing from my salad all over my salmon. My mom really knew how to barbeque salmon and cooking it that way basically meant that no extra seasoning was required. Or maybe she just didn't want to and since the family was satisfied, why change it? Whatever. It is seriously delicious that way.

But we don't have a barbecue or grill, so we don't have a way to get that excellent smoky flavour into our fish. On my drive home I realized baked salmon was going to be pretty boring if I didn't use my spice rack. A quick search for "basic salmon recipe" saved the day. I found this blackened salmon recipe from Real Simple (without even trying to get something from there again) and whipped it together while hubby worked on the rice and asparagus.

Blackened salmon sounds so fancy. But what I learned tonight is that "blackened" is really just searing the spices (which produced a lot of cayenne pepper smoke in my kitchen and had us both in coughing fits) until the fish is black on the outside. I baked the salmon about 5 minutes longer than called for, since it was still pink when I checked it after 8 minutes. Maybe my fillets were a bit thick.

Blackened salmon = blackened pan. 

So minus the part where I didn't meet my cooking slow goal at all tonight, dinner turned out great! The salmon had a kick to it, but the seasoning mix didn't overpower the fish flavour. We put just a little zesty orange sauce on the rice, which complimented the spices, and dressed up the asparagus with lemon pepper. I'm pretty darn pleased with our result. I don't even think my pre-dinner stout is clouding my opinion.

A pretty picture of asparagus. 

Dinner is served! Delicious and healthy! 

2013 - The year I become a foodie

In 2012, I graduated with my Master's degree, ran an half marathon and got married. Kind of a big year! This year, my goal is to learn le art of cooking! In January, I did pretty well following quick, fairly basic recipes. Granted, nothing came out perfect, but we didn't starve, or lose any weight for that matter. But I'm already jonesin' for some more complicated stuff.  I think I've discovered that all these quick recipes which have your oven on 425 for just 30 minutes might not actually be doing justice to the food I'm cooking. Yea, dinner comes out edible, but there's got to be something more! I received the Colorado Cache cookbook for my bridal shower and I want to get into it, but it's incredibly intimidating. I might not be ready for that level yet. My goal* this month is even more meal planning and slower cooking. (Yikes!) I feel like there's a smart way and a dumb way to do this, though. I'm still not skilled enough to know which corners to cut, and where to never skimp. So, if you have any tips or tricks, leave a comment! I'll start featuring awesome, helpful comments!
*This goal may be modified weekly or even daily.

To help me out, I searched for some things cooks should know. I am pretty sure I literally typed in "things cooks should know." Here are two (out of 575,000,000 results).

10 Things Every Cook Should Know

Top Ten Things Every Budding Foodie Should Know

Also, I had a week off from real cooking because my husband was out of town and I've had that cold that's been going around so cooking wasn't very important to me. I did other domestic things like cleaning and laundry, though, so don't think I'm slacking!