Author: Lauren

I'm Lauren and this is my life.

Make This Now

Lauren2 Comments

(MOM, AVERT YOUR EYES — MANY FISH PHOTOS LIE AHEAD!) 

Guys, I’ve been so into fish lately.  Roasted salmon salad, tuna with bacon-cauliflower purée, cod foil packs with chile butter.  Yes, I will (did) have all of that, please!  I think Joey is starting to get worried, because we are not normally fish people and I’ve been putting it on our meal plan week after week.  I dunno, I’m not questioning it, I’m just going with it.

Totally unrelated, but it’s recently come to my attention that dressing can make or break a salad and seeing as we eat a lot of salad, I know a good one when I see taste it.  So please enjoy this edition of recipe favorites featuring fish AND salad dressing, sometimes together, but mostly separate.

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Roasted Salmon with Kale-Quinoa Salad

I was kind of on the fence about this salad but I had no reservations about the salmon or the dressing, because those were both a major hit.  A major plus about fish, is that it’s SUPER SIMPLE to make and more often than not, SUPER SIMPLE to clean up.  Of all the easy ways to cook it, this olive oil, salt and pepper method was the easiest I’ve ever tried so I was extra surprised at how good it tasted.

Secondly, the All-Purpose Citrus Dressing that goes with the salad is mega-delicious!  We used it on a bunch of things besides this salad so not only does it taste incredible, it’s also extremely versatile.

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Almond Honey Mustard Dressing

File Under: would drink this.  That’s how good this almond butter dressing is.  I got sort of really really excited when I realized we had feta AND almond butter at home so we could easily make this salad but as good as the feta is, the dressing is the star of the show.  Sometimes you just need a dressing that’s not olive oil/lemon based, ya know?  And this is the one you go to in those times.

P.S. Apologies for the horrendous picture.  May it speak to how impatient I was to dig straight into lunch.

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Halibut Foil Packs with Chile Butter

Pro Tip: it’s totally fine if you eyeballed the butter amount and maybe made a liiitle more than the recipe calls for, because it’s the secret to this amazing dish.  We served it over rice, to soak up all of those flavor-packed juices and I stand behind that decision 100%.  I wanted to make this again as soon as I finished eating it!  Also, we totally used cod instead of halibut because ain’t nobody got time to go searching for halibut and cod is cheaper anyway.

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Smoky Maple Balsamic Dressing

Pretty pleased with myself when I discovered I had Liquid Smoke on hand and thus had everything to make this salad dressing that tastes pretty incredible on its own but causes taste bud exploding levels of deliciousness when paired with goat cheese and roasted butternut squash.  I easily dressed eight lunch salads with one batch, so a little goes a long way with this one and I happen to think that’s a GREAT thing!

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Parmesan Pesto Tilapia

We made this once a few years ago and I don’t know how or why, but we hadn’t made it since.  Well we had leftover pesto (tried this vegan miso one for the first time and was majorly pleased with it!) and parmesan so it seemed like a no-brainer.  I took the picture before adding the pesto (because refrigeration had turned it from pretty green to unappealing gray…), but just know it made for the perfect quick and easy Monday night dinner.

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Classic Vinaigrette

It is my very serious and important opinion that you should have a go-to vinaigrette in your cooking arsenal.  For quick side salads (with croutons and shaved parm) or lunch salads that you love everything about EXCEPT the dressing.  Swap it out and problem solved!  This is that recipe.  Memorize it and you’re good to go for the rest of your life.

P.S. Please note the cherries, the sunshine, the bright beautiful colors of that salad.  Ugh, is it summer yet?

Wishing you all a Happy Friday, Perfect Weekending and Sunshine Vibes 🙂

Odds & Ends

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At this very moment, I have something like 10 posts hanging out in my Drafts folder. Some half written, some fully written but not edited, some just waiting for me to upload a picture to go with.  In other words, they are all so close to being able to publish, but then I lose interest, or they suddenly seem not “of the moment,” and something else seems more worthy of writing about right now.  I’m sure there’s some deeper psychological reasoning, but I’m not going there right now.  Instead, I’m going to put all those drafts aside for yet another day and tell you some random odds and ends.  Cool?

I read a list of the Top 50 Fast Food Items this week, and for some reason, it was so interesting to me, despite the fact that when I really thought about it, I realized I haven’t eaten fast food in four years.  I can’t decide if I’m proud or kinda sad about that.  For better or for worse, fast food seems so intrinsically American.  For the record, said list had Chick-fil-A Waffle Fries as #1 and I feel like that’s wrong.

Guys, are you buying these new John Mayer mini-albums as they get released?  He released the “Second Wave” last Friday and three of the four are VERY good.  “Helpless” is maybe the most I’ve liked a JM song in a long long time.  Cept I think “Wildfire” is actually pretty great too.  He just added new tour dates, including a stop in Denver and while it’s not Red Rocks (ugh, the Pepsi Center), you know I still bought tickets because where John goes, I will follow.

Tuesday was the best day of the year (aside from Oscar Sunday, Opening Day, GABF Day and Thanksgiving :P): National Pancake Day/Mardi Gras!  Pancake flights at Snooze (tradition, tradition!), followed by a caffeine/sugar buzz like WHOA and homemade shrimp étouffée that blew Joey and I away.  Best part?  It makes like eight servings so we’ve been enjoying it all week.

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We watched Other People on Tuesday night and though you probably wouldn’t think of Molly Shannon as starring in anything of real quality, we loved it!  It’s much more about Jesse Plemons’ character than anything else, but it’s beautifully tragic and after watching it, I realized that might be my favorite movie genre?!  What does that say about me, exactly?

I started fermenting some carrots and bottled a strawberry-lime kombucha on Wednesday and my hippie heart felt so satisfied and happy about it.  Also, I cannot get over how amazing purple carrots are.  They are already beautiful, but then you cut into them and they are YELLOW?!  Nature is a crazy cool magician.  This is only the second time I’ve tried flavoring my booch with fresh fruit and I’ve got my fingers crossed that it tastes good.

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This is hardly worth mentioning but I’ve been using hand lotion like crazy lately and I think my nails are all the better for it.  I’ve always had pretty good nails but for the past few years, they have been so weak (tearing and breaking on the sides CONSTANTLY) and I had a theory it was because I started cooking a lot and thus, doing a lot of dishes, which probably dries your hands/nails out, so I figured I’d at least try the moisturizing route and maybe it’s too soon to say, but I think it’s really really helping.

A picture of a breakfast my mom once cooked for us popped up on my TimeHop last week and Joey and I were reminded how often we used to go to my parents’ on Sunday mornings and how much we miss that.  I pointed it out to my mom and now we’re going there for breakfast this Sunday.  Ask (or passive aggressively mention) and you shall receive.  I’m pretty excited.

Have you been watching the live feed of the April the Giraffe??  She’s about to have a baby and we’ve been obsessively checking in on her, waiting for it to happen.  Meanwhile, a giraffe at our own Denver Zoo unexpectedly had a baby yesterday.  Joke’s on us!  The baby’s name is Dobby and my heart can barely handle the cuteness (of the actual baby AND of the name)!  Side Note: if you have not seen a giraffe sit down or stand up before, check the live feed out NOW.

It’s Friday Eve and I’m happy for that.