Second time's a charm!

Attempt number two commences!

Maybe this time I can remember to actually keep up with this thing!

I have been really getting into trying out new recipes (Thank you, Pinterest!) and making up my own as I go. 

I love going to the grocery store and picking up new items to experiment with. I probably make at least 3 trips a week to the Strack's down the road. I'm surprised they don't know me by name yet! Even Dave knows how I get. If I want to make something, and I am missing an ingredient and can not substitute it with something else I have in the house, I will make a special trip just to get it. Maybe I should start riding my new bike there to save on gas!

Here is my new ingredient for the week. It's kind of a cheat ingredient if you ask me, but hey, on those nights when you don't really want to cook or you don't have all the time in the world, cheat ingredients come in handy!

Progresso Recipe Starters - Creamy Roasted Garlic

I am not quite sure exactly how I am going to incorporate this into my cooking, but I am sure when the idea strikes, it will be a great one! 

Now onto last nights meal: 

Oven Roasted Salmon with Parmesan-Mayo crust

Steamed broccoli

Rice A Roni's Long Grain & Wile Rice

Rice A Roni:

(Follow instructions on box)

Before you cook any of the other dishes, start the rice. It takes about 30-45 minutes to make so it should finish cooking around the time that everything else is done.

Salmon:

Preheat oven to 425

1. The first thing that I did was line my 13x9 pan with foil, which made clean up a breeze! The pan wasn't even dirty after I took the foil out.

2. Next I cut my salmon filet into smaller portions, placed them in the pan and & lightly salt and peppered them. 

*Hint: spray the foil with nonstick spray before placing the salmon on it, they kind of stuck to the foil when I tried to get them off. 

3. The recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of mayonnaise and two tablespoons of Parmesan cheese for a 16-18oz. fillet. Mine was about 24oz. and that was way too much. Next time I will probably cut that in half.

4. Mix the mayo and cheese together & spread on top of the salmon.

5. Place the salmon in the oven. The recipe says to cook it for 14-17 minutes or so, but mine took longer. I let mine go for at least 20-25 minutes because at 15 minutes the mayo crust was still pure white, which again, could have been because I put wayyy too much on there. I'd say that your best bet would be to just check on it every now and then. 

Onto the broccoli! 

I grew up in a household where my dad cooked, and when he cooked vegetables, he always microwaved them. I always stayed true to that method, until recently. I have been cooking carrots on the stove and they have been a lot better than microwaved ones, and they do not seem to take as long. Last night I attempted to steam my broccoli on the stove, and it turned out amazing also!

Steamed Broccoli:

1. Take a pan and fill it with 1/4 inch of water and bring to a boil.

2. Once water is boiling, add salt followed by broccoli florets.

3. Place lid on pan and let cook for 4-8 minutes. 

If you like your broccoli with a bit of a bite to it, four minutes is probably where you wanna stop. I like mine a little softer so I left it on there for 8. 

The only time I've ever had fresh salmon, was a couple of months ago when Dave used a salmon filet to make homemade salmon patties. Before that, I'd only ever eaten it out of a can. What a difference fresh salmon makes! It is DELICIOUS! This recipe was awesome. I definitely would tweak it a little for next time, but I will be making this again. Everything went so well together. It was filling, but not heavy and somewhat healthy! 

I had planned for that to be the end of the post, but as I was sitting here typing the UPS man delivered my package! Saturday I ordered a Progressive International Lettuce Keeper. It is supposed to keep produce fresher longer. I read many great reviews on the product and decided for $10, it was worth a shot. We throw away so much produce because it just goes bad before we can eat it. We try to eat healthy, but it gets expensive when you have to throw away half of what you buy because two people cannot eat a mountain of spinach in two days!

So here is my new toy!

I already washed it and put my Romaine lettuce that I purchased yesterday in it. We will see how long it lasts! I am crossing my fingers! I will keep you up to date on how well this works for me.

Thanks for stopping by & happy cooking!

xxo

-Brooke 

A thrift & a tip

Hey y'all! 

It was super nice out yesterday so I decided to do some running around to get out of the house. I've been so inspired by everyone's creativity on Pinterest that I was hoping I could find some treasures of my own at our local Goodwill to turn into some sort of project for myself. There were a few cute shelves & one very awesome rustic picture frame that I wish I could have purchased but they were marked a little too high for this penny saver! I did, however, find this awesome telephone! 

And while I didn't buy it, it is still super cool! You could see all of the little do-dads and whatchamacallit's in it and they were all bright colors too. Oh man it was awesome! 

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Although I was not able to get creative in the crafty sense, I was able to get creative in another way! I am a lover of bags. My mother is a first hand witness to this. I used to save every bag I had ever gotten and just add them to an over flowing collection that was in my closet. I loved them! Unfortunately for them, and myself, my mom made me get rid of my collection. What a sad day that was! (Plastic bags are my favorite because you can just put them inside one another and they don't really take up THAT much space. (That is the hoarder in me talking)). Since I've purged my largest collection, I've learned to only keep a few on hand at a time. (My honey uses them for his lunch when he goes to work & I use them in the bathroom garbage can.)

Anyways, besides my love of bags, I also love those cleaning wipes that Clorox and Lysol make! They are absolutely wonderful for cleaning up a messy kitchen, let me tell ya!  Well, the other day I saw a tip on Pinterest about where to put all those lovely plastic grocery bags that no one knows what to do with. It said to put them an empty Kleenex box and have them pop up like the tissues do. That was EXCITING! Finally I knew what I could do with my bags that are shoved underneath the kitchen sink. Then I came to the realization that I did not have any empty Kleenex boxes and I surely my excitement was not going to allow me to wait until one became empty. 

Today I ran out of my Clorox wipes and decided that there was a better way to use the container than just pitching it! 

And with that, my bag container was born! It's so cute too! I just tore off the label and drew my own little design on there and badda-bing we have a plastic bag holder! It's such a space saver too & holds the perfect amount of bags! 

Happy thrifting!

xxo

-Brooke