I Could Show You a Picture, But It Might Make You Lose Your Appetite

My camera's on the fritz, so all the pictures I take are a sickly green, and oozing with psychedelic trails. But I figured it's about damn time I updated this blog, so here's a description of tonight's dinner. You'll just have to trust me that it looked appetizing.

I'm still doing the vegan-during-the-week thing, but I've been finding myself kind of losing steam come midweek. It might be a need for protein, it might just be mid-week exhaustion. Whatever the case, I decided to make Wednesday nights fish night, since I should eat more fish, and just haven't been eating it on the weekends.

So tonight I got a wild caught salmon fillet and prepared it by rubbing some olive oil, salt, and pepper on it, placing it in a small cast iron skillet skin side down, covering it, and cooking it on medium heat. This ensures a crispy skin, which is perhaps my favorite part of a good piece of salmon. I think it took about 10 minutes to cook through. I made a sauce of capers, parsley, lemon juice, garlic, and a bit of lemonaise to put on top.

On the side were a couple of small, boiled fingerling potatoes. They're bright yellow potatoes, and don't need any butter, just a little salt. (For reals.) And finally, I also made some roasted tomatoes, which were broiled in the toaster oven with a sprinkling of sugar and olive oil.

And then I ate it all, and it was AWESOME. The salmon was so much better than some of the sickly pink farmed salmon I've had. And the tomatoes were amazing. I'm not a big tomato fan. I don't really like them raw, unless they're really flavorful heirlooms, and tomato sauce doesn't really agree with me. So this is definitely a way I'll be eating more tomatoes in the future.

I Had Michael Lee Aday For Dinner

The last time I made meatloaf, it was a recipe using ground turkey and tomato soup. Problem with that was it turned the loaf into a permanently pink color, so there was no way by looking at it to really tell when it was done. I cooked it as long as the recipe called for, but turns out that wasn't long enough and I ended up getting sick from eating the undercooked turkey. (That's the only time I've gotten sick from undercooked meat. I'm pretty sure it was because of the ground nature of the turkey. I don't live in fear of undercooked pork chops or chicken breasts that are slightly pink. Just saying.)

So, when I decided to make this meatloaf recipe from Every Day Foods I bought a quick read thermometer since it states in the recipe what temperature the meatloaf should be when it's done. I followed the recipe pretty much, just adding a little Worchestire sauce and some garlic to the meatloaf, and cutting the (store-bought) barbecue sauce with some ketchup. For the sides I didn't have buttermilk so just made standard mashed potatoes (butter, salt, some half-and-half) and I blanched the green beans instead of steaming, just because it was easier (fewer pots).

Getting that meat thermometer was a good idea because cooking the meatloaf for 30 minutes was not long enough in my oven, and it took about 45 minutes before the thermometer even got near the 160 mark. (Yeah, I probably need a new oven, but the thought of trying to finagle an oven in and out of my kitchen just gives me a headache.) As for the meatloaf itself: not the best I've ever had, but not bad either. I'm sure meatloaf that uses a fattier meat instead of lean sirloin tastes better; fattier is always better! But I liked having the slight crunchiness of the vegetables in there, and since there was only a quarter cup of panko crumbs used, it was pretty moist. And I'm sure it'll make good meatloaf sandwiches this weekend!