Grilled salmon, grilled baby potatoes, fresh garden salad with cheese & avocado.

Remember a few months ago when I used to cook things and eat healthier? Yeah. That’s not really been happening since, maybe, um, February? Winter is always a bad time for us to eat healthy. Long, dark days with lousy weather do not make us feel all that energetic about cooking something when we finally get home. Alas, we fell back into lousy eating habits for a while and then, I became so stressed and anxious all the time, I was hardly eating at all. (Which was GREAT for losing some weight before I got to NYC in June, but not so much the healthiest way to do things and now that I am eating again, I gained it back. Boo!)

I never want to eat in the summer. I’m hot, uncomfortable and just cranky because of the heat. I am so unhappy with my job right now, I feel way too full of despair to even want to think about doing anything about food. I need to rethink my future and career and stuff. BUT I digress.

I found out I have a vitamin D deficiency. Turns out fish (salmon and tuna(?)) is good for that, along with milk and cheese and sun and stuff. We never buy fish. I hate the smell of fish, but I do adore salmon and I love that it’s so easy to grill! I learned how to do this from my father – stick it on aluminum foil, have the BBQ at 400F (or higher in our case), butter, oil and lemon, cover it and leave it for 15 minutes. Voila!

With all the fresh veggies Jinx has been growing in the back yard, I have been feeling way more like eating healthier and finding things to do with them. We had to go to Costco and fill up our propane tank and do groceries because we were scarily out of food.

And we hardly even DRINK alcohol! That’s why it’s the only thing left! Scary.

I am sure someone somewhere had tried to live on alcohol and kraft singles, but it wasn’t going to fly for us. Heh So while we were at the grocery closest to Costco, I thought I’d check out their fish. Mostly grocery store fish is small and over priced and not very fresh, but I can never seem to get to the fish market during its opening hours. We lucked out though and salmon was then on the menu for dinner that night!

Anatomy of a salad.

First I used up all of the cherry tomatoes and one of the cucumbers from Jinx’s garden. Then I tossed in one avocado and some bocconcini pearls. I picked some basil and parsley from Jinx’s garden, too. Then I tossed in 1 Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil and two cap-fulls of balsamic vinegar. Then I covered the container and shook it for all its worth to mix it up.

Garlic… and some other stuff added to it.

I had bought these huge garlic bulbs and the cloves were about the size if three cloves put together from a regular-sized bulb. It was amazing. So I diced up two cloves, sauteed them in 2 Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil and 2 tsp of unsalted butter. I stirred them around as they browned as Shawn cut up the baby potatoes and put them on aluminum foil. We peppered and very slightly salted the potatoes, brushed them with a little more oil and then I drizzled the garlic stuff from the pan over them. We covered them up and put them on the grill for about 30-45 minutes. Just make sure the BBQ is really, really hot. Then leave them be. (we do check on them once in a while because sometimes they cook too fast and burn.) I discovered this way of doing potatoes on the BBQ when Shawn and I went to New Brunswick in 2009 and saw my cousin Sheryl doing it. We always make our potatoes this way in the summer now!

Once the potatoes were doing their cooking thing, I made up the salad and started sauteing another two cloves of garlic for the fish. Unfortunately I forgot to turn the stove down and burnt the garlic a little, but it was ok in the end. It was crunchy on the fish and SO DELICIOUS! We drizzled the oil on the aluminum foil before putting the fish down, then I brushed the top with a little more oil and squirted a third of lemon all over it. Then we put the garlic/butter/oil stuff on top and I picked some of the lemon thyme I bought (because I thought it smelled good. I am so happy I did that!) to sprinkle on top of the fish, too. I even put two sprigs of it on top.

 The end result was delicious. I could probably eat salmon like that every night. I just don’t have the desire to keep fish in my house for more than a couple of hours.

As for the salad… OMG! The cherry tomatoes were SO SWEET. With that hit of balsamic vinegar it was just bliss. I had the rest of the salad as dinner last night. It made a lot (mostly cheese, so possibly not the healthiest. *cough*) and I couldn’t keep the avocado much longer.

Needless to say, I’d like to make this again next weekend. Only, perhaps I’d make some sweet potatoes. The downside of using those as opposed to regular ones is that they do not taste good with garlic at all. They might be better for you than normal potatoes, but if you can bathe them in garlic… why bother? haha!