Last night we had JAnice and Gord and Linda and Ed over for Salmon dinner. As you can see below, Janice really does have a zest for life...always laughing ! She brought us those beautiful huge lemons for the salmon...and guess where they came from? Right off her very lemon tree in her living room! This amazes me! The lemons were giants, full of juice ( and seeds) and were mildly flavoured... a beautiful accompianment for the fish. In the pic below Janice is showing us where the lemons aught to go! Thanks Janice for fresh lemons!
Here is Emil, Linda, Gord, ashley (with no moustache) and a peak of Janice
Emil and Linda
Linda's hubby Ed, and Janice
Well, I managed to get the dinner onto the table in good time... Always tricky with fish and fresh veggies like aspargus. I did the fish with Kevin's salmon sauce recipe... made with Kraft Mayonaise... very yummy topping for salmon... then we had rice, aspargus, green snap peas and carrots and my now famous strawberry orange salad with raspberry dressing over fresh mixed greens... delicious.. I think the recipe for that one is on my sidebar. it can be made with spinach , but these days I prefer those bins of fresh greens for about 5 bucks...loads of lettuce and for the 7 people here, I used about a half of the bin of greens and it was the perfect amount.
So here is the salmon sauce recipe:
Kervin's Salmon Sauce
2 cups of Miracle whip ( not the light variety)
enough ketchup to make it turn pink when you stir it together
3 green onions chopped
3 dill pickles finely chopped
a few tablespoons of chopped dill
salt and pepper
and here is where you can get creative
Add either or : a can of drained shrimp; drained crab; fake crab; scallops; or mixed seafood ( I used the fake lobster last night ( a small package) . Also fresh shrimp or frozen cooked shrimp that have been thawed and drained and dried off a bit ( no tails or shells)
So last night I used one of thse bags of shrimp from Safeway and one small package of the fake lobster chunks).
You stir all of the seafood into the mayonaise mixture. This can be done ahead of time and kept in the fridge in a four cup measuring cup.
Eventually ,you will top the cooked salmon with the Mayonaise mixture and bake in the oven at 350* until the top starts to bubble and brown ( about 15 minutes) .So have your bottom part of your broiler pan or a cookie sheet with sides, lined with foil, and sprayed with PAm and ready for your fish and sauce ,after the fish comes off the BBQ and is deboned)
To cook a whole salmon, take off the head, then the easiest way is to butterfly the fish open by carefully cutting alongside the back bone right from the head end down to the tail end as far as you can without slicing your fingers. Open the fish wide open, flesh side up. the bones will be attached to the back bone on one side of the fish and on the other side, the bones will be cut. Slide the fish skin down,onto a slice of PAmmed foil. Season a bit with lemon pepper and dill and either spray with Pam or brush lightly with oil.
Have the BBQ fired up to high...
Gather the tinfoil up to the fish so it outlines it neatly. ( Don't cover it) Slide your fish with the tinfoil under it, onto the BBQ. Cook for about ten minutes with the lid down, ( Or you can broil the fish in your oven) until the flesh turns white under the bones, and then you can lift the rack of bones off the one side...just lift the tail up and peel the whole bone rack off the fish. This will only work when the fish has cooked immediately around the bones. On the other side of the fish where their is no backbone...just slide a steak knife or fork under the bones and lift the bones off. Voila...your fish will be deboned. Don't worry if it isn't cooked all the way through...this is good, because it will finish cooking once the auce is on it and it goes back into the oven.
Bring the fish inside and peel off the tinfoil from under it while sliding it onto another PAmmed tinfoiled pan. I use my broiler pan or a cookie sheet,as described above.
Have your oven ready at 350*
Pour the seafood MAyonaise sauce over the fish, covering it entirely .
Pop the whole thing back in the oven for about another fifteen minutes until the top starts to bubble and turn golden a bit. If the fish is giantly huge...like ten pounds, then it could take longer to finish cooking. You just don't want to dry it out by overcooking it. Our salmon was about 4 pounds, I'd say...and it fed 7 people with little waste. If the fish appears cooked and the sauce isn't too bubbly, turn on the broiler for 1 or 2 minutes to make that happen...but beware, it could burn up in a flash.
Although, sounding mildly complicated, I always debone my salmon that way. Less bones in the end. Once the bones are off, a person could re-season the fish with dill and lemon pepper or with teryaki and brown sugar, and then continue to BBq it until it is cooked... ALways on high heat about 5 minutes per inch of fish.
If you have salmon fillets, then the bones are already out and you just go ahead and cook it with the Mayonaise sauce on top... it will take a little longer, but it will all turn out yummy in the end. Who would have thunk you could cook MAyonaise???
I finished the dinner off with carrot cake, topped with So good icecream adn fresh sliced strawberries. YUm... I might have to have caarrot cake for breakfast!
I see Emil isn't moving too fast this am.
We got into a Game of Train until Gord couldn't take it anymore and Ashley had to leave, then we palyed six handed Euchre untilt he girls lost miserabley... Emil and I had only tried it once before at JAnice's . Euchre is a card game that requires wou to think in five directions at once... We had two decks of cards, using from the 9's up, so double of each card. If you play no trump, no problem. If you play trump, then the JAcks turn into your top power card. But you can use the opposite jacks in the same color ( Diamond with hearts or clubs with spades) as your helper Power Bowers...Right and Left Bowers actually. Thus a good hand doesn't only consist of Aces, but also of Jacks, is you are playing trump. Thre are other rules that come into play, but we never got so far as to use them. In the end, the party didn't exactly quit till sometime around ten bottles of wine...:-)
Somewhere in all of that, my doggy hurt herself and was having a yelp every time she tried to jump down off the couch or where-ever. I gave her a teaspoon of Benadril to come her down ( you can), and she took herself down to the basement and slept there all by herself all night. This morning, she was trembling when I tried to figure out what was wrong... Still can't figure it out... somewhere in her lower back or hip joint maybe. (All legs move, she can go down stairs, but maybe not up them) She went outside and did her jobs, then wouldn't move. I carried her back to the lawn and she headed for the car. Same thing last night. She wants to run away from her pain. Dogs will do that, so never let them of the leash when the dog is in some kind of pain or they will take off, thinking they can run away from it.
Now,after another half teaspoon of benadril, she is asleep in her bed. Bichons are very touchy when it comes to pain. The least little thing will make her think she is in mortal pain, and then one day she will be fine, forgetting there ever was pain. I will keep tabs on her and if she persists to be in pain, I'll take her to the vet with my last week's earnings...
"The Creator"
