There's a New Cook in Town

The day before traveling is always hectic. You have to do laundry, pay bills, sort and pack clothes, check in with the airline, etc. All of this activity often makes it difficult to eat well. For example, we had cold cereal for breakfast and grilled cheese for lunch, so by the time dinner rolled around everyone was hungry, but I was fully embroiled in packing the bags. Jeff to the rescue! He decided we needed a good dinner together, and he was the man for the job.

After flipping through a cookbook and not finding a recipe to his liking that we actually had all the ingredients for, he went off on a tangent to make his own creation of teriyaki glazed salmon with mushrooms. He started by whipping up a delicious teriyaki sauce from white soy sauce, garlic, honey, brown sugar, black pepper and sesame oil. Once he had the balance right, he rinsed and sliced a jar of marinated shitake mushrooms before adding them to his bubbling glaze. Next he pan fried the salmon in drippings of the sauce until it was tender and flaky. When the salmon was done he plated the fillets and spooned the beautiful, glossy mushroom sauce on top along with some Asian mixed vegetables (from frozen) on the side.

The best testament to how wonderful this meal was occurred when our son - not a picky eater, but not always a big fan of fish and sauce - exclaimed over a mouthful of food, "Oh my gosh, Dad! This is fantastic!" To add to the fervor, he asked for (and wolfed down) seconds - an unheard of event when salmon is involved. (I even pointed out to Jeff that our son has never eaten seconds when I served fish.) The sauce was sweet and a little tangy. The fish was tender and perfectly cooked. I practically licked the plate myself. And the icing on the cake of the dinner is that the guys cleaned up the dishes so I could write this entry before family t.v. time. Of course, with skills like that, I'm wondering why Jeff doesn't do more cooking!