Dinner Dash

We love delicious, healthy, and inexpensive meals. Bonus if the meal is quick and easy. Who doesn't?

For dinner tonight, we made grilled salmon with fresh ground black pepper, sauteed zucchini, surimi salad (okay, mostly healthy), steamed spinach with toasted almonds, and quinoa with toasted almonds.

016/365

This meal was easy, but not a one pan/pot meal. No complex cooking method or hardware was utilized, just 4 burners on our stove.

1) salmon + grill plan
2) zucchini + frying pan
3) spinach + small pot
4) quinoa + sauce pan
5) almonds + small frying pan

While the almost everything was cooking, I made the surimi salad by first defrosting the frozen surimi sticks for 25 seconds in the microwave oven so the sticks were malleable, cut them into ~2" sticks, then broke them apart.

Mayonnaise and Kewpie mayonnaise were added to the surimi. I prefer the texture of the salad to be midway between dry and goopy, so I used roughly 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise and approximately 1 teaspoon of Kewpie mayonnaise. One-half teaspoon of sesame oil was added.

After the surimi was coated with the mayonnaise and oil, the roe was incorporated into the salad with a gentle hand, careful not to smash the fish eggs.

My intention was to add cucumbers, but I forgot. While I like to write lists, I don't always follow them. This also goes for meal preparation. I don't always prepare my ingredients first, nor do I strictly follow recipes.

The roe provided enough crunch, but very little in the way of color contrast.

This meal was inexpensive. For under $10, this meal made a filling dinner for two.

Here is the breakdown:
1/2 lb wild caught salmon, $8.99/lb = ~$5
1/4 c quinoa, $8.99/4 lb = $0.21
1 zucchini, $0.99/lb = ~$1.00
3 sticks surimi, $4/20 sticks = ~$0.60
~1 Tbsp roe, $7.00/lb = ~$0.40
large handful of spinach, $4.00/lb = ~$0.50
Kewpie mayonnaise, $4.00/bottle

No idea how much these cost:
mayonnaise
almonds
sesame oil
shichimi togarashi

Since we always have quinoa, surimi, roe, spinach, almonds, mayonnaise, Kewpie mayonnaise, olive and sesame oils on hand, and shichimi togarashi this was "cheaper" for us.

This meal was relatively healthy. I've talked myself into believing that since I ate a small portion of the salad, it was okay. The salmon was grilled with a mist of oil, olive oil was used with the zucchini, the spinach was steamed, and the nuts were toasted without oil.

Day 16/365 Project - some days have been difficult scrounging for material to take pictures. I can't imagine what it will be like half way through, if I make it that far!

- Cassaendra