Soy Brown Sugar Marinated Salmon with Fresh Pineapple Salsa

I recently found this great recipe for Soy Orange Grilled Salmon with Fresh Pineapple Salsa.  As usual I forgot to buy a couple ingredients from the store and the price of Aji Mirin was too much for my broke pockets, so I had to improvise.  I’ll definitely try the original recipe at a later date, but I wanted to share the recipe I made because the flavors were good and I LOVED the pineapple salsa. This was my first time making pineapple salsa, but definitely won’t be the last.

I had to lure you with a great picture from the original recipe from Simply Good.

Ingredients

1 ½ lb salmon fillets

Salt to taste

1/3 cup soy sauce

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/3 water

1/4 cup vegetable oil

Lemon pepper to taste

For the salsa

1 cup chopped fresh pineapple

1/2 cup chopped red pepper

2 jalapeños chopped

3 green onions

Cilantro

1 ½ limes juiced

(I also added green pepper, but that’s optional)

I suck at presentation but here is my picture. Next time I need
 to add more color to my plate because the rice and cabbage
just washed each other out.

Season salmon with salt and lemon pepper.

In a small bowl, stir together soy sauce, brown sugar, water and vegetable oil until sugar is dissolved. Place fish in a large resealable plastic bag with the soy sauce mixture, seal and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

For the salsa, stir all ingredients together in a mixing bowl.  Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

Once the fish has marinated, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Place the salmon and 1/3 of the marinade into a glass dish. Bake for 15-20 minutes. (Cooking time may vary depending on the thickness of your salmon, so you can tell the fish is done when it is easily flaked with a fork.) Once the salmon is done cooking, top with salsa and enjoy.

I made cilantro lime rice and stir fried cabbage with my salmon, but you can enjoy yours with your favorite sides. 

Zuppa Tuscana Soup

Cold weather and having a cold make me crave soup. This week I decided to make Zuppa Tuscana. I never had the soup before at Olive Garden or anywhere else, but after seeing the recipe on Pinterest, I decided to try it. As usual, I added some of my own seasonings and had to use bouillon cubes because I forgot to buy chicken broth, but the soup still came out DELISH!

Recipe below

Cream Cheese Chicken Chili

Its only been three days, but school is already kicking my butt. Who has time to read 20-30 pages each day? I don’t. I need to figure out a schedule for reading and homework because I want my nights back. Reading about law terms and cases til midnight is not my idea of fun. #thiscantbelife

Anyway, while I was home sick last weekend, I made Cream Cheese Chicken Chili .  I was in the mood for soup, but wanted to try something different. The soup turned out soooooo good, so I wanted to share the recipe.

I found the original recipe on Pinterest from the Spokane Dinner Club, but I ended up altering some of the details like the black beans because I hate black beans. I also decided not to use a package of ranch dressing mix because most packets contain MSG. #cantbehavingthat And I also added jalapeños because I was trying to “sweat” out my cold.

Recipe below:

Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies

I like bacon just as much as everyone else.  Just the smell of it gets me excited; mouth watering. But I thought the phrase “Bacon Makes Everything Better” couldn’t really apply to EVERYTHING. WRONG I WAS!

A couple weeks ago my girl Cherice tagged me in a pic on Instagram about Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies. I had to admit I was a little intrigued and thought, “I could make those.” A week later, one of my boys mentioned bacon chocolate chip cookies again.  I love to bake, so I was down for the challenge.

I decided to whip up a batch of the cookies (hadn’t made homemade cookies in FOREVER). The verdict:  everyone loved them.

Here’s the recipe below:

Steak Salad and Cilantro Avocado Dressing

In an effort to eat better and lose weight, every Monday I do meal prep for my lunch for the week. I'm always struggling with what to make (feel free to share ideas). Last week I got the idea of a steak salad from my girl Tiara. Check out my my recipe after the jump.

Lomo Saltado

Every Thursday, I get this craving French fries. Last Thursday was no different. I’m sitting in the waiting room of my eye doctor’s office and wishing they would hurry up and call me back, so I can make my way to Wendy’s. No such luck. I ended up waiting in for over an hour and while I’m waiting I get this bright idea to make Lomo Saltado instead of getting French fries. If you aren’t familiar with Lomo Saltado, it’s a Peruvian dish with Asian influences. It’s a beef stir fry that’s served over rice and FRENCH FRIES. YES!!

I searched my love, my favorite site, PINTEREST for a good recipe. I came up with a few interesting recipes, but they were in Spanish. EEK!  I can speak and read a little Spanish, but to translate a recipe is a different. Thankfully, I used the trusty Google Translate to translate the recipes I found. I took ingredients from a few different recipes and combine them to make my perfect recipe.

Image from The Yuca Diaries

Being the little rebel that I am, I decided that I wanted to alter “my” recipe. Instead of cooking the French fries in the oven, I cooked them on top of the stove. (Bad decision) Cooking the fries on top of the stove means they did not get crispy like they would have in the oven. (Note to self: Cook fries in the oven next time)

Recipe below. Enjoy because its sooooooo good!

Cinnamon Banana Bread

My roommate had a bunch of bananas lying around and they were over ripe.  I decided to use them and make banana bread. Of course I forgot to check my cabinets to make sure I had all the ingredients and I didn’t. So I had to substitute butter in the original recipe for olive oil. Once the bread was finished baking, I was so eager to cut it, that I forgot to take a picture. So the picture below is from Lovin' From the Oven's awesome blog. You can find the original recipe there.

Enjoy my slightly altered recipe below:

Honey Sriracha Chicken

In my quest to find new recipes for Sunday dinner, I always turn to PINTEREST. It’s the best place to search for recipes, in my opinion. I looked through my Addicted to Chicken board and found a recipe for Honey Sriracha Chicken and decided to try it. I also made cilantro lime rice (recipe will be posted later this week) and asparagus wrapped in bacon. YUM

Recipe after the jump

Stuffed Flank Steak

I cook all the time and plan these great recipe posts in my head that never actually make it to the blog. The main reason for that is that my presentation skills suck. After I cook the food and can never make it look pretty on a plate. BUT you guys are missing some great recipes, so until I improve my presentation skills, I’m going to improvise (work with me).

I’m totally addicted to Pinterest and definitely spend a couple hours each week pinning new recipes or searching for new recipes. I have this thing for stuffing meat. (Don’t laugh) I love stuffing chicken. And my roommate has been asking me to stuff salmon (kinda scared about that one). Recently, I came across a recipe for Stuffed Flank Steak and knew I had to try it.

The original recipe comes from Familycircle.com, but since I forgot to get some eggs, I altered the recipe slightly.  

Recipe after the jump

B-A-N-A-N-A-S

Recently, I have fallen in love with banana pudding. I don't really remember eating it a lot when I was growing up because it was one of the only dessert my mother did not make. I asked my mom why she never made banana pudding before and her response was, "That was one of your dad's favorite desserts and since his mother made it so well, I never tried to duplicate that." Understood! You know how men always think that no one cooks as good as their mom does. I'm guilty of that too though, I think my mom is a bomb cook.

I love desserts and baking and decided to try my hand at making a banana pudding. Instead of just making instant pudding, I was a little adventurous and made the pudding from scratch and whipped up my own whipped cream. I can't tell you how excited I was when I was stirring the pudding mixture and it started to turn into pudding. Definitely did a little celebration dance in the kitchen.

When I cook, I tend to look at a bunch of recipes, take a few things I like from each and combine them to create my perfect recipe. This was totally the case for the banana pudding because my recipe is a combination of 4 separate recipes. My method worked because this pudding was magically delicious and tasted even better the second day.

Chicken Piccata

I love chicken. I love pasta. I'm starting to really like capers. Mmm, they are so good. What better thing to do than mix them all together and make Chicken Piccata? I used a little bit too much lemon juice, but the dish still came out good. 

I like to eat my pasta in bowl, so I can keep all the sauce together. I love sauce, the more the merrier. Lots of capers were used, but I tried to hide some of them for the picture. LOL I really need to work on my presentation. Maybe for my next meal, I'll make it look cute.

Here is the recipe from Epicurious below.

Ingredients

4 thin, skinless boneless chicken breasts or chicken tenderloins (thats what I used)

3 tablespoons butter, room temperature

1 1/2 tablespoons all purpose flour

Additional all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning

Poultry Seasoning

Adobo Seasoning

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/3 cup dry white wine

1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup canned low-sodium chicken broth

1/4 cup drained capers

1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

Sprinkle chicken with poultry seasoning, adobo and pepper. Mix 1 tablespoon butter and 1 1/2 tablespoons flour in small bowl until smooth. Place additional flour in shallow baking dish. Dip chicken into flour to coat; shake off excess.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in each of 2 heavy large skillets. Add 2 chicken breasts to each skillet and cook until golden and cooked through, about 3 minutes per side. Transfer chicken to platter; tent with foil to keep warm.

Bring wine, lemon juice and broth to boil in 1 skillet over medium-high heat. Whisk in butter-flour mixture and boil until sauce thickens slightly, about 2 minutes. Stir in capers, parsley and remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Season sauce to taste with salt and pepper. Pour sauce over chicken and serve.

Enjoy!

Knock You Naked Brownies

So I was still looking at all the recipes on The Pioneer Woman’s blog and found this recipe for Knock You Naked Brownies. They had me a “naked”. LOL and then when you add in chocolate and caramel, I am SOLD.

Check out the recipe here.  

Image via The Pioneer Woman

Chicken Scallopine

I’ve been stuck on The Pioneer Woman’s blog for the past 2 hours browsing through recipes. She has some GREAT recipes that has me wanting to jump in the kitchen right now, but today is my rest/cleaning day, so no cooking for me. L

One thing that I love just as much as chicken, chocolate and lamb is PASTA. If I could, I would eat pasta every day. Of course, I would probably be a 350 pound woman then, so sadly its not possible.

Anyway, I found a recipe for Chicken Scallopine that I HAVE TO try. I’ll be sure to post pictures when I do. Doesn’t it look yummy?

Image via The Pioneer Woman

Death by Spoonfuls of Delight

I LOVE chocolate and adore trifles. I came across this recipe while browsing on Pinterest today and wanted to share. The recipe comes from the Gimme some Oven! blog. They have a lot of great recipes. 

I think I’d die after one spoonful of this Twix Trifle.

Image via Gimme Some Oven

Fried Chocolate and Banana Ravioli

I saw this recipe on Twitter and had to share it. Sounds interesting. I'm not sure if I am brave enough to try it.

Fried Chocolate and Banana Ravioli

Sweets on a Stick

Anyone who knows me, knows how much I LOVE cupcakes. I am slightly addicted. I was reading StyleFrost and she had a post about her sister who makes these cupcakes. You can find her sister’s blog here and the recipe for the cupcake pops on Bakerella.