Recipe: Soy and Brown Sugar Salmon

My friend Elizabeth cooked an impromptu dinner for her boyfriend and I last night and it was a real winner. She did a soy and brown sugar marinated salmon, a wild rice medley, and paired it with a very nice Riesling. I threw in a frozen green bean/wax bean/carrot mix that I had and dinner turned out as you can see above. Even better, the marinade for the salmon (the real star on the plate) was incredibly simple.
When marinading, you can either put the salmon filets in a gallon bag or in the oven-safe glass dish you will eventually cook the fish in. That glass dish can then go straight into the oven and then straight into the dishwasher. SIMPLE.

Recipe: Summer Quinoa Salad

I'm still here! I am working on getting in the habit of posting more regularly again, so I promise I'll stop failing at that soon.  Until then, this is a great salad that came together in about 20 minutes.  I was having a bottle of wine with my friends Erica and Elizabeth and we decided we wanted some dinner (but didn't want to go out).  They gave me free reign of their pantry and kitchen and after a bit of poking around I threw this together with their help.  What is great about this salad is that it is gluten-free, super healthy, and endlessly interchangeable.  During the fall you could swap in roasted squash and eggplant, in the spring you could add in chopped baby spinach, apple, pecans and raisins.  I wish I had had some fresh parsley or lemon to throw in to give it a tabouli feel but it was perfect the way was. It works great as a main dish, or would be terrific beside a pice of grilled chicken or fish.