Honey Spiced Salmon

This turned out sooo good! I picked up a large piece of boneless salmon on sale. Hubby usually doesn't like fish but he deals with it, this he actually described as delicious!

Honey Spiced Salmon
1 lb salmon, raw
1/2 tsp ginger, ground
1/2 tsp garlic powder
3 tbsp reduced sodium soy sauce
1/2 orange, peeled and pureed
2 tbsp honey
2 tsp sesame oil

Combine all ingredients in a ziplock storage bag. Squeeze out the air, seal and marinate 20 minutes, turning occasionally. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375. This is a good time to prep side dishes too, I made brown rice, sweet potato oven fries and sauted greens to go with. Just cook rice by package directions, it takes the same cooking time as the salmon. The sweet potato fries just cut into sticks or wedges, toss with olive oil or spray with nonstick spray and bake in a single layer on a cookie sheet at the same time as the salmon. The greens were fresh from my container garden, I washed and chopped them then tossed into a hot cast iron skillet
with a dash of canola oil for a couple minutes after removing everything else from the oven.

To cook the salmon, remove from marinade and discard leftover marinade. Wrap salmon in foil, place in a dish and bake at 375 for about 45 minutes. Yum!

This doesn't have a strong fishy flavor, it's slightly sweet, tender and has great flavor! Leftovers get more fishy but are okay for using in things like tuna casserole recipes.

Luscious little lemon cookies

I tried making these cookies this morning. I wanted a lemon dessert recipe that is at least healthier than my old favorites, lemon bars. I found a few recipes for lemon olive oil cookies, and modified it. These little wonders are OUTSTANDING! They definitely don't taste like anything I should be eating! They're crisp on the bottom like a crust, luscious and tender in the middle. Not gooey, but moist, soft, cakey and almost a little chewy. Zippy lemon flavor just like lemon merringue pie. I think I have a new favorite easy cookie recipe! Try 'em out, I bet you'll love them too!

Luscious Little Lemon Cookies

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup unbleached flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

dash salt

dash ginger powder (optional)

1/3 cup sugar

1 tbsp poppy seeds (could probably leave these out)

2 eggs

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup canola oil

zest of 1 lemon, grated

Combine dry ingredients in mixing bowl. In a separate small bowl, beat together remaining ingredients. Pour into dry ingredients and stir just until combined well.

Drop by tablespoons onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 12 minutes. Makes 16 cookies, only about 92 calories each!

Next time I may try swapping out even more of the flour for whole wheat, or replacing the whole eggs with eggwhite or simmered flaxseed meal. Awesome as they are!

Here's the bottom of the cookies, see how golden and lovely? Perfect crisp but tender. Yum!

Chili Lime Shrimp

Yum! Dinner tonight turned out really good. Napa cabbage salad with asian dressing, grilled veggies and chili lime shrimp, brown rice with plain yogurt, and fresh cut pear and papaya.

Cabbage Salad

1 small head napa cabbage, coarsely diced

2 small tomatoes, sliced

1 carrot, sliced

handful cilantro, shredded

Asian salad spritzer or dressing of choice
This is one of my most common side dishes. Cut up fresh fruit, whatever is on sale. Wednesday is super cheap produce sale day and the ethnic market I go to, so I'm all stocked up right now! Today papaya and pears were some of the great deals. This is just 2 pears and about 1/8 of a papaya.

The grilled veggies are really easy too, and make a great versatile side dish. I slice up what I have, spray with Pam and put them on the George Forman grill. Leftovers make great scrambled eggs, omelets, salad toppers or pita sandwiches.

This is 2 zucchini, 2 green and 2 red bell peppers, and 1 medium/small onion.

Chili Lime Shrimp

1 lb shrimp

1 lime, zest and juice

1/4 tsp chili powder

pepper to taste

1 tbsp canola or olive oil

Combine lime juice, about 2/3 of the zest, chili powder, pepper and oil. Clean shrimp well and coat them in marinade. Cook the rest of dinner while they marinade, doesn't take long.

To cook, just place on George Forman grill until pink through and curled up. I bought precooked shrimp this time since it was on sale, and just put on the grill long enough to warm them, works a lot better with raw shrimp.

Brown Rice with Lime Yogurt

per serving:

1/2 cup cooked brown rice

1 tbsp plain fat free yogurt

couple pinches lime zest

Top rice with yogurt, sprinkle with lime zest.

Weightloss - ad awareness

Have you ever actually paid attention to commercials, billboards, signs, all the ads you see every day?

I have, and noticed a huge percentage are for things that are not good for you or your budget. Try it - while watching an average 30 minute TV program, note how many commercials you see for fast food, packaged foods that aren't healthy, weightloss scam products and treats. How many ads for those items do you see every day in the newspaper, magazines, coupons, sales ads, billboards, signs in the store, on your computer, packages for other foods or anywhere else? Our world is saturated with them, and odds are good that heavily advertised foods are things with a very high profit margin, meaning they're made of cheap, unhealthy ingredients like bleached flour, corn syrup, sugar and hydrogenated fat with little real nutritional value. How often do you see ads for plain bran, fresh celery, green beans or other inexpensive healthy foods? Almost never, because their profit margin is not high enough to afford to saturate the airwaves with ads. There are few exceptions, like almonds, orange juice and milk, where industry organizations promote the product when one producer can't.

Studies have shown that repeatedly seeing ads for particular products makes you more likely to buy that product, even if the individual ads don't make an impression. Just recognizing it increases the odds of buying it.

So what do you do? Ads are everywhere, and many are good ads that can save money and direct you to helpful products. The best advice is to be aware of what you're buying and what you're eating. Take note of what items you're frequently seeing ads for, and look at the ingredients and nutritional information for those items. If you know what's in it, you're far less likely to get something that's horrible for you, even if you have been blasted with ads for it. Try new items you don't recognize, look high and low on the shelves instead of in the middle where the most expensive brand name items tend to be, and try to stick to the outside edges in the store where the least processed items are. Less messed around with usually means more healthy! Support products that are healthy, and eventually we can make a difference in what we're exposed to :)