We had such a yummy dinner I’ve been inspired to blog about it. Some of it was planned but much of it was me staring at the contents of my pantry wondering what in the world I could make. There was lots of staring. My pantry is full, yet it can be so hard to figure out how to turn all that “stuff” in to something edible.
My go-to cookbook lately has been the recently acquired “Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2010″. I can now safely throw away all of the torn-out pages of last year’s Cooking Light magazine that I’ve got in my recipe binder.
Yes, I have a binder. Don’t you?
The cornerstone of dinner was the Broiled Salmon with Peppercorn-Lime Rub (page 116 for those that have this book). 20 minute entree that included peppercorns, one of my favorite things in life. Gives Ella anxiety though. “What’s that black stuff? Is it hot? It’s hot! Ow, my mouth hurts”. Queue eye-roll from mom. The sooner she gets on this pepper bandwagon the better off we’ll all be.
I always start my cooking prep by reading through the recipe completely. Ok, so that’s what I try to do. And I did this time. Then I looked at the pretty pictures in the middle of the book and saw the Lemon-Thyme Quickbread (page 162). Mmmmm. Recipe read, ingredients on hand, 1.5 hours ’til dinner, let’s make it happen. Also got to make more use of my stand mixer. I’m still in love with it.
Speaking of which. I bought mine through Costco and got a bonus attachment, which just arrived yesterday. It’s the rotary slider/shredder. Now I have to find a recipe that involves lots of slicing and shredding.
All right, with the bread in the oven and the entree waiting for the oven to become available I began the staring of the pantry to figure out what else we should eat. I had hoped I had some couscous or something, but we’re mostly out. Also out of sticky rice and even minute rice. There was barely enough of the dreaded brown rice. I cooked it in chicken broth rather than water and that helped.

Lemon-Thyme Quickbread
Finally I went with a staple around here for our vegetable. Yet another Cooking Light recipe, I tore this one out last May, but you can find it on page 124 of the 2010 annual recipes book. It’s Green beans with feta (and red onions and some other stuff).
So, to recap, the menu, minus all of the above filler:
Broiled salmon with peppercorn-lime rub
Lemon-Thyme quickbread
Brown rice
Green beans with feta

Broiled Salmon with peppercorn-lime rub and green beans with feta
I’m off to get my 5th slice of the bread. What did you have for dinner?