Moderate success

Ok, so tonight's meal was moderately successful. As you'll all soon learn, my DH and I don't always eat perfectly balanced meals, but rather prefer to sometimes omit the carbs altogether. Sometimes we'll just do a big salad, and sometimes just gorge on a steak with NO sidedishes at all. I dunno what this all means for our health...but it is what it is.

Tonight's meal was salmon (protein) and a thick leek puree soup. Dessert consisted of sugar cookies that I made. The salmon was great, as was the soup. The cookies however....

SALMON
Method: Random

Salmon
Lemon juice
Purple onion
White wine
Salt/pepper
Garlic
Fresh parsley
Olive oil

I basically just lay the fillets of salmon down and topped them with everything else.
TIP: Wet ingredients should be put on the fish first, so that you don't wash away all the dry ingredients by pouring the liquids on the fish.
Cover the fish with foil and puncture a few small holes to allow steam to escape.
Bake on low heat (175) for 35 minutes, then remove the foil covering and broil for 5 minutes or less (watch the fish to be sure not to burn). ENJOY!


LEEK PUREE SOUP
My general rule for soup is this: Create a broth and just throw in other things you think would be yummy. Then, boil the heck out of everything and finish by pureeing your soup with an immersion blender.

Here's what I included in my soup:
Lots of leeks
Zucchinis
Onions
Salt/Pepper
Splash of sherry
White wine
Onion soup mix
Fresh parsley
Fresh garlic

TIP: When making a puree soup, I find it's always best to brown the vegetables in olive oil for a while before you add all the water/broth/stock to make the actual soup. For instance, for this soup I placed the leeks, zuchinnis, onions, garlic and parsley into the pot with some olive oil and browned the whole thing before adding in the water to make the soup. This gives off a TON of great flavor and you'll see a huge difference than if you were to just start with a pot full of water and add the veggies later. Bonus points to scraping the little brown bits of flavor from the bottom of your pot. That's called deglazing and is packed with flavor. Once you add the water to the pot, you'll see that you immediately get a soup-flavor because of the browning you've already done. Good for you! You're well on your way to some yummy soup. In fact, you're a baguette and a green salad away from a full meal.

Update: This soup was even better the next day. I had it for lunch. Yum!

SUGAR COOKIES
As I said, I didn't have phenomenal success with these cookies, but I think that's more a function of my lack of baking abilities and my forgetting to put baking powder into the batter, rather than a bad recipe. Here's how I made the cookies, for those who'd like to try and outdo me (not tough).

I began with this recipe and tried to follow it as best I could. Then I added in raisins and orange-flower water, which are two of my most favorite flavors. For those of you who have never tasted orange-flower water, I would highly recommend adding it to your baking. Just a couple splashes into your sugar cookies, and you'll get the most delicious, old-style orange flavor. You can usually find bottles of orange-flower water at any middle-eastern grocery store. And...without making too much of a political statement...sheer demographics ensures that you already have one close to your home or will very soon.

Alright folks, that's all I've got for tonight. Bon appetit!!