Blackened "Halibut" with Avocado Cream Sauce

So I've learned something since living on the West Coast… (hopefully more than one thing, but we'll see.)

Apparently fish have "seasons"

As in, halibut is not always available whenever the mood should strike. And if you can find it, it will be super frozen, small, and expensive.

My dad asked the fish monger (his words, not mine) what a good alternative was and she suggested Basa. So we used that instead and now that's two things I've learned.

Well wouldja look at that.

You can look at it again here.

I have a surprise for you guys...

Can you tell what it is?

I got a new camera!!

Sort of.

Michael is letting me borrow his nice camera so I can take better quality bad pictures of the food I make. Uh soo nice! I definitely give him permission to marry my sister now.

This is the basa soaking in milk. Apparently this takes the fishy taste/smell away. 

It looked pretty gross but I think it worked.

Cremaaaaa

See what I mean about bad pictures with a good camera?

I have gotten better, I promise (kind of)

And we'll end it with three not really good pictures of me trying to figure out how to make it look good at different angles.

So it was also around this time that I learned that blackened basically just meant burnt spices. I guess that's three things I learned, just with this one meal. I am such a liar.

This was actually really good. I don't really like fish and this was something I'd make and eat again. Basically anything with a yummy sauce is good so that didn't hurt. The recipe for the cream made way too much so you could probably cut it in half. Unless, like us, you decide that you want to put it on sandwiches for the next few days. Then go right ahead! We skipped the cilantro, garlic salt (we don't have it and didn't buy it) and also used regular yogurt instead of greek. Meh.

Stuck to the script: like pretty good. like 95%

Slow Cooker Coconut Curry Chicken

I totally thought I had posted about this already. Oops!

Look at that delicious little montage!

Find the recipe here

I swear this is out of order and I made this ages ago...

There was actually no method to go along with the ingredients of this recipe. However, there was a picture of a bunch of stuff in a food processor. I was skeptical at first until I realized I didn't need to chop the shallot and garlic. Wahoo!

Spoiler alert: Mom cut up and put the chicken in. (I hate touching raw meat)

Magical color changing sauce!

Now with peas!

OK this was not a bad "recipe". It was kind of like a light butter chicken with no butter and coconut instead. I actually might try putting a little cream in it next time. Not as coconut-y as I thought it was going to be, which is good or bad depending on your feelings of coconut. I might even want to use the whole onion the recipe called for. Obviously the most frustrating part of this recipe was that there wasn't really a recipe. So we were guessing for the most part. The biggest "guess" in this recipe was when to add the cornstarch. We thought it was probably a thickening ingredient so we added it close to the end of the cook time, maybe with about 15 minutes to go. Anyway it definitely made for a nice "Indian" dinner that you can set and forget.  It's probably not my favorite, but easy and yummy enough to put in the rotation. 

Stuck to the script: 100%?  except for I used a shallot instead of an onion. Obviously. Shallots are awesome. Hard to tell when there's no instructions!

Macaroni and Cheese with Butternut Squash

Most times I am pretty bummed out that my husband is so far away from me (to put it lightly). Having the opportunity to make this delicious meal without him whining about how much he hates butternut squash (seriously?!) is not one of them. 

All hail Martha and her glorious food creations.

Usually I would have used (lactose-free) milk, but we just had soy. Also, Superstore sells bulk pasta! Whaaaaaat?!

This is the very second time I've ever measured out pasta amounts.

I first made this recipe during my Montessori training time and since then have really not looked at the recipe. I just kind of "remembered" how to do it. Looking at it for the blog, I realized I have been just boiling the squash in water instead of a broth-milk combo. Meh. It was about the same either way.

I guess I skipped a couple parts. This is of everything except the breadcrumbs.

Post oven. I probably would have waited a bit longer to take it out I think.

Yummy! 

This was just as delicious as I remembered. I can't really describe why I like this recipe so much. It's so creamy and cheesy, and yet a little sweet almost from the squash. If you like butternut squash and cheese, then this is pretty much the perfect combination. It also makes really super good leftovers. Which is convenient because this makes a lot. As I said before, I usually forgot to boil the squash in broth and milk and nothing bad happened. I also have used an entire (small-ish) squash instead of measuring out the required amount and nothing bad happened. Although, the squash taste was obviously a bit stronger, which was fine by me. I have also messed with adding or omitting different cheeses. One time I'm sure I forgot to add ricotta and I think it still turned out ok. What I'm trying to say is, you have to try pretty hard to mess this one up. 

Stuck to the script: 100% yay!

Skinny 3-Cheese Penne

Itttttt's PASTA!!!

I was fairly intrigued by the "skinny" part of this pasta. But, as we all know, pasta is generally not skinny. The site even includes nutrition facts, albeit extremely questionable ones… 2g of fat with three kinds of cheese? Doubtful.  Oh well!

So… the cottage cheese probably isn't low fat… but look! I weighed out the pasta!

I couldn't find "sugar-free" but I did find a fairly healthy blue-menu sauce, so I think that's OK.

Mozz and spices

At this point, we realized this is basically a lazy man's no-meat lasagna. I mean, it's basically the exact same thing with different noodles. I can't believe I didn't see this while reading the recipe. I basically felt tricked right at this point.

We decided this was a pretty easy and tasty recipe. Basically though, it's a pretty generic baked pasta/no-meat lasagna recipe. It also kind of made me realize that I could just throw a bunch of cheese, a random sauce, and some pasta into a dish to bake and it would probably turn out ok. So that's good? Kind of? Maybe dangerous. As for being skinny, I think probably not so much…This felt pretty indulgent in fat and carbs. Which makes it better...

Red Lentil Pumpkin Soup

Sometimes I wish soup season would last longer but I don't really take full advantage when it's here and I'm soooo glad spring has finally arrived in BC.

Oh hey there, Delicious… 

I love lentils. I'm not sure why and I never really would have suspected it, but here we are..

Enter the excitement.

So… there aren't many pictures of this process. I can't remember if I had decided not to post about this or if I forgot I had a camera or was blinded by hunger.

Here's another picture of the ingredients to make up for it! Yay…

I guess we can take a minute to note the lack of ginger, ground red pepper, and greek yogurt.

As the lentils and spices are cooking...

Right before the yogurt was added (the very end)

Danielle made bread!!

So I made this recipe weeks ago (I am the worst blogger) and going over the recipe site again, I realized I probably didn't take a lot of pictures because there really wasn't a lot going on. Some shallot chopping (shallots are the best!) and boiling and that's about it. At least, that's what I'm going to hope you'll believe and accept as the reason this post is so bland. You know what isn't bland? This soup. It's freakin awesome. I had seconds and then ate it for leftovers the next day. Amazing! I was pretty surprised how the lentils and the pumpkin complimented each other so well and how delicious the lemon was. I didn't think I'd be able to taste the lemon at all but it was so good with the other flavors. I didn't measure it because that takes more time and effort, so I used the juice of half of one lemon if you'd like to do it the same. Probably would have been even better with the ginger and maybe even the ground red pepper if you're into that kinda thing.

Stuck to the script: uh… what a good question… maybe like 80%

Panko Crusted Stuffed Chicken

I just noticed the recipes I've been using have started to get a little less healthy.  Oops.

It's basically fried chicken! (Not really)

Recipe here.

Not pictured: basil.. and probably other stuff. I am getting more and more forgetful by the meal.

It said the cheese mixture would fill two. I'm pretty we could have safely filled four, maybe even five. 

We were shoving the mix in and it was overflowing like crazy.

Ricotta explosion!

I opted for only half the serving.

Holy ricotta, Batman! As I said before, this was a ridiculous amount of filling for only two pieces of chicken. It was really good, just way too much. I guess, on average, most people don't just cook for two so I'd suggest keeping the filling recipe the same but adding one to three more chicken breasts to spread it out. We didn't have skewers/kebabs so we used kitchen twine to tie them together. I think this was a better way, especially with the over-filling problem. It maybe could have used some (more) salt, but I guess that's easy to add after if you agree. Mom (and I) hated the description of amounts. A "handful" and a "dash" of anything is an awfully irresponsible way to measure. My hands were tiny and we still had too much filling. Anyway, definitely try this one.

Stuck to the script: Maybe like 99%? We didn't use fresh basil but I like it better that way.

Chicken Wild Rice Soup

I used to make soups all the time. I used to make so much soup so often we'd be finding containers of soup in the freezer months after. It was like surprise soup. I'm not sure why I stopped. Maybe something to do with not being sure what kind of soup I was about to eat of the freezer and how long it had been there.

This is another page that makes it impossible to copy their images. Fair enough. I'm sending you to their site anyway. Whatever. Be that way.

Oooo… PC Rice Blend. We're getting fancy here.

You might notice that there is no chicken in this picture for chicken wild rice soup. That's because we kept forgetting to buy chicken for like 5 shopping trips in a row. So basically I lied to you in the title.

Carrot snake! 

I think I only used two carrots. I also cut some slices in half and some in quarters

It had been super thick after I made the roux and then totally thinned out cause I added the broth too fast. Also I did not buy enough broth so I added some water too. I think total it was about 6 cups of liquid instead of 8. I didn't want to make too much soup and end up with surprise freezer soup.

I probably didn't measure the mushrooms.

Before cream. I could have probably not added it really. Then it would have been dairy free.

Fini! 

This turned out to be a really good and hearty soup even without the chicken. You really didn't notice there wasn't any because of the huge bulk of mushrooms there was in there and the creamy, thick texture. The soup really thickened up as it cooked and it was really quite gummy after it cooled down. I think if you wanted to eat it for leftovers you'd probably need to add water. Or probably not because I didn't add enough water to begin with. 

Stuck to the script: OK I was super bad this time. This is probably the least I've followed a recipe in a while. I didn't add chicken or celery and I definitely didn't use enough water. I also didn't de-stem the mushrooms because.. why would you do that. So maybe like 60%? So bad, Therese...