There are plenty of fish in the sea

Wednesday night was salmon night.

Now, my family has never been big fish eaters. I mean, we made shrimp, an occasional crab biscuit, some delicious tuna sandwiches or expensive sushi, but for the most part, we stuck to shellfish. We very rarely ate Tilapia or Salmon or Halibut or Catfish or Mahi-Mahi. Because of this, I didn't think I liked fish. I have noticed this happens to many people when they don't grow up eating things. They think they hate them, even though they've never really given them a try. I think also our tastebuds change as we reach adulthood, but that rant is for another blog entry. This one, instead, is dedicated to our salmon dish from Wednesday night.

WE COOKED: GRILLED WILD ALASKA SALMON WITH TOMATO-ARUGULA SALSA

So, here's the recipe. I would type it out, but my cell phone takes such good pictures, there really isn't any reason to waste my time:


This is a recipe I picked up at Central Market one time in Austin. They have this nifty section of recipes in their store and one time I went a little recipe crazy...picking up nearly every one they offered. Ironically (and probably due to the fact that I explained above) I only grabbed one seafood dish. This one.

I couldn't find arugula at my local grocery store (I think we went there on a restocking day...every good cook's worst nightmare), so I substituted spinach. I was worried about this because, as David mentioned while I was chopping it, "arugula has a bit of a bite to it. Do we need to spice it more?" I pretty much replied "Naw."

Now, I have to say this recipe started out terribly. Coring a tomato is WAY too much work if you ask me.


At the same time, once I got the right knife (I chose one that was too small at first) that sped up the process significantly. And once the salsa was compiled, I felt that taking out the seeds and most of the juice ended up making it much nicer and cleaner.

Now, for another story. David never really grilled. In fact, his family doesn't even own a grill. Which is perfectly fine. However, I always viewed grilling with your dad as natural as throwing the baseball around with your dad. I figured every little boy did that with their father. Now, my dad was a very stereotypical father where he was upset that my brother didn't live with us, so he would substitute me as his "son." Probably why I ended up so much of a tomboy. But, because of this, I was always by my daddy's side while he was grilling. However, my dad is not enough of a manly man to worry about charcoal versus gas. Once he found out that charcoal took longer, that was pretty much the end of the argument. He was a gas-grill man.

My dad and mom bought David and me a grill for our housewarming gift, and David was pretty intimidated at first. He didn't know how to turn it on. He didn't know what temperature to set it to. He didn't know to grease it first. All in all, it was a very scary gift for him and, at first, I did all the grilling for the family. Then, he realized that he felt emasculated and took over the grill duties.


He's done really well adjusting to his new-found duties. Also, getting good grill tools like a spatula and tongs and pans have helped him a lot to not char everything we place on the grill top. Look how delicious the salmon turned out with the delicious salsa I made:


Overall, I give this meal a 4.3 out of 5 on the Yum scale, to once again borrow from Brandan. The salsa was GREAT and it finally made me feel like it was worth all my effort taking those dang seeds out.