Homemade Dinner #1!

Welcome to my first official blog post of the New Year: the HOMEMADE DINNER series! One of my New Years Resolutions was to get better about cooking homemade meals when I have the time! I am a creature of habit especially when it comes to choosing Chipotle for dinner or lunch when it seems convenient. Although I am not banning Chipotle from my diet, I am making 2025 the year of home cooked healthy meals!

Said photo from Pinterest

On the fine day of Thursday January 16th, I was brainstorming meals to make for dinner. I started browsing Pinterest (as one does) and checked my MEALS folder, and was intrigued by a meal I found that included salmon, potatoes, and broccolini. Instead of looking up a recipe on Google, I decided to make this a mission of coming up with my own!

Thought process: I wanted to buy salmon fillets from the meat/seafood counter, but that honestly seemed like too much work at the time so I opted to plan on the Morey's brand Salmon Fillets that come frozen, in a pack of 2 for $10. They are honestly delicious for frozen fish, and so easy to cook. My favorite flavor that I've tried so far is the "seasoned grill", but I also purchased the "steakhouse" flavor so stay tuned.

I ended up buying the Morey's salmon fillets, petite potatoes, and a bag of baby broccoli (similar to broccolini, but upon further investigation, they are NOT interchangeable, different families!). It is now Friday January 17th and I really was looking forward to this meal all day!

I got home from work, and I started off this dinner journey by preheating my oven to 400°, halving the petite potatoes (the gold ones specifically), putting them on a sheet pan, and drizzling them with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and cajun seasoning. I cooked these for 20 minutes, and then flipped them/shook the pan, and cooked for 15 more minutes.

The salmon preparation is quite simple: preheat the oven to 375°, put the fillets on a sheet pan (I lay foil down first but it honestly does not matter because the seasoning liquid goes everywhere anyways) and bake them for 20 minutes! I check the temp to make sure I won't die: they need to get to 145° precisely. I put the salmon in after I flipped my potatoes when they had 15 mins left, because I always turn the oven off and just keep the potatoes inside until everything else is ready (obviously make sure they aren't TOO done").

When the salmon had 10 minutes left on the timer I started my broccoli: DISCLAIMER I did look up a recipe for this because I am not familiar with baby broccoli/broccolini and was looking for a different flavor combo that I don’t always do. The recipe from Love & Lemons told me as follows: heat up olive oil in a pan, add garlic and red pepper flakes, let it cook for 30 seconds, add the broccoli, and then salt it & toss it. I also ended up adding garlic powder, onion powder, and pepper. Cook it all for 2 minutes, add 2 T water, reduce heat, and cover- continue to cook for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and toss with 2 T lemon juice!

All together, this meal was a 10/10 and I would definitely make it again! DELICIOUSSS! Thanks for tuning in to homemade dinner #1!!!