Foodie, Foodie, Foodie Glory! Ahhhh, FOOD!

Hurrah! A foodie night for my broke ass!

I've splurged for the first time since I got paid a couple weeks back, at the tail-end of my payperiod, and I feel I've earned it, since I've behaved so well.

Weirdly, splurging involves my having bought salmon, which has never been a splurge item for me since I always hated seafood. I really wanted a burger tonight but I felt I had to be healthy. Again. Sigh. :) Fish three of the last four nights? What is UP with me? Wow!

But I bought a Coho salmon steak at the Farmer's Market that is advertised by the catchers as meeting-or-beating "the freshest, highest quality you've ever had" or they offer a money-back guarantee. So, I figure it's got to be considerably better than what I've been eating from Costco.

Also, I picked up farm-fresh nugget potatoes, which I'll roast, and some amazing heirloom tomatoes I'll be marinating with peppers, plus a should-be-terrific baguette, and the bottle of wine I decided needed to join the rest of my meal. :)

I was reading lately about the "Qi" of food, and how it's apparently best for your energy if you eat food grown locally, because then it supposedly gives you energy from the land you live upon, so that you'll have the right energy for living upon that land, if that makes sense. Like, it's all about channelling the energy from Earth for your place upon Earth. Makes sense? Great.

So, I'm trying to pan-fry the salmon with a lemon-thyme compound butter (and olive oil so it doesn't burn, obviously) I made last week, which will be the first time I've tried it sauteed, since I usually bake it, but since frying makes everything yummy, why not? Excitement, excitement. Sort of. Still somewhat ambivalent, since it's salmon and I'm still in the taste-acquisition phase.

But I'm very happy that this redefining of what "decadence" means to me is finally moving in this direction. It's taken me so long to get here -- losing weight through exercising has always been somewhat easy for me if I keep my calories in check, but I'm so bad at eating balanced meals and eating healthy. Or I always have been. I've never, ever lost weight through changing only how I eat. Never. Well, not until this year. I've had my moments.

I'm starting to feel like I'm turning the corner on my culinary ignorance, though. This is GOOD!

Even if I did have a donut today. ;)

Speaking of bad-ass for my ass, I think I'll let that wine start breathing. Heh, heh, heh. Yes, "breathing" is what we'll call that. Maybe if I pour it into a wee glass it'll breathe even better... Sure... I can help it along, even... Sure... yeah, that's the ticket. Just a wee nip...

AN HOUR OR SO LATER: Oh, my fucking GOD was that good! These are the nights I LOVE being single. It's all for me! :)

Okay, I get the fresh salmon thing now. That was delicious. I'm hooked, baby, and I intend the pun. Actually, my whole meal was delish. I'm a good cook, but cooking for myself all the time, I'm spoiled. This is one of the first times I think I've ever just absolutely cleaned my whole plate after a pretty healthy meal of something I'm usually opposed to, like salmon.

Dude, I highly recommend stocking your fridge with an assortment of compound butters like I did last week in about a whole hour of labour. For $15-20 and an hour, and with making three wildly different butters from 2 pounds of butter, including one sweet nutty one [and they'll keep for months in a cold fridge], I feel like I'm as richly stocked as a goddamn Williams-Sonoma outlet.

Shit, you throw a tablespoon of that in with your salmon (I baked some with the lemon-thyme butter the other night, a slice or two of lemon; similarly delicious) and you feel like you're a gourmet. Stuff some baguette with sundried tomato butter and you feel like you kick culinary ass (because you SO do).

Do it, man, do it! All it takes is a couple of teaspoons or so (and there's lots of olive oil and other ingredients [maybe 40% volume] takin' up space there), so it's not as unhealthy as you think. See my recipes here.)