Almost miraculous

It's just after 8 and the dishes are done, lunches are pretty much made, and J is in bed.

Whoa...amazing! And peaceful. And relaxing.

And I'm giving the credit to this:


and to Alex. And he's not even here. He's at work...

He got Dad's Own Cookbook for Christmas - with the shift he's working, I asked him to help out with dinner during the week and since he has a limited repertoire of recipes, we needed to start somewhere. This book is awesome! I think it would make a great starting point for anyone just beginning to cook (Alex also has Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, another great starting point...put the two together and wow!)

This book tells you how to do everything. There's even a section on how to chop an onion!

At the beginning of each recipe, after the ingredients, but before the instructions there is also a list of exactly what you will need to make the dish - all the prep and cooking dishes.


After a number of the recipes are some suggestions for serving - side dishes and accompaniments...it's great (I wish some of our other cookbooks had that...)


Alex's first recipe from this book was Cajun Baked Salmon.


It called for steaks, but we both agreed that if we made it again, fillets would be better. Neither of us is a huge salmon steak fan - too many bones to retrieve, especially when J eats with us.


This was a super quick meal to prepare. J and I got home at 5:15 and I think we sat down to eat before 6:00. Alex waited until we were home to start cooking since the salmon only took about 15 minutes...overdone salmon=yuck!


Since I was doing the dishes, I appreciated the prep-work clean up too - a fork, some measuring spoons, a small bowl and a side plate. Easy!


It didn't take long for the house to start smelling yummy!


J loved it. She ate about 2/3 of a steak and some rice. She's decided that peas are yucky this week so she tried to get one of us to eat them for her.


Because I'm on the GAPS diet, I got to have salad instead of rice. That was a challenge when Alex picked the first recipe he wanted to try...the first few were nixed because a main ingredient that couldn't be easily left out or substituted (at least for my portion) was something on the not recommended list. I told Alex I'd go through the book and make a list of the recipes that are okay for me...maybe that's what I should do with all this time stretching in front of me tonight!

The calm evening we had is such a treat. Because we got to eat dinner with him, J wasn't (too) upset when Alex went to work and because Alex was in the kitchen, I got to spend a few minutes with J before dinner, looking at a book and playing with play dough. I don't often get to do that because I'm trying to get dinner made, but we both really enjoyed it!