Weekend Workroom: Foil-Packet Salmon

So... I don't know about you, but the whole "Daylight Savings Time" has really been messing with me - especially today. Maybe it was just because I worked on a Monday for the first time in a long time or that I went to bed super late because I was completing an assessment for the second round of a job or whatever, but I felt really dead mentally almost all day long. Kind of absurd.

I spent the evening baking, and wanted to share the recipe with you through pictures but, alas, we don't have quite the right input/output cord for the newest/old camera that we borrowed from my parents this past weekend. The fact that I took pictures of the process is completely useless with no cord.

Regardless, I have another recipe I'd like to share. We adapted this out of Great Easy Meals' "Mix & Match Foil-Packet Fish," which I've mentioned a few times. This was an incredible meal, people. Man. Really simple, too. I mean, I guess it wouldn't be great if you don't like or are allergic to fish, but for everyone else = fish-tastic.

Essentially, you take four 4-oz fillets of salmon (I bought a pound of salmon fillets in the frozen food section at Walmart for $5, and they come individually wrapped, of all things), put them over some veggies, wrap them in a piece of foil, and bake them for a while.

For ours, we used about two cups of veggies. Instead of choosing two types of veggies, as the instructions state, we went with three: 2/3 cup each of green onion, corn (from a can), and red bell pepper. This is also a little less than the instructions state (2 cups total instead of 4), but it was plenty and entirely sufficient for adding good flavor to the salmon. To the veggies I added 1/2 cup chicken broth and 1/2 fresh lemon juice, stirring it all together with some salt, pepper, and a few leaves of freshly shredded basil.

For each fillet, you put 1/2 cup of veggies down on a piece of foil, set the fillet on top of them, and add 1/4 cup of the liquid to the fillet so that it steams while in the oven. Then, fold up the foil into packets so that the juices don't get lost in the cooking process and so there's room for steam to build (basically, leave a little room for air in the packet), and put in the oven. They'll look a little like:

Bake the foil packets at 450° for 12 minutes, until they're cooked through. Remove from the oven and let them rest an additional 5 minutes.

I put ours over a simple flavored rice mix (I think it was Herb & Butter Rice a Roni), and just flipped the packet upside down onto the rice - fish first, then veggies on top. It was an amazingly flavorful and healthful meal. Only about 525 calories, even with the rice (fish and veggies alone - 275 calories).

I'm hoping to get back to more projects for the Weekend Workroom, but I haven't been working on too much lately other than trying to cook and keep things picked up. I have worked a bit more on Christopher's blanket, though, so an update picture might pop up sometime soon...