Garlic Lime Tilapia

Happy Thursday, everybody!  As my workweek winds down my life tends to get busier so I always try to have some basic ingredients on hand to throw a quick dinner together when I don't feel like cooking.  Tilapia is one of the things that is always in my freezer.  It's a very mild fish so you can do just about any kind of sauce on it and it will taste yummy.  It's also fast cooking.  So last week when I came home and wanted a quick dinner I pulled some tilapia out of my freezer and had dinner ready in 20 minutes.  How awesome is that?!

Tilapia en Croute

In case you're new to the terminology, "en croute" is a fancy way of saying that something is cooked in a crust.  Just like "en papillotte" (in a paper envelope), this is a great way to cook fish because the juice is sealed inside a pouch and turned into steam so you will end up with a flaky, moist piece of fish - yum!

Salmon with a Lemon Dill Crab Topping

This Easter I decided to mix things up a little bit and serve salmon instead of ham.  I love ham and all but my volunteer-firefighting fiancee had a bad experience several years ago when he responded to a barn fire at a pig farm and so now he pretty much avoids ham like the plague.  Since this was to be our first time hosting a family holiday meal since we got engaged, not to mention the first big meal at our new place I wanted to come up with something really special, and thus salmon with a lemon dill crab topping was born.  As an added bonus this dish turned out to be super easy!

Creamed Salmon on Toast

While it may sound strange to some of you, creamed salmon on toast was one of my favorite meals growing up. It's warm and creamy, and perfect when accompanied by canned sweet peas. Not fresh peas, not frozen peas, and certainly not any other vegetable. Trust me on this one. Canned peas. As I was making it for dinner the other night I realized it would be great to share as my next blog. I think it's perfect for a nice spring dinner, especially here in New York, where we tend to get random cold snaps as late as June some years. This is a quick dish you can throw together with things you probably already have in your kitchen.