Octopus's Garden

When John is away, I have a hard time being motivated to cook, and usually end up having cereal for dinner. But since I know I need to bring a lunch to work, I turn to easy things that are still healthy and satisfying. Bring on my fish bags. Sounds gross, but they are awesome. And stupidly easy. And only take 23 minutes. And are dirt cheap.

What you need is:

1. parchement paper

2. fron salmon filets (highliner $6 for 4)

3. quinoa or rice or whatever you like

4. quick cooking and easy prep veggies like mushrooms, broccoli, baby bok choy, spinach, green beans... play arouns with different combos

5. sauce: bc famous salmon marinade or teryaki are our fav's

And that is it. place frozen salmon on parchement paper, layer veggies, pour sauce, make tent and cook at 400 for 23 minutes while quinoa or rice is cooking!

The tenting is the hardest part, you need to make sure you have adequate paper for folding and wrapping. Then unwrap your steaming parcel and mix in your rice side. Quinoa cooked in chicken broth is particularily scrumptious with this, and makes it that much more healthy. You can also try this with white fish, like cod or basa, and do a simple lemon ginger sauce for a delicate flavour.

Since I'm on seafood, for Valentines Day John and I cooked our own lobsters! It was exciting and we had a good time with it.

I made a "bouquet garni" of thyme, rosemary, bay leaves and sage (herb bunch) to flavour the cooking water, and also added half a lemon and its juice and whole peppercorns. I did not have any string in which to tie up my herbs, so I used a loose leaf tea bag holder, which worked very well!