Cooking For Yourself

Ages ago, I picked up a cookbook called "Cooking For Yourself." It was part of the Williams-Sonoma canon and I snagged it on deep discount while I was working there.

I wasn't feeling all militant and single or anything - it just had some good recipes. And some good thoughts on how to buy food without wasting it, and without eating the same thing for a week. Despite the whole foreword about how you shouldn't feel bad about yourself because you're cooking solo.

I kid. It doesn't really say that. Well, not in so many words.

Anyway, I latched onto one recipe in this thing right away, and it's still something I make, 10+ years later.

It is, in fact, ideal, when you are cooking for yourself. As I was, tonight.

Also, I was super hungry. And also, I'm eating lightly this week so I can wear this certain dress to Rayleen & James' wedding this weekend. A very pretty dress. A very unforgiving dress.

Eating lightly for me means fish and veggies. For some reason, that seems to work for me. So I went back to my old salmon-in-a-packet standby.

It's so easy. Even if you're not cooking for yourself, you should add this to your repertoire. Just multiply the ingredients and packets.

And if you are cooking for yourself, I have a bunch of tricks that make this super single-person friendly.

Here's how it goes:

Go to the store and get yourself a nice piece of wild, line caught, salmon. Then go to the salad bar. Get corn, red peppers, and jalapenos. You want about 1/2 cup of corn, 1/4 cup red peppers, and a couple of tablespoons of jalapenos. And cilantro, a few tablespoons of that. If you remember to get cilantro, which I did not. 

Chop up the peppers if you need to. Try to get the pieces roughly the same size. Perfection is not required here.

Salt and pepper the corn/jalapeno/pepper mix and put it on a piece of foil. Add a few dots of butter.
 

Put your piece of salmon on top of the pile.

Oh. Crap. Set your oven to 450! You should have done that before! Do it now!

Ok, and then take a wedge of lime and squeeze it over your salmon on the pile of veggies. Salt and pepper it, and place lime wedges on top and then dots of butter.

Pull up the long sides of the foil and fold over the top so it's sealed. Then roll up the ends.
 

Now bake it. For 15 minutes. Or 20 minutes if you have a super thick filet, but I suggest you cook it for 15.

Be super careful when you take it out as you don't want to burn yourself on the steam coming from the packet of delicious.

It'll look like this:

If you, like me, had a piece of salmon with the skin on it, remove the salmon with a spatula to a cutting board. Flip it over and peel off the skin.

Tasty! (And healthy!)

The juices are delicious, by the way. You may want to consider serving this in a bowl so you can drink the juices at the end. Luckily, you're dining alone so such behavior is totally ok.

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