Someone asked for my Chili Salmon recipe, and to be honest there’s nothing to it

INGREDIENTS

Salmon (skin on, scaled)
Sesame Oil
Soy sauce
Pepper
Minced garlic (I have a little mincing tool)
Thai Kitchen Red Curry Paste (the yummiest ever and is NOT spicy at all because I’m a wimp and hate spice)
[Optional] Fresh Ginger Juice (It’s a hell of a job to get it)

Whatever veggies you want, but I’d suggest stir frying them separately (sugar snap peas, green onions, caramelized onions, green beans and spinach work well as sides).

STEPS

Get the rice started.
I suggest short grain white sushi rice. You have to wash the rice in water, then let it soak for half an hour before cooking it in the rice cooker or else it won’t get a nice consistency and will be dry.

Marinate the Salmon.
Coat it with a bit of sesame oil, soy sauce and some sprinkling of pepper, and rubbing the garlic all over it. [Optional: Fresh Ginger juice]

Wait.

Start rice.
Half an hour later from when you started soaking the rice, start the rice cooker by pressing “COOK” (don’t laugh, I’ve left it on “WARM” before and wondered why my rice was taking forever).

Start warming oven.
Put the salmon skin up in a little pan or on a tinfoil sheet, and heat up the oven (both racks bottom and top) and set the thing to “BROIL”.

Pop that sucker into the oven.
Broil the salmon to get the skin crispy for about 2 minutes.

Start the stirfry veggies [Optional]
Some people (like my brother) don’t eat veggies with the salmon to dilute the taste, but they eat salad or fruit.

Turn it down to 200 degrees Celsius to cook the rest without burning it.
Let it cook for another 8 minutes.

I don’t mind my fish being a bit raw in the middle because I LOVE raw fish, but if you are squeamish them put it in for 10-12 minutes to really cook the rawness out if it’s a thick slab of fish.

Rice should be ready
Fluff rice and close the lid so that the steam gets all around the rice and doesn’t harden it into a rice cake.

Pull out the salmon & plate
Put salmon on plate.

Take a butter knife, liberally spread chili paste all over the top of the skin of the salmon in a coating. (Or if you are nervous, put dollops on the plate beside the salmon before going the whole hog).

Scoop white rice on plate beside salmon.

Eat.

(Add soy sauce or salt and pepper as needed)

*heart*.. Yours truly was interviewed by Living Almost Large, one of my long-time favourite PF blogs (she asks some really great reflective questions that makes me stop and think).

She also writes another personal blog called LAL Musings.

If you want more info, you can always read The FB Story which is like a short collection of posts about me.

(Totally brightened up my day, as it has been a tired, sucky one so far. Damn am I ever cranky.)

Honestly, I think I read somewhere that Canada has some of the worst waiting times possible for health care.

Case in point.

BF feels quite unwell at 9.30 p.m.

We get to Emergency at 10 p.m.

We did not get to even see a doctor until 5 A.M. IN THE MORNING!

At which point the doctor decides that he needs blood work done.

So it takes them an hour and a half to do the blood work and another 5 minutes to tell us he’s OK.

Are you absorbing all of this in? By the time we left, it was 6.30 a.m. in the morning, we had been waiting in Emergency for 8 and a half f*cking hours!

It gets better than that.

We were only the 6th person in line at 10 p.m. and they only had 2 emergencies that night who get priority over us since they had an ambulance called. In total, 7 people ahead of us at 8.5 hours to process all of them.

The emergencies were 2 old women by the way, who seemed to have breathing problems. Nothing major like a leg or head being gashed open.

*shakes head in disbelief*

I have no idea what goes on in a hospital but is this normal!? Almost an hour PER PERSON was spent, without any overlap or multi-tasking done per patient (like one getting bloodwork analyzed while another patient is being seen).

The INITIAL consultatation with the doctor was 7 HOURS LATER, and they kind of wasted time because they could have had that bloodwork ready before.

They were also NOT understaffed. I saw 2 receiving nurses for incoming patients and 5 other nurses with 2 doctors.

HOW COULD IT HAVE TAKEN SO LONG?

I am so mad right now. And I don’t feel like myself because I only slept an hour or two there in uncomfortable chairs, came home and slept another 3 hours but now I have this pounding headache that wishes it could come out of my skull and strangle something.

P.S. – BF was fine.

REALIZATIONS ABOUT FEBRUARY BUDGET

By the way, thanks to stackingpennies, I realized that I totally forgot about interest earnings on my savings.

I earned $71.52 in interest last month (February)! Which is a hell of a lot better than my $1500 losses in the stock market. Ugh.

And come to think of it, in hindsight I spent around $700 on Technology stuff in February 2009, but I only went over my $1500 budget by ~$70, so .. if I had not purchased that Netbook and a sleeve, etc.. I would have been under budget by $700.

Huh. Food for thought.

Anyway, it’s not everyday that I purchase a laptop or score a great deal on an external hard drive (Western Digital Portable Passport for 500GB only $159.99!!!! It was meant to be priced at $179.99 but they screwed up so I scored it for $20 cheaper).

MARCH BUDGET

This is my estimated budget for March that will definitely go over the allotted $1500 by about $327 that I have budgeted for myself each month.

I am leaving it the way it is, because I always give myself $1500/month. I am also going to keep eating out, and all the fun stuff under what I THINK I will spend, so that I end up spending $1500 on point which will be my mini challenge for this month.