Food and Recipes ~ Lemony Salmon Burgers

I am new to preparing seafood. Not that I never cooked fish but that I have never prepared fish other than pre breaded fish fillets that you just heat and eat. I bought a large fillet of salmon I divided it into 3 portions, I packaged and froze two of them and I made a salmon dish with the first. This recipe I am going to make is from one of the frozen packages. I am actually looking forward to making this recipe.
I thought making a burger from the frozen fish would be a good choice and its something I think the three of us will eat.  I found this recipe called lemony salmon burgers, I have all the ingredients except the seafood seasoning (note to self look for seafood seasoning next time I go shopping), I will sub salt, pepper and garlic salt.
Lemony Salmon Burgers

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 pounds salmon fillet, cut into chunks 1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley 2 tablespoons dry bread crumbs 2 tablespoons chopped green onion

2 teaspoons seafood seasoning 1 lemon, juiced salt and ground black pepper to taste 1 tablespoon olive oil

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Place salmon chunks, parsley, bread crumbs, green onion, seafood seasoning, lemon juice, salt, and black pepper in a food processor. Pulse until salmon is chopped. Shape salmon mixture into four patties.
2.	Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Pan-fry patties until golden brown, about 4 minutes per side.

I will come back and update with how I think it tasted, how easy or difficult it was to prepare and what I served with it. 

Food and Recipe ~ Refried Beans

This is my favorite recipe for making refried beans. This recipe is to use with a slow cooker, it makes a lot but its not a problem. I package the leftovers into the amount I use for a meal and freeze. Then the next time I need refried beans I take a container out and let it thaw, heat and eat.

The following link is from allrecipes.com, I did not create this recipe, but have enjoyed making and eating them.

Refried Beans Without the Refry

INGREDIENTS:

1 onion, peeled and halved 3 cups dry pinto beans, rinsed 1/2 fresh jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped 2 tablespoons minced garlic

5 teaspoons salt 1 3/4 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper 1/8 teaspoon ground cumin, optional 9 cups water

DIRECTIONS:

1.	Place the onion, rinsed beans, jalapeno, garlic, salt, pepper, and cumin into a slow cooker. Pour in the water and stir to combine. Cook on High for 8 hours, adding more water as needed. Note: if more than 1 cup of water has evaporated during cooking, then the temperature is too high.
2.	Once the beans have cooked, strain them, and reserve the liquid. Mash the beans with a potato masher, adding the reserved water as needed to attain desired consistency.

These are some of the things I do different from what the recipe says.
I dice my onion before adding to the slow cooker.
I don't add the jalapeno anymore and we don't miss it, but if you like your beans on the spicy side make sure you add them.
I only use 4 teaspoons of salt.
and the cumin I use about 1/2 a teaspoon.

I have made this recipe over 20 times and we always enjoy them. Once you eat these you will never like the canned refried beans again. Its a fairly easy recipe.
I hope you give this recipe a try.

Food and Recipes ~ Carrot Cake

One of the things I like about cooking is finding and trying new recipes. I find them mostly online. So what I have decided to do is start sharing them here. Most of the recipes I find I will change something or tweak it a bit. So I will be sharing the link to the original recipe and any changes I might have done and if it didn't work I will include it so you know what not to do. Or if the recipe is perfect the way it is, I will share tips and techniques about that recipe.
This first recipe I'm going to share is the carrot cake I made for our Easter dessert.
I searches the internet and found a few that sounded promising but with out any feed back from others I didn't want to risk it not being good. So I ended up at one of my favorite recipe sites All Recipes . I Searched for carrot cake and found about six I thought were promising (I will list some of them at the end of this post).  I then proceeded to read some of the reviews and narrowed my search to this tasty recipe
  Sam's Famous Carrot Cake .
So here are the changes I made to this recipe for my families liking.
1. I did not have buttermilk in the house and I didn't want to spend the money for 3/4 cup of buttermilk. I made my own version of faux buttermilk by using just under 3/4 cup of milk and a tablespoon of vinegar.
2. for the 1-1/2 cups white sugar I used 1 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar
3. I was out of vanilla so I went without any flavored extract. If I had it I would put it in but I didn't miss it in this recipe.
4. For the 2 cups of all purpose flour I used 1 cup of all purpose flour and 1 cup of whole wheat flour .
5. I omitted the coconut because most of my family does not like coconut.
6. I omitted the walnuts.
7. For the 1 cup raisins I minced them up till they were very small.
8. I combined the shredded carrots and the minced up raisins in a bowl and used my hands to get the raisins broken apart and combined with the carrots, I then added the crushed pineapple to the carrot and raisin mixture and mixed.  Doing this step makes sure that the carrots, raisins and pineapple are evenly spread through the cake.
9. The recipe says bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. I baked mine at 350 degrees but it was done in 50 minutes. So I suggest checking it near the end.
This cake was the best carrot cake I have ever made and I will most definitely be making it again.

So this if my version of this recipe. with all the changes I made to it
Kathi's version of carrot cake
3 eggs
just under 3/4 cup milk with 1 Tbls. white vinegar added to the milk
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 cups shredded carrots
1 cup crushed pineapple with the juice
1 cup minced raisins

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour an 8x12 inch pan.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Set aside.
3. In a large bowl, combine eggs, buttermilk, oil, sugar and vanilla. Mix well. Add flour mixture and mix well.
4. In a medium bowl, combine shredded carrots, minced raisins and pineapple.
5. Using a large wooden spoon or a very heavy whisk, add carrot mixture to batter and fold in well.
6. Pour into prepared 8x12 inch pan, and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 1 hour. Check early with toothpick.
7. Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before serving

When the cake is cooled frost with your favorite frosting. I made a cream cheese frosting with lemon zest. This was the best carrot cake I have ever made

 I have written it here for 

1) so that I will remember my changes.

2) for my kids if they want to remake this cake for themselves. 

3) for others that might want to try and make a carrot cake.

I almost made this one Carrot Cake I didn't choose it mainly because it said it served  15 to 18 people and that was too much for us. If you are looking for a cake to serve a lot of people you might want to check out this recipe

Here are a couple others that I considered Carrot Cake III and Carrot Cake

I hope you enjoyed this post sharing my carrot cake journey. Enjoy