More Salmon Recipes

I saw an article today that said something about the key to healthy eating at lunch is not waiting until lunchtime to decide what you are going to eat.

Ideally, we would plan healthy meals in advance.

Good luck with that!

I try. I really do - well if trying means thinking about it. But if I'm honest, when I get home after a long day of teaching followed by tutoring followed by a train trip home - being creative with lunch for the next day is pretty much the last thing on my mind.

I've thought about making food ahead on the weekends - and sometimes I do - but more often than not, I'm trying to steal writing time on the weekend and cooking would just be an excuse not to write. I don't need more of those.

But today gave me pretty good evidence for why it's essential that I pack healthy lunches. I had a prep period right before lunch. I still hadn't had a chance to drink my coffee so I sat at my desk drinking coffee and eating sugar cookies. Mistake #1 was buying the cookies at the bakery. Mistake #2 was eating them instead of getting lunch. By halfway through the period, I was so tired I didn't know how I was going to teach my afternoon classes.

Fortunately, I had made lentil/hummus pita pockets for dinner last night and had brought one with me. I ate that and drank water and soon felt like a new woman.

Okay, lesson learned. Be prepared. Normally I rely on nuts to snack on, but as I've mentioned, I have students with lethal nut allergies.

So tonight I was wandering the grocery aisles looking for inspiration. I decided to find some horseradish, but they didn't have what I wanted. I found this instead.

Have you had Honeycup Mustard? Years ago when I was working at Columbia Pictures, there was a cafe that made amazing paninis with ham and cheese and Honeycup Mustard on peasant bread. I think I lived on them for a year!!!

When I saw the mustard tonight, I thought - another salmon glaze!

So that's what I did. I bought the mustard, took a salmon steak out of the freezer and put a dollop of mustard on it, wrapped the whole thing in parchment paper and foil and baked at 400 for about 40 minutes.

The result was amazing! I almost didn't have any left over for lunch. I mean this took WILLPOWER!!!!

I know the picture doesn't look like much, but that crust of mustard was so good!

I had to run out to a meeting which is really the only thing that probably saved it.

When I returned, I took my mini-pitas, layered more of the mustard and warmed that in the oven. Then I took the chilled mustard-coated salmon and stuffed it in the pita. Oh, so much deliciousness!
Actually my first thought was that it tasted more like lobster.

So good. I can't wait until lunch time tomorrow!

So what do you do about lunch? How do you handle it when you're at that certain age where skipping meals doesn't really cut it anymore?