Weekly Dinners: Soups and Salmon

I am having a great time preparing dinners twice a week.  I never really did that before and started that as a goal just before the end of last year.  I even made it part of my new Year’s Goals for 2011.  So far, so good with cooking dinner twice a week.  Of course, things come up and things don’t go as planned, but that is OK because dinner will be had somewhere!

Although not part of my home cooked dinners, I created a fun soup using these noodles.

 

My only issue with the noodles would be the sodium content.  Since only 1 serving is listed the number is just jumping off that package, but in reality, other noodle soups like this have as much sodium.  The only difference would be that those are broken down into 2 servings which makes the number look smaller.  You just have to multiply by two and find something around this 1940 mg.

The good news is that I never use all of the packet of seasoning, I drain some liquid off, and I never drink all of the remaining soup liquid.  I use these more like flavored noodles.

I thought this soup would be the perfect place to use my dried mushrooms from Nuts Online.

So, here comes the easiest mushroom noodle soup ever:

Cook the noodles as per the directions, then toss in some dried mushrooms, let stand for about 3 minutes to rehydrate those mushrooms, and enjoy.

Now on to some weekly dinners.  I always try and give Ryan some say in the dinners I prepare.  Last week he suggested minestrone soup.  I thought that would be perfect because it is a great way to fit in beans and veggies, plus I still had some whole wheat shell pasta.

The recipe I found was pretty basic, but called for a whole head of cabbage.  I am not a fan of cabbage so I passed on that, which was a good thing because I am not sure where it was going to fit in this soup.  I had to add water in just to have some liquid in the soup.

Here were some of the canned items I used.

 

I also added a bunch of fresh veggies: onions, carrots, potatoes and carrots.

Cook the veggies, broth and tomatoes for about 15-20 minutes.

Then went in some zucchini…

…whole wheat shells…

 

and the beans (plus Italian seasoning).  POOF!  There you have some easy and tasty minestrone.

 

The other night Ryan asked for something with orange.  I thought fish would be a great orange flavored dish.

I started off by steaming broccoli since I could not serve a veggie-less meal.

I also decided to add in a grain.  I went with this brown rice couscous which I picked up when I was in Boston last November.

For the fish, I selected this salmon, which they sell at the commissary.

I found a recipe for orange ginger turkey and substituted the fish for the turkey.  I thought it was interesting that it called for orange marmalade.

The salmon cooks in some oil first, and then it was so easy from there.  I just put in some marmalade and fresh grated ginger.  I covered the skillet and let it cook for about 6-8 minutes or until done.

Luckily Ryan walked in just as I turned off the stove.  I was expecting him a little earlier and the dinner actually cooked faster than expected because I forgot the fish would cook faster than the turkey which was in the original recipe.  I dished everything up, adding some of the sauce on top of the fish, and then Ryan literally walked in the door and went right to the table.

This tasted as good as it looked.  YUM!

QUESTIONS: Have you ever tried dried mushrooms?  What is your favorite way to prepare salmon?  Do you like minestrone soup?