Salmon Patties

This is one of our family’s favorite meals.  We LOVE it!  It is very time-consuming, though, so we don’t have it very often.  We usually pair it with a pasta side dish and some peas. It serves four, but I always double the recipe b/c they are really good as leftovers (and we are pigs lol).

Salmon Patties with Lemon-Herb mayonnaise

Ingredients:

1/4 cup finely chopped red bell pepper
1/4 cup finely chopped green onion
1/4 cup mayonnaise (we use miracle whip)
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
1/4 tsp seasoned salt
1 pinch cayenne (red) pepper
1 egg, beaten
12 oz Chicken of the Sea boneless/skinless pink salmon, drained
6 tbsp dry bread crumbs
3 tbsp butter
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp fresh prepared horseradish
2 1/2 tsp fresh thyme or 1 tsp dry thyme

Lemon-Herb mayonnaise: (make this first so the thyme can soften and it doesn’t get stuck in your teeth)
Combine mayonnaise, fresh lemon juice, prepared horseradish, fresh or dry thyme, and salt and pepper to taste in a small bowl; blend well; set aside in refrigerator for later.*

Directions:
In small mixing bowl, combine chopped red pepper, green onion, mayonnaise, lime juice, seasoned salt,  and cayenne pepper.  Taste and adjust seasonings to personal preference.  Stir in egg, salmon, and 4 tablespoons of the bread crumbs.  Divide and form mixture into 8 balls.  Roll salmon balls in remaining bread crumbs (I usually need MUCH more than what is called for); flatten into cakes.  Fry salmon cakes in melted butter** in skillet over medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes per side.  Serve with Lemon-Herb mayonnaise.

*Feel free to adjust the amounts of lemon juice and horseradish to personal taste.  I usually have to use twice as much lemon juice and 3x horseradish to get it the way I like it, and that is BEFORE I double it.

**Frying the patties in half butter and half vegetable oil will make the butter less likely to burn and cause the patties to taste funny.  Just a suggestion, though.  😉

Use any leftover lemon-herb mayonnaise as a sandwich spread or as a vegetable dip.  Yumm!!

Enjoy!!

Menu June 17-23

I got this idea from another blog I came across this week.  Plath’s Adventures is a cute blog and she has a lot of good ideas about gardening, knitting, parenting, and lots of other things.  She is also a good photographer.  Check it out!

Our menu is a little off, going from Friday through Thursday, whereas most people make their menu from Sunday through Saturday.  We do all of our shopping for the week on Friday, and we sit down and come up with a menu for the week right before we go, so it works better for us this way.  We just started doing this since we moved here, and its going great so far.

Friday – Hamburgers, grilled onions, baked beans

Saturday – BLTs, Bacon Ranch Suddenly Salad, fresh strawberries

Sunday – All beef hot dogs, fried red potatoes

Monday – Salmon Patties, pasta, peas  Soup, salad
We didn’t get any sleep the night before, so we were exhausted.  Salmon Patties take a lot of work, so we weren’t up to it.  We’re moving this meal to next week instead.

Tuesday – Homemade chicken fingers, tater tots, green beans,cornbread
I thought we had tater tots and didn’t check before we left for the store, but we don’t.

Wednesday – Tuna salad sandwiches, ceasar suddenly salad

Thursday – Grilled sirloin steak, cauliflower and broccoli

Good boy!

My dogs are scared of cows.  A small section of our back yard backs up to our neighbor’s cow pasture.  Every once in a while the cows make it up there.  Every time the dogs see the cows, they get the hiccups and stop dead in their tracks.  They sit there for hours in the grass watching the cows.  It’s rather funny.

Then, Olive decided to go explore in their pasture.  We don’t like our dogs to go over there.  For one thing, it isn’t our property, and another thing is that if they were to get hurt (stepped on or kicked by a cow, bit by a snake, etc) we wouldn’t know about it if they couldn’t get back home.  Simon doesn’t like to be scolded, so he was a good boy and stayed on our property.  He just sat and watched in the direction that his sister took off.

Good boy!

New Kids on the Block

I haven’t posted about my chickens in a while, and since I have some new kids to introduce I figured this is as good of a time as any.

A couple weeks ago I got  3 new chicks, Polish Crested.  Two of them came to me sick and they died within a week of having them.  The third one, though, is doing awesome!  Her name is Cricket, and she is adorable!  She will have crazy hair when she is an adult.

While she was alone she wasn’t very happy, so I gave her a lot of attention and she got very attached.  She is very friendly and loves to be held.  Since she was so lonely, though, I went and got her some friends. They were all hatched on the same date.  Cricket is teeny tiny compared to them, though.

This one is an Ameraucana/Cochin mix.  She (I think it is a pullet) is a very pretty bird.  I love her coloring.  Since she is part Cochin, she has feathered legs.

The next one is an Ameraucana mix, I think with Speckled Sussex based on its coloring, but I’m not sure.  I’m pretty sure it is a cockerel.  He is the biggest out of all of them.  He is Polydactyl and has double back toes.

The last one is an Ameraucana/? mix.  I have no clue what it is mixed with.  My son named it Gilligan. This one is small also, a little bit bigger than Cricket is.

They all get along really well and are the best of buds now.  Cricket doesn’t even freak out for me to come pick her up anymore.  *pout*  I kind of miss cuddling with my little chickie.

The last time I posted about my chickens I said that I was going to be getting some Barred Rock chicks.  They didn’t end up being Barred Rocks, but that’s okay.  I’m not quite sure what kind they are, I just call them my mystery chicks.  They free range peacefully with my older chicks but they still sleep in a brooder in my husband’s shop at night until my husband can get the coop built.  These guys will end up being butchered.

I now have a total of 16 chickens.  I think that is good for now, until we start butchering some of them.  Everyone that I have now is happy and healthy, which is good news!

Eeek!!

I’m completely fascinated by all of the creatures we have out here in the country.  When we lived in the suburbs we really didn’t find that many.  The vast varieties of spiders are the most interesting and cool to see, to me.

We have a bunch of Bold Jumping spiders around and in our house.  Yes, I said “in”.  Bold Jumping Spiders tend to leave humans alone, but they do a good job at eating other pests that tend to be food for Brown Recluse spiders.  The more the Bold Jumpers eat, the less likely we are to have Brown Recluses, so I leave them be.  I have even convinced my husband that they are good to have around.  We have one that likes to hang around in the window in our dinette, one that keeps our laundry room safe, and one that hangs outside on our front windows.  The one in the pictures below was found hanging on silk outside our side door.

The other day, the one that hangs outside our front window had just caught a moth.  The weirdo in me decided to take pictures.  lol

I don’t think he was happy with me for interrupting his meal, or he thought I was going to steal it, b/c every time I moved to take another picture he would turn the other direction to avoid me.

Tonight my husband was working in his shop.  Earlier this evening he had opened one of the overhead doors and the walkthrough door to air it out.  He had been using brake cleaner earlier and there was A LOT of fumes in the shop when I put my chicks away, who sleep in there, and it wasn’t safe for them.  He left it open while we were eating dinner.  We live in the middle of nowhere, who’s going to go in there anyway?

Well, someone did.  He was making himself right at home.  It was when he decided to take a trip across my husband’s feet is when he was kicked out.  It was a gigantic wolf spider.  I’m not sure what type exactly, I just know it was HUGE!  The body, yes…just the body…was the length of a quarter.  The legs were, well, enormous.  Take a look for yourselves.

Looks innocent enough, right??  Uh huh.

Oh my god!  Isn’t it gigantic???

My husband picked it up in a small container to put it in a bucket.  On the way, he pretended to throw it at me.  I nearly had a heart attack and about peed my pants.

I really hope we get a Golden Orb Weaver spider around our house.  I think they are so neat in pictures.

They also spin the most amazing webs!

I believe both of those spiders were Golden Orb Weavers, but I have yet to see one so I’m not sure.  I can’t wait, though!