A Girl's Gotta Eat!

Nothing much to say about this recipe other than it was easy, tasty, and made an excellent weeknight meal. We came across it in our much-used copy of Recipes Worth Sharing while making Shrimp and Grits for my MIL's birthday dinner. It looked tasty, and we have salmon in the freezer from Mike's Alaska trip and most of the other ingredients on hand, so it was perfect! The most "difficult" part was cooking and flaking the salmon, but there are a few things you could do for that. 1) Buy smoked salmon. It's more expensive, but easier to flake and you'll save time cooking it. It will impart a stronger flavor, but I think it would be good in the cream cheese-based sauce. We even talked about smoking our own salmon next time and trying it. I'll post an update when we do. 2) Grill salmon for dinner one night and purposely make enough extra to make this pasta a few days later. It will be cool enough that flaking it will be a breeze, and you save a little time no...

There have been so many recipes in our recent issues of Food Network Magazine that have been calling our name that we've been hard-pressed to choose which one to try first. When we finally narrowed it down, we were quite pleased with the results. We had been looking for a meal that seemed fairly quick and easy to execute and that was relatively good for us. This flank steak seemed hearty, but was listed in the magazine as having less than 400 calories per serving. Even better, flank steak is a relatively inexpensive cut of meat, and this one didn't need hours marinating before we could cook it. This definitely fit the bill. The steak stayed juicy and flavorful since you sear it. We cooked our for the suggested time per side for medium-rare, but as long as you sear it over high heat, cooking it longer for a more well-done steak shouldn't pose a problem. There are two things I would do differently next time. 1) Double the recipe for the beans. We thought they were excepti...