We’re up to our elbows in snow, and a good four days into our 10-day adaptation of the Food Lovers’ Cleanse. The biggest problem I’ve had (as I suspected would be the case) is that it has been really difficult to make the plan’s suggested breakfasts and lunches work with my weekday schedule, but I’ve also found that the recipes in general have been really hit or miss.

I was almost ready to give up entirely after our first dinner, the disastrous Ultimate Winter Couscous, which smelled so lovely in the oven but tasted like a whole lot of unpleasantly-textured nothing on the plate (and I’m still at a loss as to why those vegetables needed four whole tablespoons of olive oil). Mike tried and really liked Heidi’s cinnamon quinoa, the edamame hummus (both of which I look forward to trying), and the tuna with celery root and apple salad, but I couldn’t even smell that salad without gagging (and I love celery root). I ended up eating dry tuna with even drier Wasa crackers.

On a positive note, we truly loved the salmon in Bengali mustard sauce and the black-eyed pea curry (for which I used yellow-eye beans from Freedom Bean Farm in Maine), both of which we’d happily put into regular rotation.

Perhaps my favorite recipe so far, though, is one that does not appear in the original BA Food Lovers’ Cleanse, but one I decided to swap in for the OMG-are-you-serious? on-a-weeknight? Successively Simmered Koya-Dofu and Vegetables, the incredibly aromatic, delicious, satisfying, and – wait for it – easy enough for a weeknight (or any darned time) Vegetarian Pho by our friend Winnie Abramson.

You toast coriander seeds, cloves, star anise, and a cinnamon stick in a dry skillet until fragrant, add them to some warm vegetable broth with an onion and some peeled and smashed ginger, plus an Indonesian soy sauce (which I couldn’t find, so I used her suggested substitution of brown sugar and tamari). You bring it to a boil, simmer, strain out the solids, chop the softened onion and ginger, then add them back to the pot along with edamame and chopped bok choy. Cook a little longer, add your rice noodles (I even used whole grain rice noodles! Healthy!), and finish with a big hit of fresh lime juice, Sriracha, cilantro and fresh scallions. Easy. Peasy. Delicious. And so nice we ate it twice.

31 dishes, 31 days – I’m cooking my way through Melissa Clark‘s “No-Sweat Cooking” from the August issue of Every Day with Rachael Ray. And to those of you who made your way over here via rachaelraymag.com, welcome!

We enjoyed these tasty little bites before our gazpacho dinner Monday night, and while I couldn’t really wrap the cheese in the lox thanks to some rather tiny, odd-shaped slices in my package of wild Alaskan smoked salmon (as you can probably tell by the rogue dill fronds on most of them), my improvisation worked just fine. These are a little light to make up a whole meal for us, but they’re perfect as a snack or a first course. I’d love to make them again when we’ve got some of our own home-cured salmon, perhaps even using a mix of herbs to echo the ones in our cure mix.

Get the recipe: Lox ’n’ Goat Cheese Crostini

The days are growing longer, little green things are springing up all around, and though there’s still a chill in the air, I’m moving ever-so-gradually toward lighter meal preparations. Take this salmon. It’s MSC Certified Wild Alaskan Sockeye, so richly flavored, that it really needed little adornment to make it shine.

But I did want to do something more than just salmon, green beans and carrots, so I put together a sauce. It was inspired by the classic Green Goddess dressing, but since I lacked a few of the primary components of the standard version, I’d call this more of an anchovy and herb sauce. I combined a mixture of anchovy filets, garlic cloves, capers, lots of flat-leaf parsley, chervil, dill and young sorrel leaves in the small bowl of my food processor, added a pinch of salt and the juice of a Meyer lemon, and processed it to a slightly chunky paste. In a separate bowl, I whisked together a couple of ounces of creme fraiche with a heaping tablespoon of mayo, then I added the herb paste and stirred it until combined.

I placed the sauce in the fridge to chill briefly while I sauteed the salmon, rubbed with a small amount of olive oil, searing it on all sides and taking it off the heat while it was still just a bit underdone in the center.

I scattered some young leaves from Baby Greens on our plates, placed the salmon on top, and topped each piece with a drizzle of the sauce. Some sweet young carrots from Ledge Ends Produce, along with the last of the haricots verts I froze last summer, went alongside. In essence, this was a simple meal of fish and vegetables, but the easy, flavorful sauce added a nice bit of elegance and flair.

Home-cured salmon. My first attempt.

I want to tweak the seasonings just a bit, but mostly, I’m in love.

I’m still not feeling great and the weather has taken a turn for the craptastic, but it’s times like these when I’m happy to fall back on some old favorites, like Mike’s pork belly confit, our dinner Wednesday night:

I made the salsa verde, but the rest was all him. And it was delicious.

Wild salmon filets are another favorite, quick and easy to prepare for a weeknight meal.

Thursday night, I seared these in a bit of olive oil until the skin was crispy and the fish just cooked through, then topped them with a little grainy Riggwelter mustard. I served the filets over a mixture of brown and wild rice, wilted spinach and chopped walnuts.

We had originally planned to order a pizza for dinner on Friday night to eat while watching the Presidential debate, but I got a massive craving for mac and cheese midmorning, and since we had everything I needed to make it, there was no reason not to go with it.

Last night’s version had Narragansett Creamery’s Divine Providence, Grafton cheddar, Three Sisters Serena, Morbier and Crystal Brook goat cheese whisked into my standard base, along with Colman’s mustard, a couple shakes of Worcestershire and Tabasco. I added the cooked pasta right to the cheese sauce in our cast iron skillet, topped it with Panko, dried summer savory and a bit more Serena grated on top, and baked it until bubbly and browned. A salad of peppery arugula on the side provided a bit of punch to counteract the richness of the dish.

Project Pantry Cull took another small step forward last night, as I pulled out a long-neglected can of Wild Alaskan pink salmon and turned it into surprisingly tasty salmon “burgers.” I feel a bit silly referring to them as burgers because they were really more like croquettes, but I served them on little wheat rolls with a lemon-caper mayo and sweet potato oven fries on the side, so the spirit of the burger was there.

These were extremely simple to prepare: I drained off the liquid from the salmon, placed it into a big mixing bowl and removed as much of the skin and little bones as I could. I added one finely minced large shallot, salt, pepper, a beaten egg and some plain dry breadcrumbs, then formed the mixture into patties (I ended up with 3) and placed them in the fridge for about half an hour to firm up. They got a quick fry in a bit of olive oil in a hot cast iron skillet for about 3 minutes per side, then a quick blot on paper towels before I placed them on the rolls and dressed them.

This was really the first time I have cooked with canned salmon, but I was impressed by the flavor, and you can’t beat the price – I think our whole meal easily came in at under $10 – so I’ll definitely want to keep it on hand as a pantry staple. I went a little light on the seasonings for my burgers, but I think there’s definitely room to play around there as well – some fresh herbs, spicy mustard or zingy Asian seasonings would all be great additions to future versions of this recipe. If you have any favorite ways to prepare canned salmon, I’d love to hear about them.

As I’ve said before, I really believe that you eat with your eyes first, so I like to spend a little time on plating. Our dinner last night wasn’t anything fancy – a combination of beets, fingerlings and purple potatoes tossed with salt, olive oil and Herbes de Provence and then roasted in the oven, a salmon filet seasoned with salt and pepper and seared on the stovetop, my basic mustard vinaigrette and some pretty microgreens – but the presentation (and flavor) garnered a big “WOW” from my husband. It’s nice to know I can still knock his socks off from time to time.

When Copper River salmon was in season, Mike and I decided to stockpile it. We bought fillets four at a time, and for each two we ate fresh, we chucked two in the freezer for later use. It was a good strategy, ensuring that we’d have a supply of our favorite salmon to get us through until next season, but now that I need to make room in the freezer for stocks, tomato sauce and blanched summer veggies, the salmon has to go. Not all at once, of course, but we do need to start working through it.

I pulled a couple of fillets out of the freezer to thaw, and I spent the better part of yesterday trying to decide how to prepare them. It’s getting dark so early these days that grilling them was out of the question, and my other standard salmon preparations (pan-seared over lentils, or packet-cooked with tomato, olives and capers) weren’t sending me.

I did a search on foodandwine.com for inspiration, as I often do, and came across a photo of these gorgeous little nests of crispy potato, topped with smoked salmon, crème fraiche and chives. Though our salmon wasn’t smoked, the combination of flavors sounded delicious; Mike agreed and so I decided to try my hand at potato-crusted salmon. But I was nervous. Intimidated. Previous attempts at crusting anything have yielded less than stellar results, but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, and I thought if it worked, it would be amazing. I had to take the risk.

When I got home I pulled the salmon out, patted it dry and seasoned it on both sides with kosher salt. I set it back in the fridge and got to work on the potato crust, peeling and grating two medium-ish Kennebec potatoes on the course holes of a box grater, and seasoning the mixture with salt and pepper. I wanted to give the potato a little more kick, so I decided to add three generous spoonfuls of Wheelhouse horseradish to the mix. I pulled my salmon out of the fridge and pressed the mixture into the flesh and sides of the fillets, then put them back in the fridge to firm up a bit.

After about 20 minutes, I preheated my oven to 400, got a thin layer of olive oil warming in the cast iron skillet, and opened the fridge to retrieve the salmon fillets. And they looked wet. Really, really wet. The moisture in the potatoes had leeched out forming a soggy puddle around the salmon, and I was a little freaked out, but we had to eat. I pressed forward, placing my hand over the fillets to keep them on the platter and tipping the excess liquid out into the sink. And then it was show time.

I gently lifted the first salmon fillet off of the platter. I had two fish spatulas in play, but I was having a hard time trying to figure out just how to gently get the fish off of the spatula and into the hot oil without losing the whole crust or splattering hot oil all over, so I ended up just taking it in my hands and gently flipping it into the pan, potato side down. It sizzled and popped, but it was in the pan and the crust appeared to be intact. I added the second fillet to the pan, stepped back, and waited.

When I saw that the edges of the crust looked nice and brown and crisp, I took one of the spatulas and tried to scoot it under the fish; every recipe I had seen online said to flip the fillets so the crust side was up before finishing them in the oven, but mine wouldn’t budge. Again, I felt a little wave of panic in my belly, but I decided to just place them in the oven as-is and see what happened. I let them bake in the oven for 5 minutes, then removed the skillet. I shimmied the spatula under the first fillet, and flipped. It was beautiful. I did the same with the second fillet, and I decided to place them back in the oven skin-side down for just a few minutes more to crisp up.

And just like that, the scariest part was over. I pulled it off. I was incredibly nervous that I wouldn’t, but I did, and those salmon fillets, moist inside and enveloped in a crisp potato exterior, were fabulous. I tend not to be a risk-taker in the kitchen or elsewhere, but this is one time I’m definitely glad I went for it.

Okay, so we actually ate this on Thursday night, but as I mentioned, our computer died and we had to replace it before I could unload photos and write this up.

I rarely follow recipes to the letter, but when it comes to Marcella Hazan’s dishes, I always do. I spotted her recipe for marinated fish with salmoriglio sauce in the September issue of Food and Wine, and I knew I wanted to try it. This sauce is traditionally served with swordfish, but Marcella mentions in the recipe notes that it works well with other fish, too. I had already pulled a couple of Copper River sockeye salmon fillets out of the freezer to thaw, so I used those, and they worked beautifully. If you’re looking for a super easy way to dress up a simple piece of fish, definitely give this a try – the sauce is a breeze to prepare, and it’s delicious.

Neither the meal nor the day turned out quite as I had hoped – Mother Nature interfered in a number of ways, beginning with the ill-timed disappearance of our resident mama cat and her consort (just before we were scheduled to take them in to be fixed), and culminating with the strange weather that blew through last evening. We wanted to grill, we kept checking the skies and the satellite maps hoping we could squeeze it in between bursts of rain and lightning, and when what we thought was a good opportunity came, we jumped. The chimney starter lit, coals glowing red, and wouldn’t you know it, we had to scurry back indoors as lightning flashed overhead. Maddening. But we had committed. Our fire burned strong through the burst of rain and when the clouds passed, we rushed to get our food on the grill.

We have been stockpiling Copper River salmon in our freezer so we can stretch out its short season, and I had thawed two filets for our meal. I seasoned them with nothing more than a healthy amount of kosher salt and some olive oil, and Mike grilled them skin side down over indirect heat for about 8-10 minutes.

I’ve been eager to try this recipe for grilled fava bean pods, so when Mike was able to get some on Monday, I earmarked them for this meal. We placed the whole fava bean pods on the hot side of the grill until they were charred, then I tossed them with olive oil, chile flakes and kosher salt. Somehow we were out of lemons (this never happens at our place), so I added a little bit of sherry vinegar for acidity, and I used chopped spring onion tops instead of the scallions called for in the original recipe. I tossed some baby wild arugula with a mustard vinaigrette to go along with the salmon and favas.

I was mostly pleased with this meal, though I do think we left the favas on the grill a couple of minutes too long. Some of the pods got really black and weren’t particularly tasty, though the ones that were less charred and still showed a bit of green were quite nice. The beans themselves were delicious, creamy with a smoky, nutty flavor. When we do this again, I think we’ll still char the whole pods, but then I’ll pop the beans out of the pods and toss them with the vinaigrette – it’s a nice combination of flavors.