When experiemnting with food, start cheap

Like an herb sauce. Last night, in attempt to clean out my freezer, KE and I made broiled salmon. We both have the goal of being better at making sauces so we decided to try to make a dill pesto type sauce. I made the mistake of looking up a recipe that called for parsley as well. We also had way too much dill and parsley so we made more than "one recipe" called for. It tasted green. Like grass, without the fresh cut aroma. The dill was lost amongst the parsley, almost as if the two greens canceled each other out for flavor. This was surprising, because dill is such a strong flavor!

The sauce tasted a little better on the fish, but the fish having been in the freezer for way too long it was tough and the color of a salmon t-shirt... and not in a good way. I was glad KE bought a piece of fresh salmon because he wanted to make sure to have enough left overs to take for lunch today. The fresh salmon was the perfect texture and it made the "green sauce" taste better, not that we ate much of it.

Our side dish was Dijon roasted potatoes. A favorite of mine. KE brought over a bag of baby red potatoes (the cutest potatoes!) I normally cut them but because they were so small I opted not to. This was a medium sized mistake. There were about 3 delicious potatoes, which complimented the 1 of 3 good pieces of salmon. All in all we had a 33% tasty and 66% mediocre to awful meal.

What saved this meal was dessert. I have a serious sweet tooth and because dinner wasn't done being made, let alone eaten until about 10:30pm with piles of dishes and a plethora of dirty knives and counter space I opted not to make the chocolate chip cookies that have been on the back (but really the front) of my mind. When I went to pick up dill I saw Ciao Bella Maple Gingerbread Gelato in the fridge and could not help myself. I got it. After washing and drying most of the dishes, we ended our meal alternating scooping out gelato and trying to discover the little pouches of gingerbread.

What I learned from this week's wednesday night dinner:

• When experimenting with a new sauce or something, use herbs, it's a lot cheaper than messing up with meat (which I did last summer with my first ragu ever that sits unloved in my freezer).
• If you are going to experiement, aim for a nigh when you have more time. We didn't finish all the prepping, cooking, eating and cleaning until about 11:30pm. Which also meant we ate late.
• Always keep good ice cream on hand. It's nice to have something you know will be good after a 66% failing meal!
• Take more pictures while prepping, and upload them promptly!