Smoked Red Salmon Bellies

Every summer my husband commercial fishes Red Sockeye Salmon and brings some home for us to enjoy. Before filleting the fish he slices off the bellies and we smoke the bellies. The belly of the salmon is the fattiest part of the fish and is so, so delicious smoked or not.

The Brine:

2 qts of water

1c sugar

1c Salt

1/2c brown sugar

A sprinkle or two of Liquid SmokeBellies in the brine. Place a plate on top of the bellies to help them stay in the brine. Place a lid on the bowl and put it in the fridge for 1 hour or more. Depending on how stong you want the flavor to be. I put our fish in no longer than 2 hours because we like a mild flavor.

After 2 hours I took the fish out of the fridge, rinsed off each belly and placed them on the smoker racks and pat them dry with a paper towel. I let them sit for one hour.

It doesn't take that long to smoke. In 1 hour, on a low-high, they are cooked. If you like a dryer smoked salmon let it smoke longer. We like it moist so 1 maybe 2 hours at most. King salmon bellies take a little longer than 1 hour.

Smoked Sockeye Bellies are done. A couple get eaten right away and the rest get vacuumed packed and placed in the freezer. In our family, everyone but James will eat smoked salmon. He's out numbered, he might as well change his mind.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam

Not a recipe but it's still cooking.

I had the kids practice their cutting skills with rhubarb from our own yard. They love to help cut and they do such a good job. They are always reminded to be careful and do fantastic.Then they took turns with the chopper.

James stayed with the cutting and chopping until all the rhubarb was done. Good man.
I took care of the rest. Hot, boiling fruit is better left to mom.

It's the first time I have made strawberry-rhubarb jam and I can't wait to try it.

Ramen James

James asked me if he could have noodles for lunch and I said, "Yes." I told him I would make it.

I must have taken too long because he started making them himself. He made two packages of Ramen noodles all by himself. He got the pan out of the cabinet, filled it with water, put it on the stove and turned on the burner, all by himself. He cut open the packages and put the noodles in the not-yet-boiled water. He cut

open the seasoning packets and dumped them in. He waited until the water boiled and I served the noodles.

Here he is enjoying his noodles. Here is what my stove top looked like when he was done.

Clafoutis (Kla-Foo-Tee) with Peaches

I know, it has been a long time since the last recipe. I have been out of town, then there was the last week of school and that has kept us all very busy.

My daughter, Rachel, found this recipe in an issue of the LDS Friend magazine and she wanted to try it.

In a blender....

...add four eggs and....
...two cups of milk.
She couldn't help but look at the camera while I snapped a picture.

Add 1/3 cup flour....

.....and 1/3 cup sugar.


1/4 teaspoon salt..

...and 1 teaspoon vanilla or Almond extract (which I think would have been better)

Blend together for 30 seconds.

I can't remember where I put the lid to the blender. It'll show up one day.

Pour into a pie dish. I coated the dish with a nonstick spray first even though it wasn't mentioned in the directions.

Rachel puts in the peaches. We are using canned peaches because that is what we have on hand. You can also use strawberries, blueberrie, and kind of berry.

Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until it doesn't jiggle.

I think with this recipe I would do a few things different. I would add a little more flour; maybe take it up to half a cup. Try a different fruit and have whipped cream to spray on top.

I thought it was good but not great. I will try it again some day with the changes.

PW's Creamy Lemon Crumb Squares

This is the second time I have done this post. Yesterday I spent an hour and a half loading pictures, making sure they are in the right order, and then typing the text to go along with each picture. I previewed the post to make sure everything was spelled correctly and I was very happy with the result. I published the post to the blog. But when I went to view the blog, right away I realized........it's the wrong blog!!!

All that time and effort; I was not happy any more. So here I am, starting all over again. This time I made sure it was the right blog.

Rachel is helping me with this recipe. She is happy to help me. I guess when we're making dessert any of the kids would be happy to help me.

She starts with 1 stick of slightly softened butter and 1 cup lightly packed brown sugar.

We take turns mixing them together.--
In a seperate bowl, Rachel sifted together 1 1/3 cup all-purpose flour, 1/2 tsp salt and 1 tsp baking powder.

She adds 1 cup oats to the butter and brown sugar....

...and stirs to combine.

Next comes the sifted flour mixture. The recipe says to add the oats and flour together, then stir. But I decided it would be easier for her to stir with one at a time.

This is the fun part for kids, I think. Mixing with the hands. (Clean hands.)

By mixing with her hands, she was able to distribute everything more evenly.

Once the mixture is well combined, I put half in a 13x9 baking dish. The recipe calls for a slightly smaller pan, 11x8, but I don't have one that size. We both press down the mixture.

Nest comes the "creamy lemon" part.

In a bowl, mix together 1 (14 oz.) can of sweetened condensed milk, 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice and..............

.........the zest of one lemon.

That was no easy task for Rachel. She tried and tried but only managed a little bit of zest.

Scott wanted to give it a try.

He produced more zest but Rachel, not willing to give up, wanted to try again. She got better results for sure but I ended up taking over to finish.

I poured the lemon mixture on the first layer and carefully spread it around. Rachel and I used our hands to sprinkle the remaining crumbs over the lemon mixture. Bake at 350 for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown. Now, the recipe directions say to cool for 30 minutes after baking, then cut into squares and refrigerate for a couple of hours or until cool. However I did not wait that long. It was already 8:30 on a school night so we went ahead and served it hot. It does hold together better when its cool but it tastes good either way. My husband added whipped cream to his so of course the kids had to have some too.





Rachel is very pleased with her dessert. I thought it tasted good and the kids liked it too but I think they prefer cookies, cakes or ice cream. It was fun to try.

Moose Burgers

Two posts in one week; shocking, I know.

For tonights dinner we made moose burgers. Its not as easy to make hamburgers with moose meat like it is with ground beef. Ground moose does not have as much fat as beef so it falls apart easily. My husband's solution is to cook the patties in vegetable oil, which I don't really like. We did find another way to hold the meat together that is tasty and preferable to the oil.

We were watching PBS's, CREATE one night and the program that was on was BBQ University. The host was showing three different ways to prepare and cook hamburgers. Only one way caught our attention and that is to mix shredded cheddar cheese in the groung meat.

This is what I have Emma doing here. She is shredding the cheese right into the meat.

In the frying pan I did add about a tablespoon of olive oil.

I taught her how to make the patties with her hands and to carefully place the patty in the pan.
Can you see the cheese?

The tricky part is to flip the patty without getting splashed with hot olive oil. Emma wrapped a towel around her hand and arm so that she would not get splashed.

Abandoned!! Emma's friend came over to play and I was left to finish dinner by myself.


I buttered (butter spread) the potato-bread hamburger buns and toasted them in a pan.
The patties are a little small. Next time I need to thaw more meat.


Here is my burger. I added sauted mushrooms to mine.
It doesn't matter what kind of meat you use, I think mixing shredded cheese in the meat is different and delicious. We like to add an extre slice of cheese to the burger. We love cheese.

Special Spoons

Here's a sweet gift!

Our home teacher's wife found these cute spoons at a cooking store here in town and thought my kids would enjoy using them with cookies. And did they ever. They argued about who got to use them first and which color. We settled the dispute and the kids took their turns.

At first the dough stuck a little. I found that a little oil helped alot. The kids loved the spoons anyway, they thought it was more than the regular spoons.

Thank you, Debbie!