Tonight we’re eating wild salmon marinated in a balsamic and thyme vinegarette. A creamy buttermilk bleu cheese and cauliflower soup accompanies the salmon, along with a salad of baby field greens.

Buttermilk Bleu Cheese and Cauliflower SoupT: excellent meal, mandy.
A: why thank ya mista tylah! it was well balanced, both healthy AND unhealthy at the same-freakin-time.
T: heheheh. I know the salmon was healthy. I take it that soup wasn’t the healthiest thing in the world?
A: yup! i mean, it wasn’t the end of the world, but it is a whole milk based soup.. and it uses a roux… and bleu cheeze! oh, and by the way! you’re lucky i’m letting the “mandy” slide buster. most people would get a whoppin’ for that.
T: but, Mandy!
A: heheh OH OH OH NO YOU DIDN’T!
T: you heard me. I said… MANDY!
A: well, i’m going to assume you are speaking to a different amanda. Anyway, i enjoyed every aspect of this meal. It wasn’t a “blow-me-out-the-water” meal, but it was damn good.
T: well, I thought it was pretty close to being a “blow-me-out-of-the-water-meal.” I think the weakest part was the salad. The other two elements blew me away.
A: awesome. i’ll agree, the salad was the weakest. but i could have used just *slightly* more salt on the salmon, it was perfectly cooked though. The soup rocked my casbah! i really was quite pleased with the outcome of the croutons (my first ever) as well.
T: Yes, I agree with everything you just said. I didn’t realize those were your first croutons, though. I thought for sure that you had made some a while back in Baton Rouge.
A: nope, pretty sure they were my first. maybe it was garlic bread or something you are thinking of.
T: uhh. hmm… oh, well, perhaps I’ve lost a bit of my mind.
A: is there really any doubt about that?
T: what were we talking about again?
A: exactly…case and point.
T: so, seriously, what were we talking about again?
A: how you had lost a bit of your mind!
T: oh, yeah. wait, before that!
A: croutons!
T: ah ha! I still think you have made them before, and that maybe you have lost a bit of your mind!
A: nope. i think not. if you can prove your theory… i’ll…. i’ll… i don’t know what i’ll do, but it will be good. i’m just pretty damn certain i’ve not made croutons before.
T: so any croutons we had in the past were premade?
A: we haven’t eaten croutons in salads in the past. i have made, like, garlic bread, or crispy bruschetta… but no croutons.
T: hmm… maybe it was that other amanda.
A: hehehe perhaps. mystery solved. so back to the dinner at hand. i give this meal a 4.3/5. if i were simply rating the soup, i might give it something crazy, like a 4.8/5. i really really enjoyed it. i suppose if you don’t like bleu cheese you won’t enjoy it but for me, it was heaven.
T: Yeah, i’m a little split with my rating. I want to give the soup a higher rating than anything else. But, i’ll just kind of mash it all together into a rating of 4.56/5. One thing that I enjoyed about this meal, and to the salad’s credit, was eating the red bellpepper at the same time as a bite of salmon. That was fine.
A: i actually enjoyed eating all of the salad with bites of salmon because i made a dressing for the salad that was very similar to what the fish was marinated in. they definately worked well together.
T: indeed. I loved the skin of the salmon too. Mmm.. I just love that in general.
A: mmm.. salmon skin roll… mmm.. sushi…. mmm
T: ya, sushi good.
A: soupi good.
T: bread puddi good.
A: man, i thought i was still *really* full until we started this crazy foodblog.
T: i’m still *really* full, but that little picture of bread pudding in the web browser is allowing me to see past my fullness.
A: to beer??
T: to bread pudding, silly!
A: hehehe i think i’ll go with a nice hearty stout.
T: ahh, grab me one while your at it.
A: always. tomorrows dinner is still a mystery to me… it hasn’t revealed itself yet.
T: interesting. something to ponder and look forward to!
A: until then…

Kwaherini mabibi na mabwana!

Recipes in this post:

• Balsamic-Thyme Marinated Salmon
• Cauliflower and Buttermilk Bleu Cheese Soup
• Thyme Croutons

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