Delicious dinner--More calories than expected.

So I made some salmon last night. Salmon with a honey sriracha "glaze." I saw some recipes for a honey glaze on salmon, and I just wanted to spice it up. I was inspired by a delicious wing sauce that is made at a local pub, unsurprisingly named "Honey Sriracha" sauce. All of the recipes I saw had about 1tbsp honey, thinned with 1tbsp vegetable oil, various other seasonings, and then brushed on the salmon and baked. First of all, I love sautee-ing things. Salmon especially. But, okay, I'll bake it. Fine. But when salmon (and all fattier fishes) render out their fat, it forms a sort of white gelatinous pool either on top of or around the fish. It looks..unappetizing. When sautee-ing, this can just be scraped away, but when baking, it just sits there. Taunting you. On top of the filet.

As for the glaze, I thought I'd save myself some calories and use a bit of water to thin out the honey instead. It did not stick to the salmon very well at all. That is no surprise now, considering how thin it was. An oily mixture would have been more viscous. Duh. HOWEVER. It did really get a chance to flavor the salmon. Both the honey and sriracha were delightfully apparent without overwheming the delicious salmon taste. Just not nice and glaze-y like I had wanted.

The green beans were simply steamed. I thought about making them fancy, but D and I just so love the taste of garden fresh green beans. I didn't want to spoil that sort of natural perfection.

I took my friend's advice and used jasmine rice as my starch. However, with the slightly asian-ified salmon, I decided to give the rice some subtle flavors, too. Sriracha is a garlic and hot chile paste, so I used about 2 cloves of garlic, minced fine, and about 1tbsp grated ginger for 2 cups of rice (uncooked, 4 cups cooked). I made a lot of extra rice because I have PLANS for it later in the week. Nothing fancy. Just leftovers. I sauteed the garlic and ginger in just a touch of oil. I cooked up the jasmine rice with the garlic/ginger stirred into it. It's just a TOUCH of the aromatic components in that sea of rice (hence the "scented" rice). It went really nicely with the rest of the food.

But LO AND BEHOLD. Salmon has a crap-ton of calories per oz. It's a fatty fish. Fat calories add up. If you go by the recommended serving size (3oz, about the size of a deck of cards), it is 175 calories. I portioned out 5oz filets, so thats more like 290 calories. JUST FOR THE SALMON.

With about 1/2 cup cooked rice and the green beans (and all the extra seasonings), the total is 504 fucking calories! Which is a lot! Fortunately for me (and for D), we had room for this kind of calorie consumption at the end of the day. So it wasn't the worst thing ever, but just surprising.

AND DELICIOUS.