this food has made my day

I love making salads! I can even make 5 reasons why I love salads:
1. You can choose anything you like as the basic ingredients. Name it: fruits, all kind of fruits, almost all kind of vegetables, chicken, turkey, potato, eggs, prawns, tuna, salmon, pistachios, pine nuts, even pasta.



2. You can choose to have any kind of sauce you like. From greasy and fatty to sour and light. You can follow your guilty pleasure by adding rich mayonnaise,  thousand islands, sour cream, and even add some cheese on it. Or when you feel like getting chubbier you can go light and add some olive oil + salt + pepper instead. No one can be wrong in making salad, and that's the fun part!

3. It is perfectly easy. You don't even need to cook anything. All you need is just a knife and a flat surface to cut down your veggies. No cook food is all college student's best friend!

4. It is healthy (or healthier) and it does make you feel good after eating it. Just in a plate (or bowl) of salad you can get the fiber, vitamins, a little bit of fat, a better kind of fat (if you go with olive oil), protein (if you add some eggs or meat) and even carbohydrates. As a college student who doesn't live with parents, I find salads is just something I need for at least once a week, because the canteen food is not always that healthy, you know. And nobody wants an excretion problem.

5. It is satisfying. As I mentioned before, it contains lots of fiber, and fiber does make us satisfied. Plus vegetables is relatively cheaper than meat. Making your own salads (or any kind of food) yourself is actually cheaper than buy it in some restaurants outside. You can buy some vegetables and fruits for several servings of salad, and you can even use the spices/oil/mayo for some other dishes without needing to buy more. Spices, olive oil, and mayo will always worth that money spent.

Today I made a salad with pan-fried salmon on its top. I have bought the salmon about 3 days ago and kept it in the freezer to maintain its freshness. A tip to choose a fresh salmon: smell it. A fresh salmon are not supposed to smell too fishy, instead it smells almost nothing. If you have freezer you can store it there for about 1 month, and let it in room temperature for about 1-2 hour before you cook it. If you don't have freezer, well just cook it straight after you purchased.

I have made a salmon before and I used a very basic marinate on it : olive oil, salt, pepper. Some website I browsed said that salmon is best to be grilled or baked, but we don't have oven here in my hostel, so I'll just pan-fry it instead.

The ingredients:
lettuce
1-2 tomatoes (you can use cherry tomatoes also, of course)
1 lemon
salmon
olive oil
honey
yellow mustard (I use French's classic yellow mustard)
salt
black pepper
chili powder or crushed dried chili
a bit of oregano

How to make:
1. Prepare the salmon fillet. You can either throw away the skin or just keep it. I keep it because it turned to be crispy when it's still hot and I just don't want to waste it :p Cut into 2 pieces or more, just in any size you like. Mix some olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, oregano, honey, and yellow mustard. How to know if it tastes good: taste it. Everyone have their own preference on this. I'd like mine sweet and salty as well, so I went generous on honey and salt. Marinate all surfaces of the salmon, and leave it while you prepare the salad.

2. The sauce for salad is similar with the fish's sauce, only without honey and mustard. Mix some olive oil, salt, black pepper, add crushed dried chili if you like it spicy, and a sprinkle of sugar to balance the sourness of lemon juice and the saltiness of salt. Chop the lettuce coarsely, cut the tomatoes, mix them all into a big bowl.

3. Prepare your non-stick skillet / teflon pan, pour  a little amount of olive oil on it and set the medium fire on, once you feel it is warm already, put the salmon, skin side up. Once the bottom side (the flesh side) is not sticky anymore, you can flip the salmon and let it for about 2 minutes to make the skin crispy and nice.

4. If you have excess oil after the fish is done, you can either pour it onto the salad or onto the fish. It does make your salad taste better. Ready to serve!

from this moment I love salmons -- both as fish and colour

Oh, and now I'm full and feel slightly healthier also! :)

Hope you enjoy it!