Alright, so I guess you've found your way here, and I feel that this place requires a bit of explanation. Project: Salmon is not a software project. It's not a building project. It's not an art project or a craft project. (Well, not exactly anyway.) It's... a long story, and now that I'm sure that I have a captive audience, I am going to tell it.
I am not a professional chef. Far from it. I am, in no specific order, a photographer, a software developer, a husband, and a dad. Two of these, I do professionally. The other two I do for... well, lets put it this way, the currency around the house is often hugs and kisses. (Yes, I risk sounding cheesy when I say that. I don't care. I am often cheesy, among other terms of endearment that my wife uses.) When we first got married, and even before then, my wife handled the majority of the cooking. Eventually, we moved to a more even split of cooking duties. This became even more necessary after our daughter was born. But recently my daughter has decided that when we come home in the evening, she wants Mommy. Yes, Daddy's fun and all, but she wants Mommy and that's that. This threw a bit of a wrench into our split of cooking duties, since my wife would then have to attempt to prepare dinner with a child trying to compete for her undivided attention. And so... now I do the cooking.
In between moving in with my then-girlfriend-now-wife, and living under my parents' roof, I did not do much in the way of cooking. I survived on a bachelor's diet of pizza and frozen hamburgers, much to the dismay of my waistline. It's not that I had some sort of aversion to cooking; I didn't. I was just being a typical guy; too lazy to cook anything elaborate for just myself, and besides... I preferred to spend my time immersed in video games, or what ever was my hobby of choice at the time. Sometimes music... but mostly video games to be fair. I distinctly remember the single occasion that I attempted to cook a nice meal when she came to visit. It didn't end well. An admirable effort, which, bless her she recognized... but yeah. Not good. My skills at the stovetop have since improved. My previous domain was pretty much limited to the grill; I could probably grill your tennis shoe and make it taste half-way decent... but cooking off of a grill was a skill that I've had to develop.
One of my wife's favorite dishes, and something we consider comfort food and has been cooked in her family for a long time, is what we call simply "Salmon and Noodles". It's canned salmon, in a cream-like sauce, served over egg noodles. Since my wife has been sidelined from cooking some months back by a diminutive but lovable attention glutton, I had to learn how to make it, or risk not having what was one of our favorite dishes. Which got me thinking. I really like canned salmon. I thought back to all of the things that my mother has cooked when I was growing up, and I realized that I've consumed a pretty healthy amount of the stuff myself, even before I met my wife. No wonder it felt like comfort food! So what else can I do with the stuff? I mean... it's easy... relatively cheap... comes conveniently packed in a can... tastes good... is good for you... and most importantly... my kid will eat it!
This is my problem when I cook. I invent stuff. I am not of the school that follows recipes faithfully without adding a bit of my own thoughts to it. (Which explains why things often come out the way the do... which is to say; a little off from how they were supposed to be.) And so I started inventing uses for canned salmon; fist as a joke... and then as a personal mission. What else can I do with this stuff? And so this is what this blog is about. Recipes that I have invented, frequently involving my ingredient of choice, and my musings on the subject.
