POM + Salmon = Happy

After my serious kitchen failures in the last week I am happy to report that I had a SUCCESS yesterday, whoa hoo!!!

When I returned from my trip to Arizona I had a special surprise: POM juice waiting in my fridge (well, I should say Ryan from POM Wonderful so nicely sent me some POM juice and my mom so nicely put it in my fridge hehe). Since then I have been dreaming up what kind of recipes I could create with POM juice. Last time I had POM juice I made POM oatmeal :) This time I was thinking more of a dinner, and I had my mind set on a salmon dish. I told Eric my thoughts and he came up with the idea of salmon with a mint infused pom reduction. Fancy shmacy, don't ya think? I have to give it to him, it was a brilliant idea, especially from a guy who won't go near salmon or any other cooked fish.

Look how beautiful it is...

It was delicious too. Obviously easy to create if I pulled it off with only minor intervention from Eric :)

To cook the salmon, I just poured a bit of white wine into the bottom of an oven safe dish and baked it in the oven on 400 for about 15-20 minutes. To cook my mashed potatoes, I just boiled the potatoes until they were soft, added chicken broth and then mashed. I love my chicken broth mashed potatoes yum.

But obviously what MAKES this dish is the mint infused pom reduction. This was easy to prepare too though. Basically I just poured about a cup of POM juice into a pan, threw in a few mint leaves and brought it to a boil. Once it was boiling, I turned the heat down a bit and stirred it until it thickened. As soon as it began to thicken I pulled out the mint leaves (and by I, I mean Eric who had totally taken over at this point as I was dealing with the salmon and potatoes that were taking an unusually long time to cook). Once the POM juice was thickened, I poured it on my salmon and that is all.

I love salmon I really do, but this POM reduction really made this one of the best salmon dishes I've ever had. If you like salmon, you should definitely try this dish.

Before I finish my POM juice I'll probably be trying at least one more recipe. But if you are looking for more, I definitely suggest checking out the POM website. They have SO many recipes on there, you'll definitely find a bunch of things you want to try!

In other news, Gina from Simply Life gave me the Happy 101 award.

I've received a couple of awards lately that I keep forgetting to pass on. I blame it on reading about it at work or when I don't have enough time to write a blog post and then forgetting. It doesn't mean I don't appreciate them! If you tagged me lately, please remind me so I can pass it on.

So back to Gina. I got to meet Gina at our Boston Blogger Brunch back in November. She was so fun to meet and I've loved reading her blog since then. Every time I read it I want to eat everything she has made. Do you ever wish you could put your hand through the computer? I do every time I read her blog, seriously!

I think I made the list of things that make me happy before but like Gina said when she did it, you can never do that enough. These are the things that are making me happy right now...

1. My family & friends
2. New biking shoes
3. 2 outside walks in 3 days!
4. Frozen yogurt
5. 1 week and 1 day til conferences are over until November
6. Blogs
7. Finally having a kitchen success (see above)
8. Thinking about Sedona
9. American Idol
10. My cake tasting scheduled for a week from this Saturday (celebrating conferences being done hehe)

What is making you happy today?

Would winning chia seeds from Iowa Girl Eats make you happy? Go here to enter!