Dining While Stranded (The Daily Special) – Grilled Salmon with Garden Harvest

Let’s just say you were driving home to Tucson from your summer job in northern Utah.  And let’s say that your car overheated, but didn’t bother to warn you.  So you kept driving.  Until… kaput!  You need a new engine.  Pretend it’s the same car you just spent $1,300 on replacing the drive train, amongst other things.  And one whose registration you just renewed last week.   Let’s pretend there’s no way/no how that (a new engine) is going to happen, so you tow to Salt Lake City and find yourself stranded for a few days while you figure out what to do.

Hmm, that’s not a great scenario, so I’ll add to it. Say you had some good friends in SLC with whom you can stay.  They’re off in the mountains, so you have the run of their incredible home and yard.  Say the kitchen has a Viking Pro stove and granite counter tops, the yard and house have an amazing mountain view, and there are fresh veggies to harvest for dinner every evening.  And squash blossoms.  And, yes, even a grape arbor, delightfully hung with tiny sweet-tart dark purple flavor bombs.  Oh, and say your friends left a luscious piece of fresh salmon in the fridge for you.  And a beautiful porch on which to dine and enjoy the view.  And a telescope to watch the full moon rise from said porch.

Sound better?  I thought so, too.  So while I practically (okay, really) cried when I sold my car for a whopping 300 dollars today, dinner was a delight.

Take your slab of salmon and adorn it with what you find to harvest as you amble about the garden.  Colorful tomatoes (save the beefy red one for a tomato salad), basil, peppers, summer squashes… whatever is ripe at the moment.  Salt, pepper, olive oil, garlic, onion.  Use the fancy camera at your disposal to take a photo, since, despite the two weeks of exhaustive research you just did on cameras, you will  not  be buying one anytime soon.  You’ll be buying an extremely used car, instead.  Wrap the salmon up in foil, toss the package on the awesome barbecue on the awesome porch.  Grill some bread, too, for bruschetta.  Rub a halved garlic clove over the crispy browned bread, pour on a thin stream of olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper, for the simplest version, or top it with anything else delicious you can think of.  Eat the salmon when it’s juuust barely done.  That determination is up to you, but depending on the thickness of the fish, the heat of the grill, your personal taste, it could take 5-10 minutes. Or more.  Or less.  I didn’t check the clock, because, as usual, I wasn’t planning on writing about it until after dinner.  Just poke at it until it looks like something you want to eat.

Consider your luck, both good and bad this week, and decide your good fortune wins, hands down.  Worry about that whole car thing tomorrow.

Hmm, aluminum foil adds an entirely new lighting issue.  Whatever, I had dinner to make!