Brick Oven and Cooking with Kids

I apologize for not posting yesterday when I normally do. On Saturday we were given a HUGE salmon freshly caught in Alaska on Thursday as well as a small fillet of halibut. Hopefully, most of you are thinking, "Lucky!"

Unfortunately, I was thinking, "Oh no!" I don't know how to cook fish. The reason for my lack of culinary knowledge is that most of my family hates fish. (Read me and all of my children.) My poor husband!

So all day yesterday I slaved over this fish. I cut the meat off the spine and picked out the pin bones with my eyebrow tweezers.  I know...my husband owes me big time.

After that fun experience, I grilled the salmon using an Our Best Bites recipe. It turned out awesome! I even liked it. We had invited company over to help us devour this delicacy.

Orange Teriyaki Salmon

I also made homemade fish sticks with the halibut for the kids using this recipe by Emeril. It resulted in this awesome compliment from one of my teenagers, "Mom, your fish doesn't make me want to puke!"  Thanks, sweetheart!

Mommy's Fish Sticks

I purposefully didn't cook anything else so that all my kids would be forced to try the fish or go hungry. I am a good mother that way!

But this morning I made it up to them by making chocolate zucchini muffins using this recipe from Our Best Bites. It was heavenly. I made 18 muffins and one loaf of zucchini bread.

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

In other cooking news, we are super excited about the Brick Oven that my husband is building in the back yard. It is going to be a pizza oven and we are so excited to have lots of friends and family over to enjoy our delicious brick oven pizza!

Here is a close up of the brick oven right now.

Here is the tile saw he is using to cut the bricks.

Here is the place in the backyard where he cleans out the wheelbarrow to get ride of the mortar mix when he is done with it.

Here are the pavers that we have been hauling as a family to go around the brick oven once he is done.

We will also build a fire pit in this area. Not that we haven't already been building fires on the dirt but it will look so much more hip and non-redneck when we are done.

Stay tuned for a cool campfire food idea that we discovered recently. I will be posting that on Friday unless I get another drive by fish delivery!