Honey Teriyaki Salmon with Strawberry Orange Spinach Salad

Recently my in-laws celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. We threw a wonderful and fun party for them and had such a great time. Your probably saying about now, "That's great Robyn, but what in the world does that have to do with Honey Teriyaki Salmon with Strawberry Orange Spinach Salad?"

Well, as part of the celebration we had three couples play our version of the "Not So Newlywed Game." To say it was hilarious would be an understatement. A few of the questions got my husband and I talking though. One of them was, "What is your spouse's favorite meal you prepare?"

I guessed my husband's. Pot Roast, Creamed Potatoes, Green Beans, Corn Bread, Sweet Tea and my Grandmother Verdie's Strawberry Cake.

And, guess what? He knew mine. And that is the recipe I am sharing with you.


I know my picture up there already has your eyes a bit glazed over, so I'll get right to it.

Honey Teriyaki Salmon

Ingredients
Salmon Fillets - I prefer Wild Alaskan Salmon, here's why
A1 Teriyaki Marinade
Honey

Step 1. Place salmon fillets in a glass or stoneware dish. Drizzle with A1 Teriyaki Marinade and then with honey. I don't measure, I just drizzle until they have a nice ribbon of each on top. See in photo.



Step 2. Place the dish with your salmon in the refrigerator to allow the salmon to just soak up as much of all of that goodness as it can. I've left to marinade for one hour and as long as eight hours. I will say, the longer I've done the better, but it was still delicious after an hour.

Step 3. Place on grill heated to 300 - 325 degrees. We use our Big Green Egg or the grill, but I do prefer it from the Big Green Egg. It is juiciest that way. Speaking of Big Green Eggs, if you are looking for an over the top Father's Day gift, I recommend them! Especially if your husband or father enjoys that sort of thing.




Step 4. Cook for approximately four minutes per side. Do not fuss around with it, just cook four minutes, flip, cook four more minutes. It should be crisp on the outside and have a slightly firm feel when you press down with your finger. It should look like this, minus the little crusty edges where I let my Big Green Egg flare up a little.





Strawberry Orange Spinach Salad




Ingredients

1 bag Baby Spinach
1 pint Whole Strawberries
1 8 oz can Mandarin Orange Slices

Step 1. Wash baby spinach, dry with paper towels and place on large serving platter.

Step 2. Wash strawberries and slice. Add to spinach.

Step 3. Open mandarin oranges, drain juice, and add to spinach and strawberries.

My favorite dressing for this salad is a Raspberry Vinaigrette.



Now, time to enjoy. It takes about 15 minutes to make this delicious, healthy meal, other than time your salmon is lapping up all of that marinade in your refrigerator.

I'm linking this recipe up to On the Grill this week. Come on by and enter your great recipes for a chance to win a $25 Amazon Gift Card and other goodies. Scary Mommy is this week's Guest Judge. Oh how I love her!







This post is part of Tasty Tuesday.


What's your favorite grilling recipe?

On the Grill

This week has flown by for me, has it for y'all? We're wrapping up our last two weeks of second grade, packing up things at our lake house for a potential closing next Monday (fingers crossed), and I'm getting caught up from being gone all of last week. Whew! But I love being busy with lots to do. It keeps things interesting.

Now, on to On the Grill. Last week's nine On the Grill entries looked just yummy. And the variety was wonderful. Chicken, Shrimp, Pork, Fish, and Veggies. Our Guest Judge, Cheryl of TidyMom had her work cut out for her on selecting the Grill Master for this past week.

Wow this is tough, because honestly, all of the recipes sound amazing!!  But, since there can only be one winner, I will have to crown Diane's Grilled Artichoke with dipping sauce as my top choice!   Artichokes are a huge favorite in our house, but we have never grilled them!!  Diane's picture just had my mouth watering to run to the store and pick some up for tonight's dinner! I know this is something my whole family will enjoy...dipping sauce included!  

Thanks for having me Robyn! This was a lot of fun and I now have a lot of great grill recipes to try this summer !

Congratulations Diane! I've got to try those artichokes myself. That dipping sauce looks divine! Shoot me an email and I'll get you your $50 Amazon Gift Card emailed to you.

And now... are you ready for this week's On the Grill? Earlier in the week, you were introduced to Jill of Scary Mommy fame.  Jill keeps me in stitches with her posts on parenthood and I always learn a ton from her tips on blogging. So be sure to knock her socks off with your recipe this week. Remember, it can be favorite drinks you serve, sides, desserts, and yes main course items. For the past two weeks now, it has been a vegetable. What will it be this week?

Also, take a few minutes to read over the On the Grill guidelines.


This Week's Giveaway

This week's giveaway is a $25 Gift Card to Amazon and our snazzy new On the Grill I'm a Grill Master t-shirt (see below)!

How Do You Win?

Our wonderful Guest Judge will review your recipes and photographs which are linked up below. She will determine the Grill Master {winner} for the week. The winner then receives a special button to display on your blog or site,  the Gift Card to Amazon will be emailed to you, and you'll be able to show off your new t-shirt at your next cookout.

Be sure to include a link back to Our Homeschool Home. You are welcome to use the snazzy button in my top right sidebar or use a text link if you prefer.

In true cookout party style, be sure to visit the other blogs linked up to On the Grill. If you can't visit them all, at least visit the link ahead of your link and behind your link. In other words, mingle a bit.


When Does It End?

The link will close Sunday evening. Entries will be reviewed and the winner announced at next week's On the Grill party. And yes, you may enter more than one post. You will need to make sure each post entered meets the guidelines.

Last week, some folks had some issues with linking up. Let me know if you do again this week. I'll be happy to help you.

Happy Birthday Sis, Please and Thank You, and a Winner

We celebrated my sweet sister's birthday on Tuesday.  Little Buddy and I invited her over to our house for breakfast and made our (we think) super-dee-duper fantastic pancakes. They were some kind of good! (I'll have to share the recipe for them sometime soon. I think y'all will love them, too.) Then Little Buddy spent time with her this afternoon helping her with her raised-bed garden. When I went to pick him up, they both were wet. I asked what happened and he gave me his famous lop-sided grin and said, "the water hose didn't do what I wanted it to do."

As I put Little Buddy to bed he said, "Mama, I just love it when people have birthdays and I get to help them and do stuff with them. It's almost as good as having a birthday of your own."

I think my heart grew ten-fold and melted at the same time. That little booger is just so stinking sweet sometimes.



I think he reads my blog. Or at least picks up on my posts. Maybe he has ESP or something. Remember how I was having a hissy fit about his manners and planning a full assault on etiquette lessons for this summer? Well, I think he got the drift of what was forthcoming because today, you could not have asked for a child to have had better manners. He held the door for me (yes, I had to do a double take), he waited at the dinner table until everyone was finished before he asked to be excused, and he said his "Please" and "Thank You" every time he should have!

To say I felt a bit guilty about having just said how pitiful his manners were was an understatement. At least for about 10 minutes. Then, I realized I still need to make sure he knows them and more importantly uses them consistently. So, I'm not backing down on my plan for etiquette lessons starting this summer. They will most likely make it into my homeschool lesson plans from here on out.

We also have a winner for the All Aboard giveaway of $100 Amazon Gift Card. It goes to Sephysmomma! Congratulations on your win and thank you! Email me and I will get your gift card to you via email.

Etiquette for Children

I've raised a Mr. Grabby-Hands

I realized we had become lax on enforcing proper etiquette and table manners for our son when he reached for the bread basket while we were being served on our cruise.

The server quickly looked from my son to me to my husband and back to my son like he had never seen such an ill-mannered human in all of his life.

And then I think my son realized he really shouldn't have just reached his hand right into a basket full of bread and plucked out the brioche he was eyeing.  But, he wasn't exactly sure what he should have done.

I couldn't be upset with him. It was my fault he didn't know what to do in that situation. I realized I had coddled him. I am the guilty party. Just as if I had reached my hand right into that basket myself. I had not taught him better.

Now don't get me wrong, we take our son to nice restaurants quiet often and he certainly has not seen my husband or me getting grabby hands at the table. But I realized I had not taken the time to intentionally teach him what to do. It hasn't become natural for him to wait for the bread to be placed on his bread plate. He didn't know.

Right then and there I decided our lessons this summer were going to include a full course of etiquette for little boys. I checked locally and formal lessons do not begin until the age of 12. So, guess who will be leading lessons this summer? You got it, me. I'm sure I'll learn a ton, too.

I think I will have to blog through these lessons, don't you think?

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

On the Grill : Meet Our Judge ~ Week 4

I just have to tell y'all, I was just blown away when I got back in from my cruise and saw all of the wonderful recipes submitted for On the Grill last week. Cheryl from TidyMom did an excellent job as Guest Judge and I just can't thank her enough. Oh how I wish she were my real life neighbor!

Cheryl is reviewing all of the entries now to make her selection for Grill Master. The Grill Master will be announced in our link-up party post on Thursday. I get excited every week waiting to see who it will be!

And now, on to this week and our Guest Judge.

This week's judge is Jill from Scary Mommy. Jill is one of my favorite Mommy Bloggers who shares it all! Her sage advice as a mommy blogger is wonderful and her hilarious and honest take on her life is absolutely refreshing.


Her post about capturing the perfect picture of her children while on a recent trip nearly cost me my new laptop. You see, I was drinking coffee at the same time I was reading. Bad mistake. I warn you, be sure to read without beverages. Or food. Or probably even chewing gum if you want to be really safe. You'll be happy you did.

I think you'll also love her blog tips. Wonderfully written and very easy to follow. I especially love the post on how to make your blog into a book.  Her book is beautiful. It would make a gorgeous coffee table book. I wonder if I could convince her to make mine for me?


So this week, in honor of Jill as our special Guest Judge, have fun with your recipes! You can include side dishes, favorite drink recipes, desserts, you name it. Anything that you think of when you think of an On the Grill party. I'm trying to wrestle my husband's Sangria recipe out of him to share. And after my week on a cruise, tropical food and drinks are at the top of my list!

Jill will review your entries and select this week's Grill Master! So get your recipes and photographs ready.  The Grill Master will have the honor of the recognition, a button to display proudly on your blog, and will be the winner of an awesome giveaway {details of the giveaway when the party goes live on Thursday by 12:01 AM Eastern}.

Before you go, take a quick look at the On the Grill guide for more information. And be sure to head on over to Scary Mommy's and say hello.


What are you grilling this week? I can't wait to see your entries.

Adventures with Sprittibee

Today's guest is Heather from Sprittibee.

When I asked Heather about providing a guest post, she immediately thought of sharing this post from when she took my flat self to Blissdom. Thanks so much, Heather. You really know how to show a girl a good time!

You can also find Heather on Twitter at www.twitter.com/sprittibee.

Our prayers are with the families in Nashville, where Blissdom was held, after the devastating flood.

Originally posted at www.sprittibee.com ...

Robyn wanted really bad to go to Blissdom, but she had other family vacations to attend and the dates overlapped. How anyone could put NASCAR before blogging conferences, I'm not sure... but apparently some folks really are in to that sort of thing. Whatever floats their boats - er - boosts their engines, right?

Seeing as how I love Robyn and all, I offered to take her with me (a stow away in my luggage at the Opryland Hotel - if only they knew)... but she couldn't make it to Texas in time to travel with us by car. She mailed her flat self to Tennessee in an overnight package and waited on me to arrive for the conference. If you have never heard of Flat Stanley, it's a really fun way to 'virtual travel' by mail and get pen-pal packages back from your far-away friends with lots of information and photos about the places you 'saw' on your trip. Homeschool kids all over the globe use it as a geography tool. Robyn's 'flattie' got to travel with me all over the Gaylord Opryland and back to Texas.

This post is the tall tale of her flat travel adventures.

I'm sure it was lonely at that concierge desk for those first few days, because it wasn't until Friday morning that I picked her up. Poor thing. That hotel was so large and my feet were so tired, that I ended up having to get her delivered to my room with the paper. Needles to say, her first few days in Nashville were a dismal disappointment. Things quickly changed course once we got together, though.



I was so excited to meet the I Heart Faces gals. Robyn and I loved finding out that they use Canon cameras, too. Maybe Robyn can go with me some day to one of their Dallas, TX photo conferences to rub elbows with some of the most talented shutterbugs in the blog world? Of course she would have to come in 'person' and not in 'flattie'. I would feel pretty small at that sort of conference, but I would love to go to one... if I had a conference buddy, that is. I've got some great camera gear and my crazy-hectic homeschooling and baby-raising schedule doesn't give me much time to figure out how to outsmart my equipment.



Robyn, the twitter-aholic that she is, asked to borrow Sarasophia's Mac. Bloggers are good-natured folk that understand social media addiction. After a quick online fix, they became fast friends.



We hit the expo hall for some snacks and ran in to these gorgeous ConAgra ladies. They all look like they could be cousins. They are as nice as they are pretty, seriously. Robyn couldn't believe it when they told her that Poppycock came in a Chocolate-Lovers flavor.



Save some for me, Robyn! She's a snack-hog. You find these things out about your friends when you room together. I still love her... but next time I'll bring extra munchies in case ConAgra isn't there to bail us out.



One of my long-time bloggies, Shannon Entin, whom I adore, found me in the hallway. She was thrilled to meet Robyn, too. Us three homeschool mamas posed for the camera just before we slipped in to hear another session. Unfortunately I didn't run in to Shannon again. Blog conferences are just too short!



Robyn had just as hard a time getting enough rest at Blissdom as I did. The agenda and events ran non-stop in to the night. There was no way we were going to make it to that Weight Watcher's jog at 7AM. I even slept through the Prayer Breakfast with [In]Courage that I had planned to go to. At least Robyn didn't pull the blanket off when I was sleeping. She's a great roomie.



Robin Sampson is one of Robyn's Homeschool Heroes (as is she one of mine). The two Robyns exchanged a quick 'hello' before I asked to snap their picture.



Then another Robin stopped by to make three! Robin Sampson, Robin Dance and Robyn - all in one picture! I couldn't help but think that spring might come early this year in the south.



Robyn loved meeting Darcy, whom she had heard all about from ME, since Darcy designed my blog here - using the original artwork that my kids drew. Darcy and Robyn got a little fresh, actually. I figure it's because Darcy is a world-traveler and speaks Italian.



I introduced Robyn to Frelle, and they both talked about how great the blogging sessions were. They were like old friends even though they only knew each other through Twitter. Frelle is my fellow 'blog conference junkie'. I'm hoping to see her again at Relevant later this year.



Robyn helped me spin the One2One wheel during break time. She won me a CD. Sadly, it somehow got misplaced after we got home, so I couldn't even begin to tell you what recording artist it was for.



Erin and Tsh were speaking about getting published in their session. I wanted to meet Tsh since I think we may be twins separated at birth. Maybe not in image, but certainly in personality and brain-patterns. I'm like the world's largest list-making, organizing-addicted, hoping-to-make-things-more-simple mom out there besides her. And I adore Erin. I wish she lived next door so I could go grocery shopping with her. She makes me feel like a foodie-failure. I'm going to have to buy a copy of her "5 Dollar Dinners" to see if I can redeem myself in the kitchen budget area. You don't want to know how many times we ate out last week.



Even though Robyn didn't get a swaggy popcorn bowl of her own, Dawn was willing to share. That's what bloggin' pals do. It was so cool to see all these 'invisible' homeschool and blog friends in real life. The popcorn-movie night sponsored by Haynes was a blast.



Even more homeschoolers. Marshie and Ruthanne love Robyn. They were thrilled to 'meet' her.



At lunch, Robyn raved about the southern iced tea. I was kind of disappointed that it wasn't already sweet, though. You had to add your sweetener at the table... and every real southerner knows that it's not the same as sweetening the tea when it's hot with real sugar.

Photo Credit: Mishelle



Robyn ate all of her salad. She was watching her flat girlish figure - even while on a trip. I dove in to the potato salad instead. I can't resist comfort food... especially while on vacation.

Photo Credit: Mishelle



Robyn asked to get a picture with me and lovely Melissa of A Familiar Path. She said that Melissa was one of her favorite bloggers. I guess I can share a favorite blogger. She's one of mine, too.



Flat Tidy Mom and Flat Robyn were brave to get up and sing karaoke at the Saturday night bash before we headed back to the room to crash. Cathe Holden got their picture together for me. Robyn felt funny to have forgotten her pajamas. Oh, well, Robyn, maybe next year you can remember to bring them - and maybe you won't be so flat then?



QUICK LINKS:

View more pictures from Sprittibee's Blissdom Adventures at her Blissdom Flickr set. You can see all the flatties that were at Blissdom at the Flat Blissdom set, too.

Head on over and let Sprittibee know how much you enjoyed her guest post. Remember my giveaway!  I'll be selecting on Monday and announcing the winner Tuesday.

Better Blogging :: Add Print Friendly

Want a sure fire way to make sure your readers are happy when they print items from your blog?

Have you ever visited a blog and decide you needed to print the recipe or the excellent lesson they detail for homeschooling? Then, when you go to your printer, you notice it has printed out on gobs of paper - some with only a little bit printed on the paper?

Frustrating, isn't it? Not to even mention how wasteful with paper and ink. I want to share with you a solution I found. Print Friendly.

Printing a Web Page
Step 1. Copy the URL with the permalink to the page of information you would like to print.


Step 2. Paste the copied permalink into the appropriate box on the Print Friendly home page.

I surely didn't want you to have the same frustrations if you decided to print information from my blog, Our Homeschool Home. Therefore, I installed Print Friendly on my blog. Now you can simply click on the Print PDF icon below any of my posts. You can now either save the post as a PDF or send it to a printer without wasting extra pages from your printer.

Bloggers, you can install this functionality very simply on your own blog. The Print Friendly website provides great instructions along with the code to utilize.


What types of information do you save as a PDF or print from websites or blogs?

This post is linked to Works for Me Wednesday.