The salmon came back

Chicken had the kitchen last week, and it earned it. The thigh was cheap, the sweet potato stayed unglazed, and the leek did the work sugar usually pretends to do. That plate is in the archive. This week the spend is a pound of salmon.

Breakfast is broccoli and eggs in one skillet. The florets go in first, until they brown in spots, and the eggs follow. There is no toast under it and no cheese sauce over it. If a broccoli breakfast sounds plain, good. Plain is the point. You can cook it half asleep and it is still a meal.

Lunch is the cheap fish. A tin of sardines packed in olive oil, laid on a tomato sauce after the heat is off. Garlic, canned tomato, five minutes, then the fish. Frying a sardine until it is a crisp is how you ruin a good tin. Lemon and parsley. No bread, because bread is how this turns into a sandwich you did not plan to eat three of.

Dinner is the salmon, skin side down, until the skin is actually crisp, then a minute on the other side. Broccoli takes the same pan. Lemon at the end. If you reach for teriyaki, you are back in a restaurant sauce that is mostly sugar. The fish does not need it.

The rest of the week is those three pans on purpose. Cold sardines on Tuesday. Salmon warmed, not recooked, until it dries out. A second tin on Wednesday so Thursday has dinner without a new idea. Sunday clears whatever is left so Monday is not takeout.

That is the creation. Not a new personality. A week a person can shop once and cook without performing.