Dinner on a Warm Day: Pesto over Salmon & Green Salad with Strawberries

I wanted to try the Orangette Shortcut Basil Aioli recipe, but at the last minute made a healthy substitution and exchanged half the mayonnaise with half no-fat sour cream. Also, I couldn't resist adding more basil than the recipe called for, so my sauce was more sturdy and less creamy than it might have been. Nonetheless, it was full of basil, so was, by definition, delicious.

We piled the pesto with abandon over the salmon and the green beans (as well as over some brown rice and French bread for the next day's lunch).

I poached the salmon in the microwave, as I always do with any fish when I want it poached. I try to do that ahead of time so it can come to room temp or cool off for an hour or so  in the fridge. That way the pesto or cucumber sauce won't get all melty.

This sounds heretical, but I actually prefer cucumber sauce on salmon instead of pesto. Same ingredients -- sour cream, mayonnaise salt, pepper, and minced garlic -- and then a substitution of a generous amount of finely chopped cucumbers (salted, drained, rinsed, and squeezed dry) instead of basil. Stirred, not blended.

We had just a few strawberries still lingering in a carton, so those went into a salad, along with slivers of red onion and a handful of sunflower seeds, which it turns out, pack a lot of nutrition into their very small seeds -- is that why baseball players eat them constantly? (No, I don't think so either.)