Week 52 - Broiled

Last challenge of the year! (But not the last challenge post of the year because I'm so far behind in posting.) I did all 52 weeks of the challenge this year, and I did them all on time, even the themes I wasn't that into, which I'm fairly proud of. The theme for the last challenge of the year was broiled, and I went fairly simple, making a broiled salmon (based on a Dinner at the Zoo recipe) with broiled balsamic vegetables (based on a Budget Bytes recipe). The salmon came out perfectly, and we definitely want to make that again. The vegetables were also good, very fresh, and went well with the salmon.

I'm still a broiler novice, to the point where I didn't even realize that the broiler needed to heat up for about 5 minutes before it started "working," until the vegetables looked exactly the same 5 minutes later. That explains why some of my previous recipe attempts where I just turned the broiler on for a set amount of minutes (instead of watching to see when it had browned or melted) did not work at all (ex: pan de yuca). We never used the broiler in our old apartment because we weren't exactly sure where it was in that oven or if we could trust it, so I can probably count our broiler usage on less than two hands. This challenge was a great way to end the year because I really feel like I learned something!