Blackened Salmon Taco Recipe

salmon taco recipe

When days in the park and on the beach are being put on the calendar, I always start thinking about the beloved seafood taco. Hopefully this recipe becomes one of your favorite summer dishes!

Note: If you don’t have Cajun spice, you can make your own! Just stir together some salt, pepper, cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and dried oregano before rubbing it on the salmon.

Ingredients For Salmon

1 lb. salmon

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 tbsp. Cajun spice

2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil

Ingredients For Salsa/Serving

1 cup diced pineapple

2 ripe avocados, diced

1/4 cup red onion, diced

2 small tomatoes, diced

Juice of 1 lime, plus wedges for serving

Freshly chopped cilantro, for garnish

6 corn tortillas, warmed or grilled

Instructions

Pat salmon dry, if necessary, then evenly season all sides of the filets with salt, pepper, and Cajun spice.

In a large skillet over medium heat, heat oil. When oil is hot but not smoking, add salmon. Cook until deeply golden, about 5 to 6 minutes, then flip and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, until salmon is opaque.

Let rest and cool slightly, then flake into large pieces.

Make pineapple avocado salsa: In a medium bowl, add mango, avocado, onion, tomatoes, and lime juice. Season with salt and toss to combine.

Assemble tacos: Top tortillas with salmon, avocado salsa, and cilantro. Serve with lime wedges for squeezing.

Source: Delish

Tips for Creating Awe-Inspiring Content

a photography set for website photos

Content is now, more than ever, a critical component to your marketing strategies. The content that consumers look at is the center of connection between your brand and them. Because of this, it is crucial that this content is produced at a high standard and aligns with your overall business. Below are 7 tips to keep in mind while you produce content for your website, social media, and other avenues for your company.

Content Marketing Plan

It is paramount that you and your business develop a plan to help align content strategies with business goals. Having a documented plan allows for your business to strategize and produce goal oriented content. Sit down with others from your company and decide exactly what you are hoping to gain from producing content for your business. Firms with a good marketing plan will have their calendars filled to the brim with content and when it should be produced/posted.

an ecommerce product photo shoot

Quality vs. Quantity

There is no need to rush the creation of content for your website. The content that you produce directly reflects your website and brand as a whole. Take the time to produce quality content that will impress your visitors and leave them with a strong view of your brand.

Original Content

As the internet continues to grow, it is becoming more difficult to stand out. Producing original content will help to draw in and engage consumers and it will help you stand out. An original blog or video post can stick with a customer and leave them thinking about your brand in a way that a paid ad never could.

Use Multiple Types of Content

Content is now consumed under a multitude of mediums. Consumers don’t always want to read a blog post, sometimes they prefer short videos or social media posts. Mixing up the ways you produce content will help reach and engage a broader audience.

Decisions & Data

A strong way to plan how to create content is by making decisions based on data you already have access too. Looking into data from applications such as Google Analytics, can give you additional insights on your consumer base and how they interact with your website. This can help you decide the best type of content to produce.

If you are unfamiliar with Google Analytics, you can learn more about it here.

Focused Content

It is crucial to make sure that the content you produce is directed at your target audience. This will help draw in consumers that are interested in your products and will create more website visits and conversions. If your content is too broad, it will draw in visitors that won’t convert to customers.

Switch It Up

To help keep the creative spirit alive, have others in the office create content. This can be a fun way to get co-workers from other departments involved in the content creation process. This can also help prevent your team from feeling burnt out and struggling to come up with original ideas.

Hopefully this article has shown you that great, consistent content isn’t an unachievable goal. With a little time and practice you can be attracting customers through your businesses content in no time.

Photo by Alexander Dummer and Patrick Tomasso

Roasted Tomato Salsa

roasted tomato salsa recipe

Ingredients (makes 8 cups)

  • 12 large tomatoes, halved and seeded, divided
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
  • 1 bunch fresh cilantro, trimmed
  • 1/4 cup lime juice
  • 4 garlic cloves, peeled
  • 2 teaspoons grated lime zest
  • 1 large sweet yellow pepper, finely chopped
  • 6 jalapeno peppers, minced
  • 12 green onions, thinly sliced
  • 1 tablespoon ground cumin
  • 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
  • 1 tablespoon ground chipotle pepper
  • 2 teaspoons salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon Louisiana-style hot sauce
  • Tortilla chips

 

Directions

  • Arrange six tomatoes cut side down on a 15x10x1-in. baking pan; drizzle with 1 tablespoon oil. Broil 4 in. from the heat until skin blisters, about 4 minutes. Cool slightly; drain well.
  • In a food processor, process uncooked and roasted tomatoes in batches until chunky. Transfer all to a large bowl.
  • Place the cilantro, lime juice, garlic, lime zest and remaining oil in the food processor. Cover and process until blended; add to tomatoes. Stir in the peppers, onions, cumin, paprika, chipotle pepper, salt and hot sauce. Let stand 1 hour to allow flavors to blend. Serve with chips.

Source: Taste of Home

 

Free Logo Design Applications for DIYers

someone works on graphic design on their computer

Design is Important

A logo is one of the most important elements of a business. It is a symbol that represents your brand to both you and your customers and it is used as an easy identifier when consumers are shopping. This is not an aspect of your business that you want to cut corners on, and it can be frustrating to decide where to start. It is expensive to pay someone to design a logo, and some of the high-end programs such as the Adobe Creative Suite, have a big learning curve. Fortunately enough there are many free and easy programs that can be used to help design your logo. Listed below are four of our favorite tools that can be used by individuals with ranging skill levels.

Canva

Canva is a free online tool that is a favorite for those DIYers. It gives you access to thousands of templates that are a great starting point for any project. To use the program you must first sign up. You can use Facebook, a Google account, or just a regular email. Once you have done this, there are hundreds of quality templates that you have access to for your new logo. Each template is designed for a specific document purpose. They have templates for social media posts, documents, designing logos, and much more. The application was created with an intuitive drag and drop operation, with millions of photos and shapes available to use. You also have the option to upload your own photos. Canva also has hundreds of fonts that you can choose from, this allows for increased customisation and a better representation of your brand. Below is a photo of the start to a Canva logo design.

Canva can be used on most computers and any IOS mobile device. This is great if you are on the move or have access to limited resources. Canva does have the option to upgrade and pay for the service. It is called Canva for Work, and is designed for small businesses that plan on producing a large amount of documents through the application. It provides more features, such as team collaboration, the ability to save brand logo/templates, and provides folders to help organize information. This additional features comes in at a monthly cost of $9.95 USD.

Hatchful

Hatchful is a free logo application designed by the developers of Shopify, and specifically for logos. If you want to learn more about Shopify, you can here. Hachful is a logo design application that uses AI to help suggest brand assets for your business, by combining icon and color combinations for your business. It only takes a few minutes to answer the initial questions asked on the screen, and it will provide you with a large number of new logos to test out. Each logo include pre-sized photos for most social media sites. This allows for you to have high quality logos that consumers will recognize on all social media platforms. I went onto the website and within 3 questions, they created hundreds of new logos for a fictional business “Chad’s Chucks.” An example of three of the logos are below.

Squarespace Logo Maker

Squarespace is a popular application that is known to help you build websites. They also offer a simple application to use during the logo generation process, Squarespace Logo Maker. This program provides both text and icon options that you can use when creating your logo. This application is the easiest to use on the list, with a very easy learning curve. The designs that it creates are somewhat basic, but it provides a great starting point. I again used the business “Chad’s Chucks” to provide an example of what the workspace provided by Squarespace looks like.

 

Squarespace allows you to download low-res and watermarked versions of your logo for free. But for $10 USD you can download a high-res version, or you can download them for free if you are already a Squarespace customers. This application is perfect for creating a simple logo that will still attract customers to your brand.

Gravit Designer

The last application we will be talking about is Gravit Designer. This is a free application that allows you to design your logo, but differently compared to the others listed above. This program is similar to Photoshop and GIMP, it includes tools such as layering, drawing tools, effects, and many more. This sort of application is more suited for an intermediate-advance graphic designer. But if you are looking to step your game up, Gravit provides video tutorials to help customers become more familiar with their application. Below is the start to a new logo for “Chad’s Chucks”.

Gravit does have a few templates that are pre-sized for specific uses such as blog posts. The application is designed to integrate with the Gravit Cloud, which is another free program. This will allow you to backup files and share them with others at your business. Gravit Designer is a great application if you are more experienced and are looking to create a unique logo, but it will take more time. Gravit is free but if you find yourself using it enough, you can upgrade to the Pro version for $80 USD.C

Even though it is intimidating to create a new logo, there are many applications to help you during this process. These applications can be used on a large variety of devices and cater to all skill levels. All of the options that we have gone over today have a free version to help you get started with your logo. A few of them charge small fees to download and use the design, but the $10-$20 dollars you will spend can give you a logo that you can use for years. Have fun designing, and if you need any help let us know.