So here’s the thing. I’m a seafood girl. My 8-year-old son, L., gets his amazingly adventurous “If-it-swam-it’s-edible” attitude from me. One of our favorite things to do together is hit the sushi bar, and at a recent family dinner at a nice restaurant, L. took his first hit of raw oyster – then reached for more.

The two of us will eat fish and seafood at pretty much any hour of the day, including breakfast. In fact, one of the small-but-awesome perks I’ve discovered in the half-year or so I’ve been self-employed and working from home is that I no longer have to tiptoe around the concerns of my officemates when I want to eat fish at 9 a.m. I used to take my occasional everything bagel with salmon and veggies into the far corner of the empty cafeteria and set up my laptop on the cafe table so I could start my workday and enjoy my breakfast without offending someone’s delicate sensibilities. Now that I’m at home, I can eat my salmon breakfasts wherever and whenever I want. Score.

The only problem with our seafood proclivities is that oceangoing fare, even in Rhode Island, is expensive. It’s more costly to feed our family of four on fish than it is to eat most meats or to go vegetarian. We do buy a community supported fishery share each summer, which helps to keep the cost down a bit for a few short weeks, but ultimately we have to be really smart about when, where, and how we plot our consumption. So I’m always happy to find ways to stretch and finagle things juuuuuust so, to allow us to enjoy our favorites.

This year, in preparation for the Easter holiday (known in our house as “Feaster,” thanks to L.), I asked the family to help me decide on a menu for the day. L. and P. both begged for lamb, easily a Top 5 food for both of them; but L. ALSO wanted fish. “I don’t care what kind,” he said. “Just fish.” I shrugged, made a mental note, and thought that I’d leave it up to fate to help me sort out what to do about the request.

Imagine my surprise when, just a few days before Easter, my local Whole Foods advertised a sale on salmon filets. They still weren’t dirt cheap by any means, but I figured that if I played my cards right, I could make something nice with just a pound of good fish. I was (happily) right.

Salmon pate – NOT a mousse, laden with mayonnaise or gelatin, not something moldable nor whipped – turned out to be the easy, elegant, and stretchable solution I’d been hoping for. It’s light, given the lack of oil, mayo, or cream, and the flavor of the fish shines through with a fresh but subtle supporting cast of dill and chives. It’s simple to make, with almost no labor involved except for a little mixing and a bit of chopping. And you don’t need much of it, just a thin smear on a bit of cracker or toasted baguette, so it feeds more people than you might with the same pound of fish prepared differently.

Even salmon-reluctant P. liked it so much that he requested it for lunch the next day. As for me, I ate the last of it on pumpernickel toast with capers, for breakfast, alone in my comfy chair with my coffee mug. Blissfully.

Get the recipe: Salmon Pate with Fresh Herbs