Sauted leeks in a white wine, butter and lemon sauce

I have never cooked leeks before but god damnit I am kicking myself for it. All these years I could have been having leeky goodness in my mouth, well I am going to make up for it. Still, I digress recipe is as follows

• White wine, left overs from a fiancee will do in a pinch
• butter, i think i used a quarter a stick
• rice
• chicken broth
• half a lemon

From my limited experience with leeks I learned a valuable lession, they are a bitch to clean. So what i did, and would love to discover a better method, is to cut the leeks in to little disks. Threw the disks in a collander and run under cold water. Then I laboriously rifled through the little bastards making sure all the mud and god knows what else is in farm soil was washed off, or at least to the point where I could in good conscious serve the food, shhhhh. So with my leeks and potentially goat placenta I threw it into a skillet the white wine, the butter and the other half of the lemon from the previous entry, set the burner to medium high. If I had more white wine, ahem Eva!, I would have cooked the leeks longer and on a higher temperature. But since she did buy the wine, I couldnt argue. Cook a cup of rice with chicken broth. Serve the orgasmic rings of green deliciousness on top a bed of rice and pour the white wine sauce on top. Presto changeo delicious.

day one dinner butternut squash, chicken, leeks with a white wine sauce

This is the part that I look forward to, eating. I have had this whole chicken in my freezer for the better part of the summer. I finally got around to defrosting it and decided that I would ring in the new season with a fall inspired roasted chicken. So, the recipe is as follows

• a bushel of carrots
• a butternut squash (this one was only 2lbs or so)
• a whole chicken
• a lemon
• an onion
• a bunch of leeks
• white wine
• butter
• pepper
• Cayenne pepper
• chicken broth
• celery
• rice

For the roasted chicken I crushed some black pepper and threw on some Cayenne pepper and stuffed it with half a lemon and some cubed butternut squash. In the roasting pan I lined the bottom of the pan with the veggies, butternut squash, onion, carrots, celery. I added some chicken broth so that they wouldn't burn and placed the dressed chicken on top. Threw it in the oven at 425 and walked away. Normally this would be the time that I start drinking the white wine because I know I am not going to use it all for the meal. Only problem is that my fiancee got to it first and had to plea bargain with her to use the remains, as if cooking wasn't a bargain enough. After about 30 minutes or so, I wasn't paying attention, I took the chicken out of the oven to gauge how it was fairing. I want to reiterate that I have no idea how this thing is going to turn out because I have never cooked a butternut squash or with leeks. But what I do have is Internet access to the kind people over at about.com. I think they paid some good money to be at the top of a google search or there are enough lazy people to just click on the link that says leeks.about.com. Lucky bastards, i want the about.com domain. Jesus wall of text...

I digress, so now the chicken is all hot and juicy ( that's what she said) time to add the coup de grace, the peice de triumph...BUTTER!!!!. I have had the notion that I need to start cooking with small amounts of butter more often because while using to much can kill you not using it and you might as well be dead. So i just took a stick of butter and rubbed it on the top of the chicken so the skin would turn all nice and golden brown and crispy. Rub a little butter on the top of the chicken every half hour or so and it will come out looking like those people that are addicted to tanning beds, only less orange but just as crispy. I cooked my chicken for about 2 hours and so far I am still alive so i would call it a success, good food and not dying from it.

Day one

After work I went to the gym, and worked out as follows

• 10 minutes on the bike on 10 resistance ~80 Calories
• 20 minutes on the eliptical ~230 Calories
• 30 reps of bench press at 40 lbs
• 10 10 second reps at 40 lbs
• 1 1 minute rep at 40 lbs
• 2 sets of 20 rowing at 60 lbs
• 2 sets of 20 machine flys at 60
• 2 sets of one arm machine flys at 60
• 2 sets of 10 bicept curls at 40
• Strength trained my shoulder muscles (not sure what they are called but it was low weight, read 5 lbs)
• 1 set of 30 tricept press at 40
• 1 set of 20 tricept press at 60
• 1 set of 10 tricept press at 80
• 1 set of 10 alternate tricept press at 80

So that was a good 500 calorie or so work out.

Begin operation "God Damnit Justin you are 20 pounds overweight and its time to do something about it"

Today is the beginning of a journey for me to loose the weight that I have always meant to loose. I realized that I lead a very sedentary lifestyle, working for a tech support company and my hobbies involve computer games. But I will not succumb to the 'betes or congestive heart failure so my new goal will be to chronicle my journey through weight lose, document my food intake, document the recipes that I find along the way and hopefully motivate me to work out and blog on a daily basis.

So goals for today, continue to make good food choices, I have had some home made gumbo that mainly consists of rice, beans, peppers, okra and hot sauce and to hit the gym. At the gym I will bust my ass, and rock out. I have a motivating factor this time around, I finally got around to updating my IPhone and the 30 something gigs of music on my computer.

I will update this tonight after the gym or come up with a really good reason why I didn't go.

Mission Statement

I guess that I need to come up with a purpose for this thing. So far its been a haphazard collection of my mostly successful cooking adventures. This simple will not stand I need a more focused direction...maybe.

Question

Does anyone actually read this?

Julie/Julia vs Justin

So I saw this movie over the weekend, Julie and Julia and it was good, yet it was interesting that I share the same interests and/or life goals as a 30 something year old woman and a well I dont know how old Julia Childs was suppose to be in the movie. And to all those people who are judging me right now, let me add some fuel for your fire. That same weekend I made two quiches, from my very lovely Joy of Cooking, well I got the general idea for a quiche from the book and threw caution to the wind. Which is how I feel cooking should be done, receipes are good and all but there are rare times where if you do not follow the measurements to the exact 1/8th of a teaspoon you will die. Cook, Learn, Live.

More on the quiche in a different post.

P.S. I think I just made a catch phrase for myself.