Paella

I made this Paella, entered into a contest and never heard anything about it. 


It's right here.

I had a great time making it, I even used a wood fire!

Coffee mug

Size does matter!

Been a year..almost

Since my last post. So on my almost anniversary of silence I guess I'll update. I am now the proud owner of two very nice folded carbon steel knives. My wife looked at one of them the wrong way and it cut her finger from across the room. Ok, thats a lie, but they are that sharp. Which leads me to my point on knife safety more people get hurt from dull knives then from sharp ones, honestly. I used to work at a wine bar and we were constantly slicing and chopping and 9 times out of 10 the injuries were due to the knife not being sharp enough and taking the tip off someones finger and right into a salad (happened only once, and we may or may not have noticed that the tip of the finger was in the salad after we served it). The other 10% comes from not paying attention. So when handling knives, sharpen them and pay attention, otherwise you'll have to comp someones meal and give them free dessert...

I digress, I received a Shun knife for Christmas and it is as beautiful as it is sharp. It is a 6 inch damascus patterned chef's knife and if you have the money i definately recommend this beautiful  knife.

Just some Rambling

So in order for me to keep my sanity right now, I am going to just type out a stream of consciousness because I haven't uttered a word to anyone today. I have to say that I got a little excited when my work phone rang, for a second and the jackass hung up...I was honestly hopeful that I could do some work. I might just turn off the internet here just for a little excitement. Oh that would be sweet, people running around pounding on my door "JUSTIN!!!! THE INTERNETS ARE DOWN" alas, while I am intellectually lusting for human contact and conversation their just isn't the motivation for me to actually do anything.

Since this is primarily a cooking blog I will regale someone with my dinner last night. After realizing that perhaps my steady diet of fried fare and meats will kill me sooner or later i decided to use my cooking prowess to change that. So last night I made some chicken in a white wine, leek, garlic, pepper and lemon sauce. The sauce consisted of nothing more than the above with a little olive oil. Then we had some asparagus with the sauce on it, it was awesome. Damn, now I'm hungry, rightfully so all i have had to eat today is a cliff bar and a half gallon of coffee (ok not a half gallon but enough). I am back on a work out kick that hopefully will stick, I feel like it will because I am starting to enjoy the pain and fatigue that comes along with a good work out. Also, I really dont have anything better to do. I either work out for an hour or so or play video games for an extra hour which honestly my ass doesnt need that.

In efforts to eat more like some without a culinary death wish I am trying to refocus the mainstays of my diet. I am actually trying to invert the proportions of my diet. From almost non-existant vegetable consumption to a majority. Which should prove interesting for my body to shift from a processed grain and red meat dominant diet to one of poultry, seafood and vegetables. I am probably going to eat a baby by the end of the week... maybe.

So for the small percentage of people who know me and the even smaller percent that know me and read this, there has been some job troubles as off late. About a month ago the owner of the company I work for came to me and the office manager and said that he wasn't sure about the health of the company and suggested that if we had another job to take it. Reading in between the lines here, get the fuck out while you can!!! This has lead to an indescribable amount of stress while i desperately try to hunt down a job that I can do. Most jobs out here in the Midwest are either sales, general labor or some obscure shit that research physists can do. Whats a consultant/tech person to do, I am to gentle to do general labor and I don't have a PHd in Quantum fluid mechanics or whatever that job posting was for. So after a week or so of doing some serious network milking and resume spamming, I got two hits. One is a general tech support and bench work the other, which i am more excited about, is a technical consultant for a finance firm :D, I am excited. This should prove to be awesome, truly awesome if i get the job because I can finally cook like I want to, using materials that I can actually afford to use and have access to that fresh stuff.

It is now going on 2 hours and I still haven't had any human interactions. I wonder how long until i spiral into a disassociative hallucination where I can't determine the difference between my existance and a that of a highlighter. Kinda like having a 0 Charisma score in D&D. Perhaps I'll crack open that orange I bought, that'll occupy me for...not long at all.

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.