Mushroom risotto

Surprise Surprise! I was in a cooking mood last night. I've been feeling bad lately because all I've been doing is laying on the couch and vegging out. I definitely haven't been cooking, and I definitely haven't been cleaning (our cleaning lady came yesterday-she's an angel!). Time to get prepping on the ingredients. On the menu:

• wild sockeye salmon
• red pepper and bok choy medly
• mushroom risotto
• lamb chops from Waitrose (already preseasoned) for T

I wanted to try something different with the salmon so I went with this recipe I found on allrecipes.com
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/grilled-salmon-i/detail.aspx

chopped up some romano red peppers

marinated the salmon for an hour:

• 1 tablespoon and 2-1/4 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon and 2-1/4 teaspoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon and 2-1/4 teaspoons water
• 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• garlic powder 
• small sprinkle of sea salt
• generous squeeze of siracha

started by making chicken broth (I used the cubes)

After prepping the salmon, I got to work on ELR's mushroom risotto. I've made several things from her website and everything has been fantastic. And of course it would be, she's a LeCordon Bleu grad :-)
I would highly recommend checking out her website and cooking from there, especially if you're not too familiar in the kitchen like me. She has many simple and delicious recipes on there.

per her instructions, I sauteed one minced shallot in EVOO.

sliced up some mushrooms

added 1/4 cup white wine to 1 cup risotto and stirred in the chicken stock, 1/4 cup at a time. Thankfully, the wonderful smells got me through the whole stirring process that took over 30 minutes!

yuuuuumm... seeing this again makes me want to heat some back up right now.. at 9 a.m.!!

near the end, I sprinkled some fresh grated parm cheese. It was REALLY good but sort of on the salty end. I swear I didn't add any additional salt. Next time I'll remember to use low sodium chicken broth.

sauteed bok choy and red peppers

• evoo
• soy sauce
• sesame oil
• siracha

oven roasted lamp chops for the hubby (since I had a feeling the salmon wasn't going to be enough food for him!)

the salmon was a bit overcooked but the marinade was delicious! It was the perfect balance of sweet and salty.

one huge bowl and lots leftover. I have a feeling the leftovers won't be there for long.

mmm.. I was quite proud of myself for putting together this dinner. Especially since it was super easy to make! T even said it was probably the best dinner I've ever cooked him. I bet it was the lamb that won him over! Hmph!! ;-)

Breakfast this morning and then I'm going to try and make it to the gym!

Would I like some eggs with all that ketchup?

Okay, I didn't make it to the gym. It is now 12:24 and I just finished lunch. I guess I was more tired than I thought! Here's the workout I would have done in the gym:

• tricep pulldown
• barbell chest press
• tricep kickback
• pushups
• overhead tricep extension
• chest flye

Here's what I'm going to do now:
http://www.youtube.com/user/blogilates#p/a/u/1/zA5jfTSv9O4