Category Archives: Food

Wine, Tartan, Celïdiluh, and fun

Posted on by

life has gotten an update bringing it up to the beginning of this month. I had quite an eventful last month, it seems. But it’s also been an eventful last week.
(Also, because I was sick of referring to the sections as “stats” and “life proper”, they are now called “photo stats” and “photo journal”, which hopefully will be easier to refer to. So yeah… the photo journal has been updated.)

Besides the usual Thursday board games, we went to Yubin’s this week for a wine tasting (with 5 different cheeses and 4 different kinds of crackers), and it was pretty awesome. Yubin really knows her wines.




This weekend was also Cèilidh Weekend (AKA Homecoming) and so there was the usual chili cookoff. I wasn’t able to enjoy it as fully this year (had to work starting at noon, so I just grabbed a bowl of chili and a burger and went upstairs to work), but I got my mug, so I continue my streak of having every year’s mug.

Yesterday was also the opening of Vincent’s exhibit of photographs at the Trinity Gallery. It was kind of awesome to see… yay gallery shows by people we know!
(Photo kind of related… it’s bblum biking home on the way to the opening.)

Today was Tartan production. I had done a crossword for the paper last week, but it was a really crappy one. This week, Greg helped me and (after one failed attempt and a couple times of giving up) we ended up with a reasonable crossword that is reasonably dense and rotationally symmetric. Hopefully we’ll do even better next week with finding more common words.

Earlier in the week was a 66th monthiversary and an associated dinner at Point Brugge which has really tasty mussels (and reasonably good, but very oily, fries).

Life continues to be good. :)

I really should be pursuing more personal side projects, but I’m kind of a fan of this whole “fill my life with friends and events with friends”, so I suppose it’s not all bad.

Meme: Cooking and music

Posted on by

There have been nice bits of music lately.
First off there’s Little White Flag and the related kickstarter for a full album. It’s a good song. You should help fund their album if you like the song.
Second, Kelly apparently wrote a new anthem for the Dallas Cowboys called “Get Up”, which you can download for free here. It’s very happy and upbeat and dance-y. I am a fan (even if I’m not a fan of the Cowboys).
Third, Incorporated Elements did an awesome remix of “The Day We Fell Apart” from Kelly’s last album, which is also up for download here.
Fourth, I downloaded Bangarang back when the EP was on sale. Dubstep is awesome. Too bad good dubstep is so hard to come by.
Fifth, I also downloaded Amaryllis back when it was on sale. A few of the tracks (Unity, Miracle, Through The Ghost) are standouts and they’ve been on my standard playlist since then.
Also grabbed a few random tracks like God Gave Me You and Something To Do With My Hands using free MP3 credit. My musical tastes are rather eclectic.

Anyway, I’m making food for 5 tonight (kind of an impromptu dinner party), so it seems like an appropriate time to cover the last of Jess’ meme topics for me.

Cooking is a weird thing for me. I generally like food, and looking at food, and contemplating food. One of my favorite websites is airline meals, where people post photos of their plane food.

That said, I don’t really have a good appreciation for “fancy” food. Maybe my palate isn’t refined enough or something, but on the occasions I get to go to upscale places, I feel like I don’t appreciate the food as much as I should given how much it costs… really, I would rather go to cheaper places and get larger portions.

So, expectedly, my cooking is rather boring, standard stuff. There’s a bunch of stuff I make in the food category of this journal. It all tends to involve a meat and a veggie or starch. I do cook Thai food sometimes, but not as much as I should given the expensiveness of “exotic” ingredients ($4/lb for bok choy? really?) at local grocery stores and distance of cheaper ethnic stores. Also, Greg doesn’t like tofu or non-standard sea creatures, which also limits the kind of things I can easily do.

The process itself I usually find relaxing and rewarding, since it’s nice to be able to do something after a day of coding that doesn’t involve a keyboard or debugging. Cooking pretty much always works out the way you want it to, and you can experiment as much as you want and (usually) still get something tasty out the other end.
Still, when I’m feeling particularly stressed about work, I tend to find the extra “chore” of cooking to be too much and will default to heating frozen things or making sandwiches. Which is odd given how much I enjoy it normally. But meh.

So yay food.
Tonight’s menu is salad (a mix of bagged salads with some fresh tomato and mozzarella; yes I’m lazy), lemon-pepper baked tilapia, green beans, rice (made with mixed veggies and spices in my usual style), and watermelon (since we have two, since they were on sale this week at geagle). Om nom nom nom.

I’ve had a lot of other random introspective thoughts bouncing around my head the past few days, but I don’t know how to put them into words, so they will remain unwritten for now.

Food, Kickstarter, cards, and thou (but not really)

Posted on by

Life goes. Yay life.

I’ve started cooking again, which I think is a sign that I am generally happier. This is a good thing. Here’s a couple of the things I’ve made in the past few days (when I, unfortunately, neglected to get pictures of any of it). I’m still using organic and local ingredients when possible, so I made it all with organic chicken, organic eggs, organic carrots, and locally-grown zucchini. I feel like I’m eating better that way. Yay.

Chicken “Parmesean”

2 chicken breasts, sliced in half lengthwise
1 egg
1c breadcrumbs
1/2 jar pasta sauce
1/2 box whole wheat spaghetti
4 slices of cheese (I used extra sharp cheddar)

Dip chicken breasts in egg, then liberally coat with breadcrumbs. Brown both sides in a skillet over medium heat. Move to a baking pan, top with a little sauce (not enough to even cover each piece) and place cheese on top. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. Serve over spaghetti with remaining sauce.

Chicken and rice and veggies

2 chicken breasts, sliced in half lengthwise
1/2 package frozen mixed vegetables
1c dry rice
1/2 zucchini, sliced
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
Spices to taste (I used an Indian Curry blend from Giant Eagle)

Cover chicken in spices and bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.
Add frozen vegetables to rice with 2c water. (You can also add some herbs and it comes out very tasty.) Bring to a boil, then simmer on low heat for ~20 minutes until done.
Put carrots and zucchini in a bowl, add a little water, cover, and microwave for 4 minutes on high.
Serve chicken with rice and vegetables.

They’re both really low effort to make (throw stuff together and surf the web while it all cooks) and are much healthier than eating out due to lack of added oil, salt, and sugar.

In other, non-food news, I have been exploring the awesomeness that is Kickstarter recently. I’ve already pledged to three board games (all of which succeeded), and am contemplating pledging a fourth.

  • Ground Floor looks kind of like Puerto Rico, except it has elements of placement like Agricola, which are two of my favorite games. It also looks like it has a good theme.
  • My Happy Farm is a *lot* of fun, and I’m sad it didn’t get more support. I already received and played the print-and-play version, and it’s a very cute, very entertaining game that is a good time-filler while you’re waiting for people to show up or finish other games.
  • Pixel Lincoln looks like a very interesting deck-building game. I tend to like deck-building games (Dominion is good, Rune Age is better, and Ascension is… interesting), and this looks like a very interesting twist on one.
  • Currently looking at Flash Point, which Greg has apparently played at Yubin’s before, and which has excellent reviews online. Still I don’t particularly need to spend another $65. We will see. The only cooperative board game I’ve played previously is Pandemic, and I find that to be a little too fiddly.

Each game also comes with a lot of awesome extras (like Ground Floor coming with an entire extra game, or Pixel Lincoln coming with a bunch of extra cards), which makes supporting through Kickstarter more than worthwhile.

Also been starting up on People Wars again, after a hiatus following Carnival (and the last expansion). I always like working on my card games, and always find it interesting to look back at my card game history and seeing how they’ve evolved.
In particular, since People Wars represents the fifth iteration of the same basic game, it’s interesting to see how it’s been refined over the years (8 years now!), and to look at how certain things have worked (dual characters, storage cards, working on GPA/tasks) and other things haven’t (trigger text, group nodes, division of characters into primary affiliations).
I suppose it’s kind of sad, but I still consider the PPA TCG/Student Wars/People Wars game series to be one of my most fulfilling accomplishments. Sometimes I wish I had the skill (or luck?) to work on card games as a career, but I also enjoy my current job, and my current job probably pays the bills far better. (Likewise with photography, although I haven’t felt urges to do that professionally for a while.)

So yeah. This post has gotten far too long and contains far too many words. Have a picture of My Happy Farm

and a card from the upcoming People Wars expansion

SOPA, Toast!, Facebook, and thoughts

Posted on by

I’ve written in this blog more this month than the last two combined (if you include this post). And it’s only the 18th. Weird.

Anyway, you’ve probably been hearing about the various site blackouts today in protest of SOPA/PIPA. Given that I work for a tech company, you probably already know my stance on the issue.
It just occurred to me this morning that this conflict seems to be a lot like the kinds of conflicts you see in tech companies.
You have the management types (politicians, MPAA, RIAA, etc) with the money and the power, who want something to happen without really having an understanding of what they’re asking for. You have the tech people (Google, Wikipedia, Craigslist) who have a good understanding of why the request is flawed.
When a direct conflict between the two groups happens in a company, it’s not a good idea for management to blindly push ahead, insisting that they are right over all the protests of the people who really know what’s going on. Do so, and you come out with a crappy product. Do so too much and the company goes bankrupt, or all of your employees quit, and you’re pretty much screwed.
The same thing is happening here. I find it absolutely insane that Congress is attempting to draft legislation that involves so much technical detail, but refuses to listen to the people who really understand that technology. (Or, you know, dismisses them as “profiting from the illegal activities.”)
Sigh.

In other news, I had a birthday, and it was nice. We went to Toast!, and I got the tasting menu with wine pairing, and it was tasty. Probably not nice enough to justify the price tag, but still really nice.
I suppose I’m one of those people who can’t fully appreciate gourmet food and drink. Wine tastes like wine. Food tastes like food. A $30 dinner may taste nicer than a $10 meal at Orient Kitchen (one of my favorite restaurants here), but it doesn’t really feel like it’s 3x as good. So I don’t know.
Service was also not up to what I would expect from such a place. They forgot the wine pairing with my first course (but made up for it at dessert with an aged tawny port), forgot to switch my butter knife for a meat knife (so I pretty much had to fork my salmon apart; they seemed to get everyone else though), ran out of bread (which I suppose is excusable), and just generally weren’t as attentive as you would expect for a restaurant that was mostly empty. Part of it may be the late reservation (7:30). Part of it may be that I was expecting more from hearing people talk about the place (and how they gauge your reaction to each course when selecting the next). I don’t know.
I guess this means I should not attempt to make a trip to The French Laundry. I wouldn’t be able to properly appreciate the food there. (Although I’m sure a $270+ meal would at least not have issues in the service aspect.)

In other other news, I miss Facebook. This is not because I miss Facebook itself, but rather because I miss being able to contact people. It seems that, these days, AIM usage has fallen off and email is generally neglected. When I want to contact certain people now, I pretty much have to send a text message (and that doesn’t even always work). It’s kind of a depressing thought that Facebook has become such a central means of communication, especially over something like email. I don’t know.
I still don’t have plans to get a new Facebook account anytime soon. I’d rather be unable to contact people than deal with their crap again.

In other other other news, I ascended again in KoL to try out bumcheekcity’s ascension script. Apparently, not only does the script not eat or drink for you, it also neglects to find food or drink for you to manually consume. Which meant I was almost stuck with a super-crappy day 1 at level 3 with no food or drink. Luckily I was able to rest in my campground, use the MP to summon Alice’s Army cards and a snack voucher, and use the snack voucher for adventures to spend at the tavern. I’m wondering what other people do for the script. Or do they rely on having spleen familiars to get the adventures necessary? It’s my own damn fault for not ascending manually, yes, but meh.

In other other other other news, I was looking at Photoshop Lightroom as a potential upgrade from Photoshop Elements organizer (currently using version 5). Unfortunately, while Lightroom does have the ability to import Photoshop Elements libraries, it only does so for versions 6 through 9. So my options, if I ever want to upgrade, are to either buy a new version of Photoshop Elements as an intermediate step (to use to upgrade the album file), and then import the upgraded album file into Lightroom (that is, of course, assuming that all of the upgrades work as promised, or I’d have wasted $80 on something pointless)… or to reconstruct my tag library from scratch.
Neither of which is a good option.
Considering doing a small upgrade now to Elements 6, since that’s supported by Lightroom, and Amazon does still sell it (via third parties), and reviews say it doesn’t suck nearly as much as the newer incarnations of Elements, and the process of upgrading the album should work better than an upgrade from 5 to 10. But still, the entire thing has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Do people really not use software for years anymore? Do companies really expect you to be on the new version as soon as it’s out? Elements 5 is just over 5 years old. That doesn’t seem like an unreasonable amount of time to use a piece of software you paid for.
I suppose it’s also hypocritical of me to use Elements organizer when I decided not to get a Kindle because of the lock-in effect on Kindle books.
I do have all of my tags written to the photo metadata, so I could potentially switch to anything if I absolutely had to without losing them completely, but I would lose all of the organization I currently have of the tags (like categorization of people tags, separation of people tags from location tags, etc). That’s nontrivial when you have several thousand tags.
Sigh.

I guess this has been a list of things that have been making me sad lately. #firstworldproblems, eh?

Edit: From Ian:

I see SOPA in a very different light from you, I think. I don’t see Congress and media execs having any misunderstandings. They’re old, don’t have a use for the Internet themselves, and accumulating short term earnings for retirement. Fuck the rest of the world.

Yeeeeeah. :\

Groceries

Posted on by

There was a Christmas. It was nice. I got some iTunes gift cards, which I used to buy Kelly Clarkson’s new EP. We also got a really nice toaster oven to replace our crappy half-broken toaster (and so I can bake without heating up the huge oven).

Relatedly, I bought and watched Food, Inc. about a month ago, and it’s pretty much changed everything about how I eat.
I’m buying almost exclusively organic fruit and vegetables now (and generally buying and eating more of them than before). I’ve switched away from the “cheap” pork and beef to the turkey and free-range chicken. (Giant Eagle also has some grass-fed beef I think I’ll try soon.) I’ve started buying organic yogurt and free-range eggs instead.
Our grocery bill has gone up a bit, but for the first time in a long time, I’m feeling good about my purchases when I leave the store. Strangely, prices for organics are often only 20 to 50 cents more than the regular counterparts, when they’re not on sale. But I think buying fewer processed foods is what’s making the bill go up, since fresh produce is expensive (and also not usually on sale like the processed stuff is). It’s actually scary when you look at the labels on some packages, because something as simple as “corn meal” has like 10 ingredients. WTF, guys.

Good food is nice. I think it’s become one of the areas where it’s okay for me to pay a little more, because the quality of what you get is so much higher.

Not looking forward to going back to work on Tuesday. This break hasn’t been nearly long enough.