Yum-O! February 27, 2008

Sam and I are culinary geeks.  We have some credentials to start with, nothing fancy, but we’ve both worked in different types of kitchens making and serving different types of foods.  We love food, and we love making it.

Both of us are good cooks, and both of us cook differently.  I tend to cook from my tastes and memory.  I know what things taste like, feel like, and I can somehow predict how they’ll combine to create an end result.  I bake from a recipe - strictly.  I sift my flour and measure everything.

Sam grew up in a home that always was feeding lots of people.  She’s great at combining pre-made ingredients to make awesome meals.  Where I might look down my nose at a can of cream of mushroom soup as a sauce, she’ll embrace it, and have me going to the pot for seconds.  And thirds, much to the dismay of my waist.

Sam bakes from memory - she knows how her favourite recipes work and she does it with cookbook open beside her, barely looking at it.  She doesn’t bother with precise measurements, cause she somehow knows that it’ll work out.

We’re pretty demanding on our kitchen tools.  We want strong long lasting pots and pans, good knives and we both like gadgets.  The pride of my collection is my knife Scott bought me in Japan.  It’s hand made by a family that’s been making knives for centuries (since 1560 )- it’s spectacularly sharp and keeps it’s edge a long time.  And it has my name on it in Japanese.

We’ve been looking at new pots for a while.  We have an orange kitchen, and we found that Rachael Ray has a pot/pan set out with orange handles, we got a bit excited.  We haven’t found an excuse to buy a set yet, but we’re working on it.  Today I hit up Rachael’s site, and found a couple of nifty things.

1) A set of Rachael Ray knives that I might like to add to my collection.  They have orange handles, and look pretty awesome - though I don’t think they can compare to my Aritsugu.

2) The pot set we want to get is this one - there is an all orange version, but it’s inferior in quality, though it is cheaper.

3) Yum-O!  This is Rachael Ray’s no profit organization dedicated to empowering kids and their families to develop healthy relationships with food and cooking.  It looks like a neat organization, and their website has some great tools on it, like a pantry organizing list that you can fill out and print to take shopping with you.

Yeah, I know the whole post sounds like a bit endorsement of Ms. Ray.  But really, there is some great stuff out there with her name on it, and as someone who appreciates the colour orange and her style of cooking, it’s a natural for me to point some of it out.

I’ll put more up about other celebrity cooks and chefs sometime probably.  Or not.  Either way, that knife set looks rockin. ;)

Time to put up more Ivy pics. February 27, 2008

So that’s what I’m doing. I’ll update this post as I get them up on Flickr.

Ivy and Gabe, Summer 2007

Ivy and Mom, Summer 2007.  She’s outgrown her Aunt Jemima outfit now, maybe we’ll have a girl to hand it down to!

Our house before renovations, sumer 2007.  I put this up for Chelsea, so she could see what it looks like.  The outside is much the same, the inside is what counts!  But I don’t have good pics of that yet!

Same photo, about the same time, but taken in front of the lilacs.  I love lilacs, and we lucked out with a couple of nice ones, plus an awesome japanese maple tree in the front yard.

I feel like poop poop poop, poop poop poop. February 26, 2008

Really, I do.

I saw the doc today, I have some sort of crazy gastroentr-something or other.  It’s rather uncofortable, what with all the diahreah and vomiting.  The dehydration sucks too, but I”m starting to get a cap on that.

I’ll be back up and about soon enough.

Oh, ps - Ivy has pneumonia too.  In one lung - so she’s got some craxy antibiotics, thankfully they seem to be helping and she hasn’t caught what I’ve got.  Neitehr has sam, thankfully.

Be back later.

comic of awesomness February 22, 2008

Today’s Comic of Most Awesome Awesomeness.   xkcd of course.

Auntie Mimi February 17, 2008

Mimi came over today.  It was a great visit.

She brought Ivy her birthday present - a big bag filled with clothes and shoes.  We can always count on Aunti Mimi for shoes and clothes.  And she has great taste too.  Awesome little jeans, they’re a little long (size 3) but they have a collapsable waist, which rocks.  A green striped sweater, and three pairs of awesome shoes.  She got them at something called The Children’s Place

And Sami got her Christmas present too - a cool wire whisk with a spiral coated whisk inside it.  It’s sweet, and one that she doesn’t already have - it can be tough to buy that girl whisks.

Yesterday we drove up to PG to go shopping.  We found a couple of small things, but nothing really spectacular.  We did get to go out for lunch with Greg and Kate though, and the company was awesome.  The food was pretty ok -  we hit up the new East Side Mario’s.  Service was alright, considering it was stupid busy.

We also got to go ring shopping, and we found a few contenders.  More on that later.

happy non-denominational cupidy mass-market holiday February 14, 2008

I’ve been sending Sam lolcards.  You need to check these out.  I haven’t sent any to anyone who isn’t sami, so don’t get sad that I didn’t think of you.

PS.  Did I mention these things are hawesome?

Also because I’ve been creative lately February 11, 2008

John Scalzi recently wrote a post entitled “Unasked-For Advice to New Writers About Money“.  It’s a great read for anyone who is, or is considering being, a freelancer.  Not just writers, though that’s what it’s geared towards.

Interestingly, this has always been a day-dream of mine.  However, I know I have the fiscal and time management skills of a slightly retarded rock, so I know it’s never going to happen unless I become independently wealthy.

Here is a quick excerpt:

“Lots of wanna-be writers wax rhapsodic about how great it would be to ditch the day job and just spend all their time clickety-clack typing away. These folks are idiots. Look, people: someone is paying you money and giving you benefits, both of which can support your writing career, and all you have to do is show up, do work that an unsupervised monkey could do, and pretend to care. What a scam! You’re sticking it to The Man, dude, because you’re taking that paycheck and turning it into art. And you know how The Man hates that. You’re supposed to be buying a big-screen TV with that paycheck! Instead, you’re subverting the dominant paradigm better than an entire battalion of college socialists. Well done, you. Well done, indeed.”

He continues in this vein thusly:

“People who aren’t full-time writers tend to have a hazy, romanticized view of the full-time writing life, in which writers wake up, clock four-to-six hours of writing truth, and then knock off for the rest of the day to be drunk and brilliant with all the rest of their writer friends. They tend to gloss over the little things like all the time you spend worrying about where the next writing gig is coming from, or all the e-mails and phone calls to publishers reminding them that, hey, they’ve owed you a check for nine months now, or (due to the previous) deciding which bill you can allow to go to a second or third notice, or the constant pressure to produce something you can sell, because you’ve heard of this crazy idea called “eating,” and you think you might like to give it a whirl. The full-time writing life isn’t about writing full-time; it’s about a full-time quest to get paid for your writing, both in selling the work, and then (alas) in collecting what you are owed. It’s not romantic; it’s a pain in the ass.”

It’s worth a read.   The whole thing is full of good financial advice, specifically geared towards freelancers, but applicable really, to anyone.

Go and read it.  Really.

because I’m being creative lately February 11, 2008

I found this article today at Man Bytes Blog, one of the blogs on my reading list.  It contained a very astute observation about the relationship between creative people, those who review their work and those who try to disect it and find the ultimate “meaning” or “message” hidden within.

There has always been an uneasy love triangle between the artist, the critic and the academic. It is a tempestuous relationship, often fraught with violent sulks, bitter recriminations and vengeful silences. There is nothing new about an artist claiming their work contains different themes, or no themes at all, than that which an academic claims to see, just as there’s nothing new about the artist accusing the critic of not being deep enough, or sensitive enough, or intelligent enough, to understand the true import of their novel, play, movie, sculpture, or what have you. Likewise, the critic is often hampered by their own limited understanding of the creative process or frustrated over their own failure to produce works that captivate the public. The academic may, in their examination of the artist’s work, be more focused on impressing their peerage with convoluted insights or insecurely scrambling to bury their own ignorance under a mound of obfuscation. Those who are but tangentially involved in this codependent ménage à trois, the audience, probably wish they’d all just shut up and get back to buggering each other, because that’s what they’re paying their hard earned shekels for in the first place.

I just thought you’d enjoy that, and perhaps that some who read this would enjoy the blog of an indie game developer who comes up with such insights.

breakfast incoming…..duck! February 10, 2008

INGREDIENTS

* 2 egg yolks
* 5 tablespoons white sugar
* 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup butter, melted
* 1 teaspoon salt
* 2 3/4 cups self-rising flour (or add 2 3/4t of baking powder to normal flour)
* 2 cups warm milk
* 2 egg whites

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large bowl, beat together egg yolks and sugar. Beat in vanilla extract, butter and salt. Alternately mix in flour and milk until blended well.
2. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until they have formed soft peaks. Fold egg whites into batter and let stand for 40 minutes.
3. Spray preheated waffle iron with non-stick cooking spray. Pour mix onto hot waffle iron. Cook until golden brown and fluffy.

I’ll let you all know how they turn out.

Crofton Forks - a Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Setting February 4, 2008

I’m working on an adventure setting for Dungeons and Dragons. Sami and I are planning on playing for the first time in a long time, so I started thinking about a place to run some really simple adventures. As so often is the case, the idea has blossomed and grown. Now I’ve got a few cities and towns built, and idea, and I’m working on the background.

So much for a simple “go kill some orcs and re-learn D&D combat before we play with our group” adventure. Actually - that’ll still happen. This is just the setting building blocks - giving me a setting of my own to tell my own stories in.

If you like it, you can use it yourself, or modify it for your use. I’m going to be releasing it under a Creative Commons licence - so it’ll be free to use as long as you give attribution where it’s due.

You can go check out my Crofton Forks blog if you like, that’s where I’ll be organizing the information. This is in a way I guess, my first foray into self publishing - however, it’s not for pay - just a way to stretch my legs a bit.

Let me know what you think.