Category: Foodstuffs

Everything’s better on a stick

Life is weird these days. I’m at home nearly 100% of the time now. I don’t see other human beings, except from the safety of my balcony. McDonald’s brought bagels back from beyond the grave.

And so, I play along by cooking weird things. The other night, I fancied grilled chicken and mango skewers.

Now, the typical thing to have done would have been chicken and pineapple kebabs. But the fact is that I don’t plan these things ahead of time. And also the other fact is that I almost never have pineapple on hand. However, I do always have at least one mango kicking around.

I can’t say that this was exactly a huge success. The mango was a little too ripe and got much too drippy and fall-aparty for my liking. Otherwise? Not half bad. I think that with a sturdier, more youthful mango, it would have been ratcheted all the way up to “pretty good.” Also I think a slightly under-ripened mango’s blend of sweet and sour would have complemented the chicken better than the overripe mango’s overwhelming sweetness.

Would I have it again? Yeah, but I think I’d have to think it through a little more. Add some onion, maybe red pepper. Oh, yeah, that sounds real good. Probably should learn how to marinate my chicken properly. And also get some fresher ingredients for said marinade. Both my olive oil and spices were a little… very old. And I had to throw out the lemon juice I was going to use because it had turned completely black. Such is the life of a bachelor who is just now teaching himself to cook things more complicated than Kraft Dinner.

Cultural Appropriation

I’ve yet to really write anything about Monster Hunter Rise, and that’s mostly because I’ve been keeping myself so busy playing Monster Hunter Rise. But there’s one thing about the newest entry in the MH series that I feel like I absolutely need to do a little spiel about.

An important part of every Monster Hunter game is eating before you go on a quest. You select a few ingredients, and a meal is whipped up that provides an increase to your stats and maybe some special buffs. Typically the meal is a cartoonishly huge plate of meat, fish, and veggies. MH Rise, being very strongly ninja-themed, replaces that “normal” meal with dango: a traditional Japanese rice snack.

While I’m sure I’ve seen dango somewhere else during the course my life (probably a different video game), I’ve never really known what it was called or what it was made of until MH Rise came along and made a huge deal out of it. Learning more about the snack from the game, and partially being persuaded by how every character is obsessed with the stuff, I felt like it was something that I had to try for myself.

Of course, I don’t live in Japan, so… I think you see where this is going.

Yes, that’s right. I made my own dango. And while they look just about perfect in the image above, rest assured that this was my third batch, and the first two didn’t come out anywhere near as well.

Continue reading Cultural Appropriation

New-ish Territory

Did you know that hamburgers are probably my favourite food? There’s so much delicious food out there, it’s hard to really narrow it down to one absolute favourite. If nothing else though, I eat hamburgers more than anything else. Lately it’s become something of a Friday night ritual for me to scour my food delivery apps and order a burger from a restaurant that I haven’t tried before. Or just BK. It’s quite often BK.

Despite this, I’d never actually made my own hamburgers until last week. And of course, that was the perfect opportunity to try doing something totally new for my YouTube channel. Did it work? Ehhh, not really. You couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a better way to spend fifteen minutes. But at least I’m trying new things! Both in the kitchen and on the interweb. So that’s like a twofer right there.

Quantity Over Quality

Here’s a fun fact: I have now recorded and posted 70 Pop-Tarts review videos on the internet for the general public to watch. That’s a lot!

If nothing else, doing so many of these has slowly helped me to get better at it. Through making all of these stupid Pop-Tarts videos, I’m building skills that might help me to create something that is genuinely good someday.

Or maybe not. I’ll probably just keep making mindless trash like this until I get bored of it.

24 Days of Quarantine Fun – Day 24: Rudolph’s Tipsy Spritzer

It’s here. Finally, this stupid thing is over. Every year that I do this, I always come to regret it by like, Day 11, but I always push on through because it’s too late to stop at that point. Sunk cost fallacy and all.

So I’m sick of writing blog entries, all stressed out by having to think up 24 things (it’s a lot, right?) and then write something passably thoughtful about them. What’s the best way to forget your troubles? A severe head injury!

That’s probably not an avenue that you want to pursue, though. I don’t particularly fancy the idea. I do have an alternative suggestion, though: alcohol! Yeah, that’s much more plausible. You probably won’t actually forget your troubles, but if you drink enough, they’ll be replaced with a whole new set of troubles. And that’s… something.

Specifically, I want to mention a concoction that my mom has been making on Xmas day for the past couple years now: Rudolph’s Tipsy Spritzer. I’m not sure where she got the idea -probably Pinterest- but a quick Googling reveals that there are dozens of recipes with that name, so I’m just not going to credit anyone. How about that?

I’ve never watched it all come together, but my understanding of the ingredients is this: Vodka, 7-Up, vodka, orange juice, vodka, and maraschino cherries. It goes great with breakfast, and is the only cocktail that I’ve ever really grown attached to. Probably because it’s a once-a-year thing and is attached to happy memories of spending Xmas day with my family. Also, it’s the one time a year I have an excuse to be wasted by breakfast time.

I don’t really know how Xmas is going to pan out this year, but the plan was for my (immediate) family to get together and just hang out and spend the entire day drinking, eating, and napping. It sounded like a perfect Xmas to me, but the current public health orders restricting people from entering a house that is not their home are kind of spoiling that. Whoops! Looks like I’ll just have to spend the Xmas long weekend all alone in my condo!