December Recap

Wow, January is creeping up faster than I thought.

Been busy wrapping up work for one department and making preparations for getting back into the other department’s swing of things as the new year comes around. (The former is done, finally, and the latter is ongoing.)

Couple that with the construction of a computer and Charmed and cooking, and I not only have an alliteration but a full schedule.

On the bright side, the new computer set up is done (and dual screen capability is freaking cool), even if I now have a legacy hard disk filled with goodies and redundant stuff that I –intend- to clean up some day so I can reformat it and use it for storing reference material…

I’m still miffed that I can’t locate the first CD of my WH40K - Dawn of War series. It’s kinda crucial for re- installation so that the system actually realizes I own the darn game. It’s lost somewhere in the crap that I should sort out, but haven’t got around to. Hopefully anyway, otherwise it’s permanently gone.

The good news is that I apparently do -not- require it in order to play the single-player campaign of WH40K – Dark Crusade. It is only needed to play the starting four races in multiplayer. Not that much of a biggie, since the amount of opportunity, time and people I have to play multiplayer with can be painlessly tattooed on my lil’est fingernail.

I’m getting seriously trounced by the difficulty level though. Teaches me to pick “Normal” instead of “Easy.” This campaign game style adds a whole new level of consideration. Gonna have to read up a few guides to see what other people have come up with.

Second ‘C’ Item: I’ve finished Charmed – Season 6 through a Christmas weekend marathon, and gotten some emotional ideas for JanNoWriMo. Piper’s grown up son, the Whitelighter Chris who comes back from the future (played by Drew Fuller) gives me a huge emotional resonance with (of all people) Jherenais.

More on this in a separate JanNoWriMo post.

Last ‘C’ is that I’ve been in a mad crazy mood for home-cooked Western-style food. An entire freaking month of my mom buying back Chinese food from the local hawker centre’s ‘zhi cha’ has seriously made me sick of:

a) bee hoon – meehoon goreng, beef mee hoon (black bean or just egg gravy), fish soup bee hoon (my parents eat this nearly every night, god, the non-variety is almost as disgusting as my mom being able to survive on fishball noodles and nothing else), yang zhou mee fen (S’pore beehoon?), yadda yadda.

b) rice – yang zhou fried rice, beef fried rice, steamed rice with some variant of chicken/pork/beef (ginger, black bean, or kung pao - spring onions included) on top.

c) tofu – egg tofu in various incarnations, but usually with brown gravy and minced pork on top.

d) chicken – fried chicken, usually shrimp pasted.

e) pork – in cutlet form, with some kind of sweet and sour variation thereof.

Well, all of this is perfectly nice food that I like to eat, but not repetitively every freaking night. What’s even more scary is that I’ve added on two kilograms from eating this boring oily food. (I suppose a fortnightly desperate gasp for variety by ordering Sarpino’s pizza didn’t help on the calorie count – but I must say Sarpino’s is GREAT and totally pwns Pizza Hut on price, and California Pizza (and prolly Pizza Hut too) on quality.)

Long story short, I am now even more desperately overweight than before and have laid desperate plans to link an exercise habit to JanNoWriMo.

And also have developed an overwhelming desire to have some American-style food for a change (though hopefully not in American-sized portions.)

But I’m picky. Outside restaurants generally can’t cook to the quality or to the taste that I’ve acquired in the goddamn US of A. (The West End restaurant down the road is a nice exception, and not too pricey - $15-20 – though not something one can spend every day.)

And I’ve suddenly got a hankering for…meat. (Urgh, there goes the diet.)

I’m dreaming about beef stew. About Hungarian goulash. About nice thick gumbo soup with okra and rice in it. About chili (con carne.) About a well-grilled hot dog (sausage and bread both.) About a juicy slab of hamburger (Not even Carl Jr’s fits the standards of quality, and certainly not the pathetic excuse of Burger King’s or horrors, McDs.) Or a Salisbury steak. Or a yummy meatloaf.

So I finally found the time to wrangle my way to Cold Storage yesterday night after work, and bought a buncha ingredients. I cooked up a nice batch of chili. Took 3 hours from start to cleanup (inclusive of eating time.) Put it on top of a Johnson’s bratwurst and it was good. The only mild letdown was I just used a slice of Sunshine bread rather than a real hot dog bun, but oh well.

Two cravings satisfied, and I’m out of minced beef. So the latter three have to wait until much later. I’ve got a bunch of beef for stewing in the chiller, and I’ve been trying to decide between goulash and gumbo. I suspect I’m gonna end up making both this weekend. Gumbo will be more soupy and vegetably, and the goulash can be this pressure cooked deal with potatoes.

If we don’t end up going out tonight, I’m thinking of a couple of things with the remnants of the chili. Betty Crocker’s cornbread muffins from a mix. Or making a corn tortilla with masa harina, and then rolling it in the chili and trying to make a tostada out of it. Or baked potatoes with a itty bitty of butter and chili on top. *swoons*

(Irony: I missed American preservative-filled food so badly that some time ago, I was browsing in the local 7-11 and saw these Tacquitoes (chicken + jalapeno cheese, prolly from frozen) grilling on those hot dog roller contraptions, and plopped down $1.50 to get one as a snack. I enjoyed it like all heck. Yay for Tex-Mex. Talk about a sinful craving. :P)

All in all though, things are good, and I’m crawling out of a depressive, moody, probable-hormonal induced slump with constructive activities.