.. .what the /hell/?!

... they've been /fiddling/ again .. >.<
Or else Firefox is doing weird shit. *sigh*

Actually, my comp's been doing weird shit in /general/ for the past couple of days, so I don't really think I'm too surprised - either Jet and Ayzur are having a party (Meep!) or my RAM is worse than even Andi and I thought....

For those of you who celebrate it - Happy Saint Patrick's Day! No, I won't kiss you, even if you ARE Irish. ^^

Skipped a couple of days - lessee.

Lunch - trying to remember if I /had/ lunch yesterday - day before it was left over Tuna Cats.. I think yesterday was more psuedo quesadillas. Today was hot pastrami sandwich on extra-sour rye bread with a little di'jon mustard. Not bad. ^^

Dinner: Yesterday was little lamb-chops with roasted potato chunks and steamed broccoli with cheddar-cheese sauce - broiled the lamb-chops with garlic, marjoram and a little sage and ground pepper. For a change, they didn't come out half /raw/. (I like my meat rare, but I don't generally want it THAT rare..) I did the potato chunks with olive oil and a sprinkling of Old Bay - nice flavour, and then it /kicked/ - holy hell. ^^

Tonight was spaghetti - and I tried tipping a little worchestershire sauce in with the meat. Added some interesting tang. Gotta do that again....
No one commented though - which was interesting. ^^ (You'd think they'd /notice/ - but no one so much as batted an eye...)

One thing about this ..

It's encouraging more blog posts.
Of course, that's only a good thing if you're interested enough to /read/ them .. ^^

Actually, it's a good thing for me too - I get more practice blathering on about nothing. This, perhaps, will encourage me to actually /do/ something, therefore giving me something to blather about.
... well, so much for making sense.

Anyway.

skipped breakfast, as usual - had oatmeal for lunch. Yes, you /can/ make oatmeal with non-instant oats in the microwave. I do it all the time.
I sprinkled turbinado over it, dumped some half and half on it and called it good. ^^

Dinner was Tuna Cats - cassarole, more properly, but a mispell on the dry-erase board changed it's name. This is basically tuna, noodles (Macaroni, bow ties or shells..) a can of condensed cream of mushroom, a carton of sour cream, some slivered almonds, green beans and cheddar cheese - with a little Old Bay and granulated garlic - all smashed together and thrown in the oven.
a handful or so of Cadbury Minieggs made for dessert.

Does /anyone/ use condensed soup for anything besides cooking? With the notable exception of cream of tomato (Which I haven't come up with a use for - tomato sauce is far superior in most recipes), I have yet to see cream of ANYTHING soup that wasn't home made... admittedly, cream soups aren't something we eat much of.

... hmm. Leek season must be coming up - time to plan potato soup. ^^

It's a Dog's Life and other sundry details.

Or it will be, come June - Mom's been hunting feverishly for afghan hound puppies and finally found one. She's got Ladd into it too, the dogs and the agility and all of it.

This would be a lot cooler if Andi and I weren't forced to stay here. Which we are at least until he finds a job or I get pizzed off and hit Mcburger up. ('Ello, welcome to Burger Sling, how may I poison you today?) .. yes, we can just see me doing that. ^^

Anyway.
For anyone who doesn't know what an Afghan hound is - they're sighthounds. Oversized cats with attitude and more coat than any critter ought by rights to have. (They look /really/ good when they run though, and they love to run.) People claim they can't be trained - Mom's proven that one wrong before.

... *sigh* I want to be happy about this. I really do.
I just wish there was some way they could wait until Andi and I are /out/ - 'cause there really isn't space.

Anyway. Dinner. I forgot yesterday, but yesterday wasn't what you'd call inspiring - pizza for dinner and something vaguely resembling a cheese rollup for lunch (Take one tortilla, sprinkle grated cheddar on it and dump a little salsa in. Roll up, throw in microwave for 30 seconds.) And of course, lots of tea.
Oh, there was a blood orange as a snack - I wasn't impressed with the orange, though. Very blah. Aren't these things supposed to be sweet?

Dinner tonight wasn't much better - a toasted sandwich raided from the 'local' Quizno's. We like Quizno's - we also like Pogy's. ^^
This particular sandwich was chicken with tomato and lettuce with mayo and (Apparently), ground pepper. Yum. ^^
Lunch was more cheese-and-tortillas - this actually got modified from baked 'quesadillas' - except that I /hate/ having to turn the oven on everytime I decide I want some. So I figured out how to make them without doing that.

Di'jon chicken - assembled from memory:
Bread crumbs (We use the heels of whatever bread we buy - tends to be a lot of wheat and extra sour rye bread. Makes for fine crumbs, ymmv.)
Parmesan, grated. I'd imagine one can substitute just about any kind of hard cheese for this.
Pepper (To taste - I grind it in fresh.)
Thyme. (I've been known to sub Bouquet Garni in for this..)

I also add a teaspoon of Old Bay and ... an estimated teaspoon of granulated garlic.
Mix all this together in a suitable dish - it's your breading.

Now - what you use to stick that to the chicken. Take about three tablespoons of Dijon mustard and three tablespoons (or less - I've found more di'jon to mayo is pretty effective .. of course, I ran out of mayo last time, so I didn't have a choice...) of mayonnaise. Blend the two together and get your chicken.

Your oven should be preheating while you're doing all this - set it at 375 (F - sorry, don't know Celcius) and let it do it's thing. If you're spoiled like me, you can turn the convection fan on too.

The recipe calls for about 4 lumps of breast meat - that's about right, but I usually devide them into smaller pieces (In half, usually.. as much to accomodate my dipping containers as anything else - you don't have to do this.) and whack them a little to make them a little more even.
Dip them in the mustard/mayo, shake off the excess, then cover with crumbs and lay on a rack. I usually use something like a cooling rack set on an old cookie sheet - works just fine.
I should note, I wear latex gloves to do this - it's /messy/.

Once you have all your pieces breaded and laid out, stick them in the oven and set a timer for 40 to 45 minutes. Check the pieces when they come out to be sure they're cooked.

The recipe I used suggests making a batch of biscuits to go with - I have done this, and it is good - particularly if you have a spare oven to shove the biscuits into so they come out at the same time as the chicken. (this also is good with rice or potatoes done in whatever fashion appeals to you..)

*grump*

.. I hate people.

I particularly hate people who cannot bear to lose. Okay, so we all have our offdays.
Whoopie.

I have to bitch about something, so bear with me - this shouldn't take long.

.. is it just me, or is the standard responce to being questioned to pitch a fit and say nasty things to the questioner? Or is this just some people who can't possibly ever be wrong?
I mean, okay - maybe you don't /want/ to answer that question right then - but why then can't you just SAY that? Why threaten a person, call them names and generally be nasty to them?

I don't get this.

Now, I admit, I don't always like to be questioned myself - but I usually don't fall to threats, name-calling or nastiness. If I don't care to answer, I say so - degree of politeness depending on how many times the same question has been asked with the same responce. Sharp answers are not my first resort, though. ( ... well.. okay, if you have the misfortune to be the fifth person to ask the same question, you're likely to be growled at if I thought you were around to hear the answer the first four times...)
So I don't really understand people who resort to that sort of thing right off the bat.

I particularly don't understand it in the context of online RPGs. Now, some of you might know what I'm talking about - having been witness to the altercation I'm bitching about. Some of you might even have been there, on one side or the other.
For the record - I do not care. If you don't want to know what I think, don't read this.

I run games. I tend to run them in tandem with my husband, with him handling the mechanics and me handling (most of) the story. If my players ask me a question, out of character, about something they might bump into later, they can usually expect a reasonable answer. If it's something their character might know, they can usually expect a reasonable answer about THAT, too - particularly if they can give me a logical reason their character would know it.
If not, I just tell them it is - for the moment - need to know info and I'll keep them updated as soon as it becomes necessary for them to know. Quietly, politely - without threatening anyone or getting nasty. That's been pretty much standard for all of the good games I've been in. All of 'em - the best refs I've ever played with treat their players with respect. No "I am GOD and you WILL obey", no attitude, no bullshitting and no stupid, illogical reasons for their decisions. If one has a question about something, they have a good answer.

Now - Andi and I haven't been running games together for all that long. But we try to do that too. Be there, with useful answers for our players, be polite and helpful and generally willing to give them enough rope to either hang themselves with, or pull themselves out of whatever deep pit they've fallen into.
To us, at least - as well as every one of the refs I've played with who put fun and the game first - threatening the players and being nasty to them generally results in no game.

This person does not appear to understand that. Maybe things are different where s/he is. Maybe hir standards are different, or s/he played in games where that wasn't the case.
Either way, I wish s/he would either take a hint - I'm not the only one who's complained - or hurry up and hang hirself....
While I feel sorry for hir, I won't miss hir.
I don't much like being insulted or threatened, but it must be damn lonely up there on that pedestal ....



...

Okay. I feel better now. ^^

Good enough to talk about food.
What I eat - or more like, /don't/ eat.
I practically live on tea - black tea, with cream and a little sugar. Not the healthiest thing, I know. ^^
Today though, I had cheese tortillas for lunch, and we had chicken di'jon, with lightly steamed cauliflower (with cheese sauce!) and rice (Brown, cooked with saffron and garlic and a few other things in chicken broth.).
Chicken di'jon is basically chicken breasts devided and dipped in di'jon (and a little mayo), breaded (parmesan, Old Bay, thyme, granulated garlic and some fresh-ground pepper) and baked in a hot oven. Normally, I'd do fresh buttermilk biscuits with it, but I only have two ovens to work with ...

.. I think I also had a cadbury creme egg too, and a couple of cocoanut macaroons..

Just don't... Add a fortune to your website or blog, click here.

.. Don't /what/!?