Rocky Road

Yum yum yum yum etc.

For those of you who don't know, I don't consider myself to be much of a cook. I don't understand the science, and therefore, I don't like it. I don't know who corriander makes curry taste better, or why cinnamon and nutmeg remind me of Xmas, or why guacamole and fishsticks are a bad idea.

I also can't taste things very well. My wife tells me a good cook should be able to taste all the ingredients in a meal, and if not, that the ingredient was pointless. I know what she's trying to say, but to me that sounds like it's a better idea to live off of peanut butter sandwiches than really try anything exotic.

That being said, I can cook an okay seafood curry (so long as I have curry paste to start with!), and I can make simple cakes and whatnot. A vague interest in the hobby is there, but it's more often than not crushed under my other hobby: being on the PC 27 hours a day.

Now available with icing sugar!

So, finally, I've found a YouTube channel that may help to kindle the former hobby by using the latter: MyVirginKitchen. It's run by a fellow Brit named Barry, who cooks very interesting dishes and shows off how easy they are to cook. I'm skeptical about the ease of some of them (but you must remember: I'm very lazy), however I found one that I was willing to try: Rocky Road.

I've always loved Rocky Road. I know it's one of the worst things you can possibly eat, but isn't that true for most things that are genuinely nice to eat? As mentioned above, my tastebuds are kind of dysfunctional, so anything that tastes this good to me must be a winner.

Thanks to the wifey for these artsy shots.

Being someone who has, against his will or not, popped back and forth to the USA more times than he'd like to remember, I've sampled more than my share of bad-for-you food. And I have to say, as a dessert, Rocky Road is probably the best. The fact that I can make it so easily is both a blessing and a horrible artery-clogging curse, I think.

As you can see from the pictures, it turned out well. I was impressed with myself and moreso with Barry for making such a simple to follow recipe. You just need to remember to pace yourself while eating it - it's very decadent.

So, good show, MyVirginKitchen. I'll be staying subscribed and maybe trying out more dishes in the future. Once I've worked off this one. Which won't be 'til after Xmas at this rate. I didn't time this very well, did I?

Dreams

I had two weird dreams last night. In one, I was being hunted down by family members, and the other I was RoboCop and really had to use the restroom.

In neither was I exploring tombs and villages, or slaying dragons. Which is weird because Skyrim came out yesterday and it's freaking amazing.

More on that later.

BookCrossing

The other day the wife and I went to the library in our city centre. She signed up for a library card (had to use my address, but they didn’t mind that she wasn’t a UK citizen), and as we were looking around upstairs, we came across a rather eclectic collection of books upon a shelf marked “BookCrossing”.

Neither of us had heard of BookCrossing before, despite later finding out it’s a somewhat international thing. It works like this:

You find a BookCrossing book. A BookCrossing book is a book, any book, that a person has registered on the BookCrossing.com website, pasted a book ID number inside the cover, and has “released” into the wild. This could mean many things, from donating to a library’s BookCrossing (I’m going to just call this BC for the rest of the article, okay?) shelf, to “accidentally” leaving it in an airport, to donating it to a charity shop, to leaving it in the park. The idea is that the next person finds it, notices it’s a BC book (most of them have a big sticker on the front explaining the site) registers it on the BC website, reads it, then releases it into the wild.

This way, a book builds up a little backstory for you to read on the website. The book I got, which I’m reviewing in a separate article, had never been read before, and therefore it only had two journal entries on the website: one saying it was being donated to the BC cause, the other saying it was being left at the library. Lucky me for accidentally finding it!

The BC shelf at Milton Keynes library is free to use, I don’t even have a library card (shame on me!) and they didn’t mind me just picking up a book and carrying it out of the library. I’ve already read it, and need to decide where I’m going to leave it. I might give this one back to the library when we return, just to make sure it isn’t accidentally thrown away. That’s the risk when you’re a BC book!

So visit their site, http://www.bookcrossing.com, to learn more. My username there is FungusTrooper, check back later to hopefully see more books that I’ve found!

New Blog

Hello everybody, and welcome to my new blog. For those who know me personally (or not, maybe?), you'd know I already have a blog, but this one is for much more light-hearted content.

I'm going to review books and games and generally post about things I'm interested in.

So, without further ado, welcome, again! Hope you enjoy your stay.