A Cooking Challenge (Null Partition) 
23, September 2011, 09:39 AM
(Note: This post is originally from my blog Null Partition)

So this week I decided to do a bit of a cooking challenge, every Thursday my girlfriend and I get together, usually at my place. Most of the time I cook us dinner, though there’s been times where we’ve gone out to eat instead. Each week I usually try to do something a little different with the ingredients I have at home, most of the time there’s not major changes to the plate as it usually consists of chicken, carrots, and broccoli (the ingredients I’m most likely to have in my apartment). This week I didn’t feel like restricting myself to the limited ingredients I had at my apt, as I’d likely just to make the same thing I had made previously, and that didn’t intrigue me much. So I came up with an idea, I told my girlfriend to go out and get some things from the store on her way over, whatever random ingredients she wanted to have for dinner. At first I think she misunderstood my intention as she looked up a recipe online and planned out a small simple dinner from there, thankfully our conversations of the day revealed this and I pointed out that I was hoping to “work my magic” on some random ingredients. When she eventually arrived she had a couple of bags with a nice assortment of ingredients, of course she pointed out that I need not use all of them (and I did not) it afforded me an opportunity to broaden my pretty narrow cooking experience and work with a few things I never had cooked with. Here’s a Nice list of the items she purchased:

Chicken (skinless, boneless breast)
Yellow Squash
Mangoes
Peaches
Portobello Mushrooms
Garlic
Broccoli/Cauliflower
Chinese Noodles
Lite Soy Sauce
Chicken Broth

So after some quick thinking (and a taste test of a mango, as I don’t have the taste filed away in my mental taste cards) I set off onto cooking. The items I chose to use for the meal were as follows:

Chicken
Garlic
Portobello Mushrooms
Mango
Broccoli/Cauliflower
Soy Sauce

I also utilized a bit of salt that I already had in my kitchen, and away I went.

First I went through quite a learning experience while handling the mango, the nice hard “center” of the mango proved initial cutting plans futile, and so I eventually settled down to cutting off slices from the surface until I had enough. I then proceeded to cut up three of the sliced portobello mushrooms, a little bit of the garlic, the broccoli and cauliflower, and the chicken. Granted I started my cutting acts with the chicken, but the mango proved more exciting to cut so I had started with that. I took a tablespoon of vegetable oil and tossed it into my all too small frying pan and set my stove up to 6 and waited for it to heat up. Once some smoke started to drift up from the pan (the sign I use to indicate it’s heated up enough for the food to be put upon it) I put the squares of chicken I had cut into the pan and started cooking them, a few moments later I added my chopped up garlic, and then after a decent amount of cooking (the chicken was pretty much at a nice shade of white by this point) I added in the mangos and gave the cooking a few more minutes, to allow all the juices of the mangos and everything to mix. I also added a little bit of salt to try to enhance the flavors. I took all of this and put it onto a plate to wait for later.

I added more oil, gave it a few moments to heat up, and tossed my broccoli, cauliflower, and mushrooms onto the pan. While cooking them I began to add liberal amounts of the soy sauce into the mix as well as more salt, I cooked this grouping up for several minutes and then tossed it into a mixing bowl.

I added my chicken/mango mix into the mixing bowl and began stirring it all up to try to mix the flavors, I would have preferred to mix them in the frying pan for best results, however the pan was far too small to do so effectively and I’ve learned my lesson to not overfill it in the past. The mix came together decently and I served the dinner with great success, out of the various dinners I’ve made so far I feel this has been one of the best. Admittedly if I were to try again I might add a tiny bit more garlic, and less soy sauce but overall it came out excellent and I feel I passed the challenge successfully, which makes me happy. I’m thinking of trying to turn it into a weekly affair, should the girlfriend agree to these terms of dread, and I say dread as I’m sure to come up with a failure somewhere down the line. Though I look forward to that, because I will probably learn more in the failure than I do with the successes.

As for the ingredients I didn’t use, I hope to cook something up on Saturday using some of them, since we’re planning on doing a nice Star Wars Marathon using the new Blu-Rays we’ll see how it turns out.


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The Leveling List (originally on Null Partition) 
14, September 2011, 12:22 PM
(Note: This post is from my personal blog on Null Partition.)

So I’ve fallen pretty hard since my last posts, having gotten to a point that’s effectively square one, well almost. My weight is back up to where it was in March before I started trying to do the weight loss thing, and my motivation took a major dive. I’d like to toss around excuses and blame but I believe it all happened because I allowed myself to become complacent after having entered into what thus far appears to be a successful long term relationship, sadly sometimes there’s downside to having an ever accepting girlfriend in that sometimes you allow yourself to fall hard back into old habits that you’ve been slowly working hard to crawl away from.

While it might be fun and sometimes entertaining to blame the girlfriend for making me fat and complacent again the blame can only lie upon my shoulders, and so I accept that blame…just don’t tell her that.

In my attempts to try to get back into my healthy habits that I was attempting to develop I’ve opted to not jump back into the weight loss plan I had utilized before, while it was good and did help greatly it was only designed to work for 30 days and not necessarily for the long term, so I returned to the site where I had first heard of this information, Nerd Fitness. most of the stuff on the site I was already aware of, having read it previously in the year. There is one bit that I quite like that I’m thinking about trying to emulate, and that’s a sort of Epic Quest Leveling system that he uses. Based off of various RPG games out there he has a set of items, or quests, that he desires to do and each time he completes one he gains 20% experience towards his next level. While his list is certainly quite Epic, a majority of it is not things that I have any interest in. Admittedly it has a lot in common with those bucket lists that have become so popular these days, though it’s not intended to be something to do before one dies, instead it’s a list of things to perhaps improve oneself over the course of ‘leveling up’.

So I ask you dear readers, what little may exist out upon the wild plains of the interwebs, what suggestions do you have for my list?

Here's a link to the list on NerdFitness for everyone Nerd Fitness: My Epic Quest


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SOTM May 2010 
03, May 2010, 12:49 PM
So Paragon took Sim of the Month for May 2010. w00t. It was a tough battle, I've gotta give the Firewall folk a lot of credit they gave a great run, I was worried they were going to take the win until the very very end.

I want to thank everyone that gave their support to Paragon, I really appreciate it. It means a lot to see you guys showing a support for Star Wars Chat sims in the FSF. Who knows, maybe one day this will provide a basis for future Star Wars sims to come into FSF or for folk to start up new ones, and create more choice and diversity in the genre like exists in the Trek and Gate realms of simming.

Again, thanks to everyone for the support, and congrats to firewall for the amazing run.

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Five Years and Sim of the Month 
06, April 2010, 05:37 PM
So next month (May) heralds the fifth anniversary of Paragon, also we are up for Sim of the Month in the current poll (for May). I think it would be awesome if we were able to claim our Anniversary month this year. I'd really appreciate any votes people can send our way. Plus this would be epic since Stargazer just had their 10th anniversary, so it's obviously a good year for the 5's (y'know 5, 10, 15...)

Anyway, just putting that out there. I'd appreciate the support, but if you feel your support belongs somewhere else well, that's your thing then.

Have Fun!

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Yes, it's that way on purpose. Grammar be damned 
25, March 2010, 03:42 PM
Just wanted to make a quick note here for anyone that might complain. Yes I know that the name of my blog should be "whose" instead of "Who's". It's done on purpose to indicate it's the blog of FSF Who and not just some random other person, it has a certain amount of logic to it, don't you think?

If you don't agree I have an amazing argument lined up that will undoubtedly convince you.

OH MY GOD LOOK OVER THERE!!! A THREE HEADED MONKEY!
::poof::

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