Thanksgiving 2011

There's the spread! I worked all day on the dinner, cooking perhaps 90% of it. My mom made up the stuffing as well as the gravy, and had to make the whip cream for the dessert too. The only reason I didn't post this update sooner was because yesterday my mother dragged me around town for a few hours trying to find new beds for myself and my brothers. Then I spent a fairly obsessive amount of time clicking through Black Friday online deals and attempting to find a decently priced new smartphone.

Anyhow, the menu was as follows:

• Roast turkey - seasoned with salt, pepper, and drizzled with butter. About 22 lb that we got for $10 USD. SCORE!
• Stuffing - basic bread cubes with celery, onion, and sage, seasoned with turkey broth from the giblets. It was stuffed in the turkey as well as baked off on its own.
• Green Vegetable Casserole - Used this guy's recipe, with added asparagus and broccoli, using shiitake and white button mushrooms for the sauce.
• Steamed Broccoli - My brothers hate trying new things without a fallback.
• Sweet Potato Casserole - boiled sweet potatoes and carrots, with a little brown sugar and spices, and mixed in toasted cashews sunflower seeds. Topped it with a fluffy meringue!
• Roasted Butternut Squash -  After cooking, I tossed it with some Mrs. Dash Caribbean Citrus blend, honey, and Turbinado sugar before baking some more to create a delicious syrup.
• Mashed Potatoes and Gravy - Used dry milk and some of the boiled water to mix the potatoes. The gravy was PHENOMENAL (I thank the butter).
• Whole Berry sauce - FRESH CRANBERRIES FTW! Used orange zest, apple-cinnamon preserves, a little sugar, and nutmeg to flavor it.
• Canned Cranberry jelly - Because some people in my house are uncultured swine.
• Wheat Hawaiian sweet rolls - For some reason the dough didn't ferment properly, so these were like really tasty dense breads.
• Pumpkin Cheese Crostata - This guy's recipe again. I used regular cream cheese instead of mascarpone, because I'm cheap that's how I roll. It turned out really good, creamy but not too sweet.
• Apple Pie - a friend at my mom's work brought her it, so I baked it off anyway, but it wasn't even dug into xD

The day was marked with several instances of nearly setting the kitchen on fire, the dishwasher had to be run 5 times, and apparently I can give myself a pain-induced seizure by twisting my shoulder just right. I consider this a very successful year, all things considered. We could have ended up at a local Denny's, where apparently they RAN OUT OF TURKEY!

What's Happening Around Here?

Hey there internet, I haven't forgotten I have a blog! Real life has been busy, so here's some images from the last two months to prove it! If they load oddly, it's because I can't figure out how to edit picture placement in this blog ._.

Halloween saw me wandering downtown Reno as a goth fairy in Reno's Zombie Crawl:

 

It was a night in which I sang karaoke, had an amazing swordfish and tabouli dinner bowl, and had about 3 drinks before I realized how drunk I was. That night was so much fun, and I can't wait to do it again next year! I also discovered there is a beer I like:

I have already requested multiple people to procure me this fine drink as a birthday/holiday gift. Sadly I have only found it online thus far :(

I have also been driving my new car for about a month:

Her name is Rosalinda, a 2008 Pontiac Torrent. She is probably the best car I've ever owned, and some road trips for Spring and/or Summer are in the dreaming stages!

School-wise I have been pretty consumed with baking class:

Left is an Oreo Cream Pie I made at home in order to master the base for making custard pies. Below that is the spread my partner and I made on 17, November: Chocolate Tuile cookies in the shapes of poinsettias and the Batman symbol, Coconut Macaroons, Ciabatta bread, Bavarian Creams, and Creme Brulees. Far right is a zoom-in of my Bavarian Cream decorated with Coconut crisps that resulted from our Macaroons spreading too much. The instructor said I should consider entering the college's Pastry Arts competition in the Spring! I was floored!

One of the bathrooms on campus had sticky notes all over the place one day:

 This kind of positive reinforcement needs to become the next big meme I think :)

This past weekend I was amazingly cultured. I visited the Nevada Museum of Art, which had one Renaissance painting as the main exhibit (a marketing strategy I am still confused by), as well as some cool architectural and photographic displays. Altered Landscape was definitely cool, and I wish I could find some of those works as affordable prints.

I also got to see the Trans-Siberian Orchestra on their Winter 2011 Tour! Here are some photos from my seat in the back of the arena:

These ones are from when some of the musicians came forward to play on a raised platform, always a perk of sitting in the back ;)

The only bummer was that it was an early showing, so lots of children and elderly folks packed the audience, who for some reason feel the need to get up EVERY TWO MINUTES. Unfortunately I had an aisle seat right next to a main trafficway, so every single time someone needed to get somewhere (and it happened quite often) I had to deal with their tromping and blocking of my view >:(

Otherwise the show was incredible, I might have been having mild epileptic seizures for a few hours afterwards xD. Also, if anyone wants to get me this shirt (with the phoenix), for any particular reason, I will shower you with much glitter and confetti of gratitude :)

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in America, and I have been put in CHARGE. I will see how much militaristic planning my family will put up with, as I've been taking management notes from Robert Irvine >:)

Hopefully I won't be too exhausted and can remember to post the results of the day's labor :D

Have a safe and fun weekend, folks!

Games I Like and Some Thoughts on Gender

In a recent conversation with my older brother, the topic of MMORPGs came up, specifically why I won't play World of Warcraft. Besides the practical problem of not having enough disposable income, the only appealing point of sale for that game to me is the silly dancing all the characters can do. I can quest for meaningless items and grow a powerful character in plenty of other games. In fact, the only MMORPG I ever really got obsessive with is Maplestory, mainly because it was free, and paying for extra things is optional. I even play the Facebook version!

Hold on, that can't be the only reason, I thought. Not only because the game is increasingly resembling the aforementioned WoW, but What else is appealing about it? Thinking to my console collection, which is chock full of such games as Psychonauts, the Shadow Hearts series, Elite Beat Agents, Okami, Resident Evil 4, The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, and Meteos, I began to suspect my tastes ran to specific kinds of games. Most of my collection can be classified as ridiculous, mentally challenging, or they tell a good story. Maplestory has colorful, cute imagery, which is balanced at higher levels by monsters that actually look threatening, and enough of a story to keep me interested.

Now comparing this collection to what my brothers tend to get, the differences become rather distinct. They buy games that usually involve shooting things, like Medal of Honor, Ace Combat, and Gears of War. Yes they also get adventure and RPG games, but their collection has a great deal more action-oriented game play rather than those that involve the kinds of mechanics, such as puzzles, found in other genres.

Since earlier this week I was reading about the histories of classics Pac-man and Tetris, which mention how popular the games are with females, I'm wondering how much the types of games me and my siblings play are reflective of gender norms. Even when young, I preferred playing pretend games with my dolls (headless Barbies and Ninja Turtles say a lot for my personal development), rather than running around pretending to be a warrior and whacking others with a stick as my brothers tended to do. Which would make sense, from traditional evolutionary theory. Boys are more rough and active because of testosterone, while girls have better thinking qualities because of their physical capacity in rearing demon-spawn.

But recent psychological research seems to point out that perhaps gender is not innate, but forced on children by society. Ok, that would certainly explain the different cultural notions of gender, such as the Native Americans third, and sometimes fourth gender type. Which only makes certain eras of Western history, namely Victorian and Edwardian cultures, all the more bizarre in their restrictive gender roles. So if it's not gender that guides what types of entertainment one pursues, such as the video games one plays, it must simply be personal preference. Then again, my female best friend and I both have similar taste in games. Perhaps personality types have something to do with it? I mean, if I was anal enough to pursue a physics and mechanical engineering degree at the same time, I'm sure I would want to veg out by blowing up things with various weapons too. However, as I am an artistic type, and much less analytical, I prefer games that challenge my brain even in their simplicity, like Katamari Damacy. Of course, I've also always liked weird things, something my brothers don't always appreciate.