Why did I choose to be the rogue? Damn! I got sprayed with acid (ACID’D!) so many times last night trying to open/disable this trapped door. And then I kept walking into enemies. I need to roll higher on my spot checks. I need to roll higher on everything. We all do. Combats lasted forever because all of our characters kept rolling below tens on all attack rolls. It was wearisome.
I need to cook something.
I don’t think sweetbreads are my thing. I went to Left Bank with my parents last night and decided to try them. They were… a little strange. The texture was kind of like scallops, strangely enough. The flavor was mild. They were served with mashed potatoes, which wasn’t a great idea, in my opinion. The textures were similar but just different enough to be really strange. Nevertheless, I’m glad I tried them.
I had some challah left over in the freezer, so I made French toast on Saturday. I froze most of it and have been eating it for breakfast. It’s tasty. I’m glad I had some real maple syrup! I bought it for the apple-rutabaga soup and haven’t used it since.
Yesterday was the Ghostwalk session of the D&D ‘minicon’ that my friends have been holding. I dusted off Mynnyd and brought him to the adventure. I nearly killed him straightaway- it was pretty funny. R☆ (and by extension, Cooper) was away at Stitches West, so Summer and Mynnyd were the only frontline fighters. Summer’s the awakened bear companion of the druid Berg. A marilith did about 100 points of damage in a round against both of us, plus constitution damage. (It took Mynnyd from 110 to 12 hit points!) Thankfully, we were both able to get healed so we could try to kill her again, but she teleported away, and we lost our chance. Oh, well. We were able to stop her evil plot, so all was well in the end. We’ll get her next time.
This month’s “Cake Day” at work is not cake, but soups. I was a BAD FOODIE and decided not to bring one in. The apple-rutabaga soup is too much prep hassle to make for my coworkers (plus there’s the bitch step of sieving it, since my blender is not as awesome at pulverizing as Barbara May’s is). Potato-leek is an unattractive grey color and basically an unexciting soup (as is chicken noodle). The chicken tortilla soup separates into layers (plus, I think it’s a little too spicy for general consumption). My attempts at pasta e fagioli have either had mediocre flavor or set up into an un-soup-like consistency (no links for the first time I tried it, I never posted it). Let us not speak of the time I attempted ribollita. Matzoh ball soup is… well, I make it from a mix, there’s no challenge there. Cream of roasted cauliflower, also unattractive. I was unimpressed with my attempt at making cream of mushroom soup, although I should really try that again, since I screwed it up the first time. Hm, what other soups have I made? The creamy scallion-mushroom soup isn’t great (although a pretty color). Oh! The lentil soup! That was GOOD. I could have made that.
I wonder if the sweet potato gratin dish could be made into a good soup. Sweet potatoes, cream, maple, chipotle… sounds promising to me.
Also, I was too busy to make soup- we started our new campaign last night! My new character is a rogue named Kaya Marquette. (Terrible name, isn’t it?) I came up with a pretty decent backstory for her, but I can’t divulge it here. I want to keep it a secret from the other players until it comes up in story. (Just in case they read my blog- long shot, I know).
Did you know about this? I certainly didn’t know about this.
I went over to Sara’s yesterday for sewing fun, and we stopped by this Indian grocery near her house to get samosas (which were ridiculously good- I ate three). Anyway, I found all these Pillsbury products in the freezer cases. I bought one Pillsbury product (Indian bread stuffed with peas and paneer) and two Deep products (malai kofta and a spiced layered bread). Very intriguing stuff. I was going to eat one of them for dinner last night, but then I didn’t (good story). I’ll probably eat one tonight unless I go out with the MV crew.
Oh, speaking of my Mountain View peeps, R☆ and Jer finished the table yesterday. Now we can be slightly less paranoid about spilling stuff on it. Pictures! Unfinished and finished. It is very big and awesome. We have lots of space for mapping. No, it’s nothing like the over-the-top gaming table I linked to before (nor do we have anything as high-tech crazy as this one), but it makes gaming much more comfortable now that we’re not crammed around a rectangular table.
I had forgotten how much fun sixth level was. Dude, two attacks! It was pretty awesome. Unfortunately, we’re ending our time in the AU world for a while, so I won’t get to have the ceremony performed for my nifty new feat or my hawk animal companion until we pick things back up again.
We’re starting a new campaign, The Shackled City. This is an adventure that takes place in regular 3.5 D&D. It’s supposed to take us from first to twentieth level. Damn. That is going to be a LONG time. Jer’s DMing. We’re going to roll up characters next week. Rob’s pulling for us to be a party of clerics. I’m not entirely sure why, but I don’t really want to be one. I thought I’d try something new and go rogue. The hard thing about this is that rogues, with their mass of skills, are generally the ones to do a lot of actual RPing, not just “I hit it with my sword!” playing. I kind of suck at thinking in character, so hopefully this will push me to become a better player.
What’s this blog about? Food? Oh, yeah.
Um, we’re going to Fiesta del Mar Too for dinner. I haven’t been there in forever and a day. I need some adobo. And tons of their salsa. Yum.
We’ve been getting pizza and wings for D&D from Fast Pizza in Mountain View. Their wings are a little anemic, and the pizza crust is nothing to write home about, but damn, they have some nice sausage! Big chunks (not the rabbit-poo variety) and a hit of fennel. I love fennel. They’re decently priced and relatively fast, so I’d recommend them if you’re in the area.
Congrats to Lydia and Zack on their engagement!
Our holiday party is this afternoon. There was a thing with a strike and caterers, which is why it was postponed to January. I’ll let you know how the food is.
We almost lost Balthazar, Jer’s character, last night during D&D. We kind of got a little full of ourselves and decided to take on 40 enemies in one encounter. And then we decided to take on one really tough guy before we levelled. If we had waited until we were level six, it would have been a bit easier, since three of us would have gotten our second attack. But we survived, thanks to a simple distraction spell cast by our magister. Hurray! Scott, our DM, says that if that hadn’t worked, we probably would have lost two party members. (Brindel would have survived, because she runs FAST.)
I’ve been sick all weekend. No food has been made, and my apartment’s a right mess. Barbara May, that Mexican vanilla you got me for Christmas is fabulous. I am tired of being sick.
I am currently taking a very long time to write up the lasagna recipe. I’m at the layering stage, and it’s frustrating trying to make, “Cover the noodles with some ricotta. Then cover the ricotta with sauce. Then cover the sauce with mozzarella. Then put three more pieces of pasta on top of the cheese. Then repeat all that until you run out of noodles,” sound at all interesting.
Played D&D last night. We pretty much decided to screw our mission and go find a town where we can sell our loot to buy shiny new equipment. The hostage who we’re supposed to rescue can just wait for two weeks. I’m sure her captors are very patient.
