Momo-Zaza

Got this from Jed’s google reader feed….looks like a pretty cool (and potetinally frustrating) game that is like an Escher drawing. Read the full article about the game here.

You can play around with the model here or go to the bottom of this page and download a demo.

Jed: >_< parental controls!
Jed: ahhhhhhh
Christine: no >: (
Jed: how come you’re not at school? i have no work today! comon!
Christine: i have week off, why do u have day off?
Jed: i called in sick so i can hang out with my buddies
Christine: THEN HANG OUT WITH UR BUDDIES
Jed: i meant wow buddies
Christine: (-_-)like who
Jed: 0:)
Jed: urm… christine-o
Christine: and don’t say me cuz i’m not playing
Jed: christinert?
Christine: (=_=)
Jed: aw comon i have like 4 minutes before they get here
Christine: no
Jed: that’s precious questing time!
Christine: no
Jed: awwwww

Christine: no
Jed: hahahaha you’re a cold cruel mistress christine
Christine: and how long are ur friends staying btw?
Jed: saturday
Christine: mm
Jed: leaving sunday morning
Jed: wait! i meant tonight!
Christine: what time sunday morning?
Jed: open up my saturday for play
Christine: no
Jed: -_-
Jed: dammit, stanford people are smart
Jed: early like 10ish
Christine: wait ur waiting w/ me at dim sum tho right?
Jed: yeah i’m not actually seeing them off
Christine: so you can’t play till after lunch anyways
Jed: NOOOO koi palace might have wireless
Christine: so i don’t have to change any settings really cuz u also have drawing
Jed: =_= you sure you don’t want to keep being a teacher? because you’re totally reminding me of my high school ones right now. you don’t even draw with us!
Christine: i will on sunday?
Jed: =_=
Jed: i’m drawing a crayon picture of you then drawing an X on it with red crayon then posting it on your refrigerator as a reminder of your evilness
Christine: too bad our fridge is stainless steel = not magnetic

Jed: aw common can u at least log in for me and grind some Sporeagar faction for me? i’ll give you gold!
Jed: fine i give up
Jed: you’ve broken me
Jed: there.
Jed: i hope you’re happy
Christine: aren’t you alraedy friendly with them? you don’t need to be more than neutral really - and that was to get the quests that we already did
Jed: i need revered to get the daggar
Christine: dagger?
Jed: daggers, they’re the best i can get for my level
Christine: well you have a long ways to go to get to revered, too bad. you’ll outlvl it anyways by the time you get that much faction probably
Jed: http://www.wowwiki.com/Hardened_Stone_Shard
Christine: i’ve seen it

“I was thinking about going after this item for my rogue. I just finished all non-repeatable quests for Sporeggar and got Honored with them. Considering each repeatable quest gives you 750 reputation, it’s 16 turn-ins to go (16 x 750=12000).
The easiest quest one can do is Now That We’re Still Friends… since the rest either require you to go to Underbog or have a horrible drop rate.
Now here’s my favorite part: math :o). To complete the quest you need to kill 24 mobs. Each gives 522 to 555 experience (1044 to 1110 rested). That makes 522 x 24=12528 non-rested experience per turn-in, and 12528 x 16=200448 experience (minimum) to get from Honored to Revered.
With my rested exp I will get half of my level 66 grinding for that dagger. Is it worth it? Not for me. Carefully think and research what will it take for you to get the dagger. You don’t want to be wasting too much time on this.”

Jed: @_@ how did u do all that
Christine: a little function i like to call “ctrl-c” and “ctrl-v”
Jed: you’re a wizard

I’ve been planning on making a food category for my blog, but haven’t decided whether I want to keep it to just my own creations, or food I eat at restaurants. At the moment, I’m going to go with just food I make. Which makes me want to smack myself in the head because I forgot to take pictures of the hamburg lunch set I made for Vince’s lunch today. D’oh! Another time I guess. (Though it bugs me because that meal came out as intended, whereas the one I’m going to be posting about now - okonomiyaki - is not going to be accompanied by pictures that go with how it *should* look like. Sigh. I’ll add better pics next time I make it I guess.)

Anyways, uh yeah, this is supposed to be about okonomiyaki (one of my many favorite Japanese foods).

Literally, okonomiyaki means pretty much “baked/grilled as you like it” - in other words, the ingredients are really only limited to your imagination! It’s been called a Japanese pancake or Japanese pizza, neither which is really right IMHO, but whatever. You can add whatever you want to it. That said, there are some basic ingredients that you should add for the right consistency. The recipe is for roughly about 4 people.

Must haves for the Base:

• 2 cups Okonomiyaki mix* (I personally buy a brand called Yama-imo Oji-san that comes in a yellow bag from Mitsuwa Supermarket. If you can’t find this or some other brand, substitute with regular wheat flour and add some dashi to the water)
• 1.5 cup water (add about 1/2 tsp dashi to the water if you aren’t using a specific okonomiyaki flour mix)
• 4 eggs, uncooked (one for each person)
• 1/2 head of cabbage, chopped finely (think shredded like in cole slaw) - avoid using the center white parts)

Toppings (Choose whatever you want, or add your own! Below are just some of the things I usually add to mine - add as little or as much as you want. I’ve often been accused of adding too many different types. :-P)

• Bacon (cut the strips into one inch pieces)
• Shrimp (shelled, de-veiend, and cut into smaller pieces - I usually cut this into thirds) or squid or octopus
• Ground beef (or pork or turkey)
• Thin slices of pork or beef, or small pieces of chicken that cook easily/quickly
• Shredded cheddar
• Mochi (white rice cakes, they should usually be hard and unflavored for the savory recipes - cut into small half inch cubes)
• Mentaiko (spicy cod roe)
• Green onions, chopped

Traditional Condiments/Garnishings (optional, but for me is what really makes it taste right)

• Ao-nori (dried green seaweed, that looks almost like a powder)
• Katsuo-bushi (dried, shaved bonito flakes)
• Kewpie mayonnaise
• Okonomiyaki sauce (or tonkatsu sauce) - it’s a brown sauce that typically comes in a brown and orange type bottle for some reason.

Misc. Stuff

• Large flat frying pan/griddle (ideally non-stick!) - We usually use a family size George Foreman Griddle which allows us to cook two at a time.
• Cooking spray
• Large spatula
• Individual mixing bowls

Steps:

• Prepare the base by mixing the water and okonomiyaki flour together. You might have to adjust the amount of flour/water - ideally you want a consistency that is a bit thinner than pancake batter.
• Chop up the cabbage, and prepare the toppings that you plan to use (such as de-veining shrimp, chopping up meats etc).
• Since it is “as you like” each person should have their own mixing bowl to mix whatever toppings they want into their own okonomiyaki. Use about half a cup of batter and 1 egg per person, and have them add cabbage and any other ingredients they desire to their own bowl.
• General rule of thumb: Stick to about 3/4 cup cabbage, and 1/2 cup to 3/4 cups total of other toppings.
• Mix the base, egg, and toppings together well and heat up the griddle/frying pan!
• Once the frying pan is hot, give it a quick spray of Pam’s or Crisco non-stick cooking spray and pour the mixture onto the pan.
• Flatten it out into a round shape, about 1/2 inch thick.
• Check the bottom after a few minutes - once it starts browning and is more stable, flip it over and cook both sides evenly. If you have a thicker pancake, and need to cook it longer, lower the heat to prevent burning.
• It’s done when the ingredients you added are cooked basically - typically about 5-7 minutes? I almost always add mochi, so I go by how soft the mochi has turned, orI check to see if the meat is cooked, shrimp has turned orange etc.
• Once it is done, you can sprinkle the top with ao-nori, katsuo-bushi, and squeeze kewpie mayonnaise and okonomiyaki sauce onto it.

Pics:
Kewpie Mayo

Cabbage

Batter (I like it a bit thinner than what it looks like in this pic I grabbed off the net)

Cooking on the Griddle (notice something missing? YES THE CABBAGE!!!! I wanted to eat okonomiyaki that day but had no cabbage….so I added lots of mochi and ground beef to make up for it….but it came out more like a hamburger patty with lots of rice cake mixed in. Still good though, and the final product at least *looks* like a normal okonomiyaki. Sorta? You can compare below)

My finished hamburger okonomiyaki without cabbage (Really, I do make normal ones usually! With cabbage! At least I have a salad and a small side of mentaiko!)

Someone else’s okonomiyaki (with cabbage. *sniff*)

If you use the recipe, let me know how it turns out! Nothing’s really precise about this recipe, I just make it the way I like it to taste, and my roommates all mix it their own way when they add their toppings. Some, like Chieze (who hates eggs), always tries (foolishly) to get by without mixing an egg into the batter. And always ends up adding it anyways. Others, like Eddy, seem to like adding a lot more batter than actual toppings, so his usually looks like an actual pancake. Jess and I tend to make topping overloaded okonomiyaki (especially me), but that’s how we like it, so there! =P

I don’t like playing PVP (player versus player) on WoW much, mainly because I suck, and also it can suck when the other random players on your side suck as well. BUT I really wanted a tiger epic mount. There were basically two ways of getting a tiger mount for my character: 1) Do random quests to get exalted with Darnassus and buy a mount from that city, or 2) play enough PVP battles to earn medals of honor and purchase from a PVP mount vendor. I went for the secoond option because the PVP black war tiger was cuter than the mounts available from Darnassus. Understand that at this point, I had already gotten a regular epic mount (a horse that increased my speed by 100%) and didn’t NEED to have another mount….but the tiger was cute!!!! (ok, maybe more like cool? whatever, I still think it’s cute)  And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, you probably have a life.  So just shut up and rejoice with me in the cuteness of my fake online pet that helps me move around fast in a virtual world that is sucking the life out of me.  No really, it’s a fun game.

In other news, I set parental controls on Jed’s WoW account to help save the soul that Vince sold to get his own back. Sadly, Vince says he has “quit WoW” for real. Again. We’ll see how long it lasts. In the meantime, we have Jed to make up the 5th person in our group. (^_^)

And no, I haven’t been playing WoW all day during my week off. I’ve updated my website (see??? posts on the front page now!!), did some laundry, and filed my taxes. BOOYAH! I also plan to do some writing/editing of stories and resume this week, and of course do all my grading and planning jazz for teaching. Yay! We should all get entire weeks off every couple of months. I think it helps keep things in perspective?