An early Merry Christmas to all of y’all!
T’was the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not a creature was stirring not even a … Corgi!
It’s been a pretty good year and now it’s time to settle in and eat way too many goodies during this holiday season, visit the folks, and celebrate my birthday! I’m also going to be making some items for the season so stay tuned for the next post: it’ll have yarn and Christmas food!
Pre-Christmas nosh
Barbecue chicken burritos with caramelized onion, cilantro, sliced jalapeno, iceberg lettuce, steamed jasmine rice, and sour cream. Very simple meal with ample amounts of vegetables. It’s probably quite evident by now that I’m a sucker for tacos and burritos.
Classic wintertime hot cocoa with mini marshmallows. I slipped in some butterscotch schnapps too. Warm, sweet, and tasty.
The store had really cheap London broils so we snagged a couple. The first one became part of Vietnamese pho. We used pho bouillon cubes for the broth and added wide rice noodles, cilantro, thinly sliced yellow onion, sliced jalapeno, and lime. Sambal and hoison sauce on the side.
To prepare the beef, we used this cooking guide for the cooking process. For the thickness of this broil, five minutes might have been too short. We’ll broil them longer next time. This was also the first recipe we’ve done with a cast iron pan. The meat seared and sizzled, the kitchen smelled like a smokehouse, the Cat and I marveled at the delightful smells … and then the fire alarm went off.
We made a mistake with that pho. A crucial mistake. We didn’t check the ingredients of the pho bouillon cubes. MSG was the third ingredient. The third! We had used two cubes in the past with no ill effects but this time we used three cubes. Feeling sick the next day ensued. Basically too much MSG makes it feel like all of the water in your body is gone: killer headaches, trouble with maintaining body temperature, dizziness, nausea, and stomachache. It’s more or less what I imagine a hangover feels like. I haven’t had a hangover and I don’t plan to have one any time soon.
Several cups of water and Kool-Aid and several pretzels later — we didn’t have any Gatorade or toast — we were composed enough to make a simple dinner of baked barbecue chicken, roasted potatoes, and rice.
- Preheat oven to 350F and start making rice.
- Cube potatoes, put on a cookie sheet, and season with oil, salt, and pepper. It’s easier if you put the potatoes, oil, and seasonings in a bowl first and mix them up for even distribution of toppings before laying the potatoes out on a sheet.
- Cube chicken. Put in a casserole dish and coat with a layer of oil and BBQ sauce.
- Put chicken on the top rack and potatoes on the bottom and bake for 15-20 minutes. Take chicken out. Move potatoes to top rack.
- Increase oven temperature to 400F and bake another 10-ish minutes or until golden.
Super simple dinner in less than an hour! I like making this meal in a pinch, at the end of a long day, or, in this case, when one or both of us is not feeling well.
The next day after the tragic MSG “hangover”, the Cat and I were feeling right as rain. We got the second London broil out, cooked it the same way as the last broil except we left it for a few minutes longer, and the Cat whipped up some Philly cheese steaks with caramelized mushrooms and onions, and some sharp cheddar cheese. I’d never had Philly cheese steaks before except for the Hot Pocket ones in grade school, but I don’t really think those count! The slices of beef were a bit too thick but this was an amazing and very rich and hearty meal that I’d definitely have again.
The Cat used a whole pack of chicken (six or seven boneless, skinless breasts) to make a giant pot of curry that we could eat off of for a few meals. I forgot to take a picture of the final product, but here’s a picture of the Cat mincing ginger before dicing or slicing Roma tomatoes, jalapenos, and a yellow onion. Not pictured are three peeled carrots and many cloves of garlic. The other photo is over five pounds of potato that we cubed, seasoned, baked, and added. We ended up snacking on about eight ounces of the roasted potatoes each but the rest went straight into the curry.
Think we had curry for dinner? Nope. We had tacos! Curry is like a fine wine or whiskey that gets better with age so we cooled it off and put it in the fridge for the next day, and all we would have to do is make rice, hard boil eggs, and reheat the curry. Here we have tacos with chicken, sliced jalapeno, diced Roma tomatoes, cilantro, caramelized onion, sour cream, and lime. The Cat and I agreed that next time we’ll stick to raw onion. It just adds another punch of flavor to tacos that the caramelized ones don’t have.
Other news
Ultimate EQ is a bit different from the other EQEmulator servers I’ve tried. This one has a token system where if you kill anything, you get a chance at a token and tokens are redeemable for really nice gear.
Pros:
- Very friendly and helpful community
- Active GMs — I think there are only two and no guides
- MQ2 allowed — some warping allowed before PoP, I think
- Unique token system
- Interesting player hub (Muramite Proving Grounds)
- Auto-scribe — I played a Mage and automatically got my epic spell in my 40s! Doesn’t include certain drop-only custom spells at the end game
- Unique progression — for example, Vanilla progression is collect Nagafen’s Head, Innoruuk’s brain, and Cazic-Thule’s Eye
- Smooth progression so far — I passed the Vanilla Progression, am almost done with Kunark and I’m almost level 70 in a week of very casual play
- Buff bot in lobby
- Instant-cast lobby teleport clicky
- Free Broom of Trilon, Shovel of Ponz, Stein of Ulissa, Torch of Alna, Ultimate Charm, DMF clicky, aug distiller, and Essence Emeralds
- Custom content
- Leveling is easy than normal but you’re not invincible (unless you have awesome buffs)
- Increased out-of-combat health and mana regeneration
- Platinum is easy to come by — I already have 16k from leveling, looting, and vendoring
- Can trade AAs for plat or plat for AAs
- NPC summons awesome pet weapons for you
- Race changer NPC
- Can link your main character to your alt — I’m a bit fuzzy on the details of this as I haven’t tried it
- Alt backflagger NPC to skip those pesky flags
- Some sort of character specialization system where you choose a “path” and get an item that greatly improves your characters (i.e. clicky that gives a heal effectiveness buff for a priest that chose to become a better healer)
- Treasure goblins have a chance to spawn and they drop coins (vendor trash) and XP potions. They also have a chance to drop rare items like a Manastone and Guise of the Deceiver
Cons:
- Translocator doesn’t send you directly to some zones (WW, Seb) — A bit of running if you don’t warp. Personally doesn’t bother me.
- It seems that one of the best buff clickies is available for real money — Some people buff in the lobby with them though (It has a 16k damage shield!); I hope to find clickies with similar effects in the game
- Have to level to 60 or 70 before you get to the custom content
- Limited resources — I guess they’re still compiling info
- Forum search requires reCAPTCHA every single time
- Banker in lobby is quite far from the vendor — personal pet peeve
- Frequent server-wide /shout of people who get certain flags, gamble and win or lose, craft something legendary, or choose a character path
I might keep playing on Ultimate EQ or try another server. I haven’t decided yet. The Cat mentioned trying out an EQ Live server so that’s on the table too.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Corgi and the Cat!
Corgipup Designs 