Saturday, June 30, 2012

Drink your summer away with this vile elder god!

If you're anything like me, you're a wee drunk very hammered off of Mai Tai's right now, laughing at all these PDX people complaining about "the humidity."  If you're not like me, you're probably wondering who is that crazy drunk lady pointing and laughing at you.  Anyway...
This summer, I have (clearly) be revisiting the tiki drink, and the joy of the 1950's Polynesian drink.  What better way to take that trip down Bahama Mama lane than with a true island original, The Cthulhu tiki mug!
Designer Jonathan "Atari" Chaffin came up with this beauty and with help from the intensely talented Kristina Lucas Francis has decided to bring your summer nightmares to life.  Right now, there's a Kickstarter for it, so make sure you pledge a few dollars to get your very own.  Last one in the Dagon is a miasmic egg!

Sunday, June 24, 2012

Various internet goodness

Here's a bunch of stuff the interwebs has to offer:

First we have the pizza necronomicon, or as I will forever call it: the necro-om-nom-nomicon.
Unfathomable, soul-destroying evil never tasted so good.

Up next is Madame Hillary Clinton being fucking awesome.  You're welcome.


And lastly is a wonderful pride tribute to Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician, computer scientist, and creator of the Turing Test, who would have 100 on Saturday.  Though it is often said he committed suicide, there has been several people who said that might not have been the case.


Sunday, June 3, 2012

Feast!

I will admit it, once I get into a fandom, I really get into a fandom. In this case it's Game of Thrones, though more properly, I'm into the Song of Ice and Fire books, since I don't have HBO and I am waiting for the first season of GoT to be available from the library (yes, people can get movies from the library). Anyway, I've finished the third book, A Storm of Swords, have just started on the fourth, and to celebrate this fact, I decided that I needed to make a GoT themed dinner last night.   If you haven't read these books, or seen the TV shows, maybe you'll think I'm a bit crazy.  However, if you have, you'll notice there is a intense amount of time spent discussing what people are eating, or what people want to eat.  Luckily, I am not alone in recognizing all the food motifs in these books.
To aid me in my medieval munching I turned to the amazing blog The Inn at the Crossroads. The ladies who run this blog are not only devote GoT fans, but also exceptional scholars of old timey foods.  Taking the foods mentioned in the books, they offer an original medieval recipe and a modern one, both tried and tested by them. On top of this, they also wrote the official Game of Thrones cook book, sanctioned by George RR Martin, so they know what they're doing.

Last night's Feast of Instagrams.

To make it easy on myself, I chose three basic looking recipes: sweet biscuits, garlic butter roasted mushrooms, and a meat pie.  For the biscuits and mushrooms, I followed their recipe word for word, leaving out the capers for the mushrooms as I didn't have any on hand, but for the meat pie I changed things up a bit.  I used ground turkey instead of pork (it was on sale), and I added bacon, onions, and a good splash of red wine, omitting the dates because I forgot to purchase them.  The sweetness of the honey and currants played nicely with the tart wine taste, and the bacon masked the fact it was just turkey.  It all turned out wonderful and with the bit of pie crust I had leftover, I added a direwolf to the top (Team Stark!).

If you're wondering what I drank, don't worry, there's a recipe for that, too!
My husband bought us some mead for the evening and I also made some hot spiced wine, which turned out amazing, and insanely simple.  For mine, I did a very very basic, what I had around the house recipe: Red wine, honey, a cinnamon stick, a few cloves, and some of the remaining currants.

Additionally!  If you feel like totally nerding it up and making some Winterfell roasts, I would suggest the amazing book Fabulous Feasts.  While the first part of the book is all about the medieval dining customs and ceremony, the back half is all recipes, ranging from really simple stuffed dates to how actually make a bird pop out of a pie.  And don't worry, there's a couple spiced wine recipes in there for good measure.

Friday, June 1, 2012

The Summer of the Zombies

So if you've glanced at your Google news alerts lately, it looks like there's an upcoming zombie apocalypse this summer (and I assume everyone has "zombie apocalypse" as a saved topic for their Google news alerts).  If you haven't, here's a quick run down: Three separate incidences of people eating people, some creepy rash breaking out in Floridian schools, the bug that killed Charles Darwin is hunting around the Americas, and some dude flipping out and throwing his intestines at police officers.

And this is all happened in about two weeks.  If this isn't the first signs of the cannibalistic undead rising up to eat our flesh, I don't really know what is.  Lucky for you, the internet exists and is ready to prepare your sorry ass (playing Left 4 Dead does not mean you're ready to mow down zombies) in case this does pan out to be the real thing.  Here's my quick list of sites you should read prior to the upcoming apocalypse.  If it does happen, you'll find me barracked in the nearest liquor store with my pug and all the boxes of Girl Scout Samosas I could find.

CDC Official Zombie Guide: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has actually sat down and figured out what you need to do in case of a zombie attack. 
Zurvived: A podcast and website dedicated to teaching you what to do and how to survive a zombie attack. 
The Crovel: A weaponized shovel actually endorsed to kill the undead. 
Instructables: Besides showing you how to put an LED in nearly everything, Instructables also has a handy lesson in how to build a zombie survival kit. 
Zombie Squad: They host Zombie Con.  They also teach you how to kill zombies.