Mango-Jalapeno Trout and Cilantro-Tomato Corn Salad

Both of these turned out so good! I will definitely be making both again.  Also, they work well together in a meal as each uses 1/2 a bunch of cilantro, and 1/2 a lime.  Keep that in mind if you make both together.


Mango-Jalapeno Trout
2 whole trout, cleaned, and pat dry
1 large jalapeno, seeded and finely diced
4 green onions, sliced thin
1/2 bunch of cilantro, chopped
1/2 c. ripe mango, peeled and diced
1 TBS olive oil
1/2 lime, squeezed for juice
garlic salt, to taste
pepper, to taste
This can be done on the grill over medium heat, or in the oven, at 350; either way, preheat.  In a bowl, mix together everything but the fish.  Lay out squares of foil, and spray with non-stick cooking spray.  Lay your fish in diagonally, then stuff each with 1/2 of the mixture.  If it all does not fit, you can put the remainder on the outside of the fish if you wish.  Bring together opposite corners of the foil to form a packet, making sure it is fully sealed.  For oven cooking, place the packets on a cookie sheet, and cook for 30 minutes. For grill cooking, place the foil pack directly on the grill, turning once, for a total of 20 minutes. 

Serves 2, 352.5 calories per serving (assumes 8.5oz fish pre-cooked, skin, head and tail not eaten)

Cilantro-Tomato Corn Salad
2 c. corn kernels (fresh is best, frozen if you must)
1 TBS olive oil
4 Campari tomatoes, chopped
1 jalapeno, de-seeded and finely chopped
1/2 small red onion, finely chopped
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped
1/2 lime, juiced
S&P to taste

Mix everything together and call it a day.

Makes about 3 1-cup servings, 85 calories per serving.

Eric dinner: Pasta Roni, Alfredo

As an aside, I had a "moment" with my fish last night as I was prepping.  I guess this is sort of peculiar, and frankly I feel a little funny about putting it out there for everyone to read, but it was kind of a neat feeling.

I was washing and patting my trout dry when I noticed the rainbow sheen glinting off of his scales, and I thought that it looked really lovely.  Then I looked into his clear eyes (this fish was FRESH) and noticed tiny little teeth in his mouth. It occurred to me that it is so easy to forget that the food we eat, which is generally presented as heaping mounds of neatly shaped flesh on colorful plastic trays and wrapped in slick plastic, was once a creature that was alive going about his business.

Don't get me wrong, I am fully cognizant of the fact that humans are the top of the food-chain and we have evolved to find sustenance off of other animals.  I felt no guilt or sadness when pondering the fish.  This was just a moment where I sent my heartfelt thanks out into the cosmos for the life that was given in order to sustain mine.

Top 100 Movies (as of today, anyway)

A friend of mine and I decided it would be a fun exercise to try to list our Top 100 movies.  This is my list.  The first 10 are my top 10 in order, and the unnumbered ones in the bottom almost made the list, but didn't quite cut it.  Everything in the middle is listed in no particular order:


1    The Fifth Element
2     Princess Bride
3    Serenity
4     Dr. Horrible s Sing Along Blog (I am counting this is a movie, even though it was in 3 segments, and only 45   minutes long - BUT its an hour and a half if you count Commentary: The Musial - which I do, making it full length)
5    Labyrinth
6    Monty Python and the Holy Grail
7    Army of Darkness
8    Clerks II
9    The Chronicals of Riddick
10   Repo! The Genetic Opera

and in no particular order:

11    28 Days Later
12    Shawn of the Dead
13    I am Legend (Directors cut)
14    Clerks
15    Mallrats
16    Dogma
17    Chasing Amy
18    Pretty in Pink
19    Sixteen Candles
20    The Dark Crystal
21    Zack and Miri Make a Porno
22    Conan the Barbarian
23    Conan the Destroyer
24    Clash of the Titans
25    Terminator
26    Breakfast Club
27    LOTR 1
28    LOTR 2
29    LOTR 3
30    Harry Potter 1
31    Harry Potter 2
32    Harry Potter 3
33    Harry Potter 4
34    Harry Potter 5
35    Harry Potter 6
36    Shawshank Redemtion
37    The Usual Suspects
38    Star Wars 4
39    Star Wars 5
40    Star Wars 6
41    Pulp Fiction
42    Aliens
43    Singles
44    Monty Python The Meaning of Life
45    History of the World, Part 1
46    Braveheart
47    Fargo
48    Blue Velvet
49    The Sixth Sense
50    Twelve Monkeys
51    Say Anything
52    The Matrix 1
53    Day Watch (Dnevnoi Dozor)
54    Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor)
55    The Matrix 2
56    Sweeney Todd
57    Dazed and Confused
58    Office Space
59    A Christmas Story
60    Waterworld
61    Underworld 1
62    Underworld 2
63    Underworld 3
64    Terminator II
65    The Jerk
66    Starship Troopers
67    Total Recall
68    Superbad
69    Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist
70    Willow
71    Hot Fuzz
72    Contact
73    Unbreakable
74    Blade
75    Men in Black
76    Independence Day
77    I, Robot
78    Mad Max
79    Mad Max 2
80    The Andromeda Strain
81    Seven
82    The Chronicals of Riddick: Dark Fury
83    Pitch Black
84    Enemy Mine
85    Trading Places
86    Zombieland
87    Stardust
88    Bladerunner
89    The Abyss
90    Minority Report
91    A.I.
92    The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy
93    Spaceballs
94    Time Bandits
95    Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
96    28 weeks later
97    Run, Fatboy, Run
98    Some Kind of Wonderful
99    Dawn of the Dead
100    The City of Lost Children
     Constantine 
    The Doom Generation
    Soylent Green
    Charlotte's Web
    Dragonslayer
    Cloverfield
    The Day After Tomorrow
    The Postman
    Red Dawn
    Raising Arizona
    Wild at Heart

And now my bottom 10 most hated movies (there is 12 or 13 of them but who's counting)

Bruno

Napolean Dynamite

Twilight (and I haven't seen New Moon, nor will I ever, but lets go ahead and count it)
Howard the Duck
Disaster Movie
Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus
all Saw movies (and if you have seen 1, you have seen them all, so only counting as 1)
The Scorpian King 2
American Pie: The Naked Mile
The Lost Boys: The Tribe

Hamburger Hill
Blackhawk Down

It is a pity I haven't been updating. I have had some awesome dinners lately:
Lamb with pear and blackberry chutney
Poached eggs with roasted tomatoes and spinach over toast
Stir fry
Curry
Miso soup
Potlicker greens w/ smoked turkey

And now I rejoined planet organics so mystery veggies every week to figure out what the heck to do with. Good times!

Learning is an uphill battle

I am trying to teach myself how to use this polymer clay medium with only the internet and books to show me the way. I don't recommend this way of picking up a hobby. More than anything I want a mentor, or classes or SOMETHING to let me know I am on the right track. The only real input I have is from Craftster, a craft forum I have been visiting for a few years (Eric calls it Craft Porn as I sit there drooling while getting excited for hours on end).

I found a polymer clay guild in the South Bay that I am considering joining, just for the free classes. I guess beggars can't be choosers...

In any case, here is the product of a couple of weekends worth of tinkering around.

First is a dragon that I made following the steps in one of Christi Friesen's books:

I think he is awesome and I loooove the way the colors turned out, and his facial features. Pretty much everything. However, he is a face in the crowd. While my hands did it and the coloring and some decorations came from my brain, it almost feels like this is a CF piece and not somethign original that I did. Kinda like I cheated.

This next item is all from my brain, but I don't like it. There are some elements that I think are cool (the top-down koi, and the pebbles came out amazing - they look real), but I managed to make an item that wasn't my own taste. Can someone please explain how that is possible?


I posted the pictures of this vase on Craftster, and I got so much nice feedback it brought tears to my eyes (can you imagine - 1 person said they aspire to be able to make things like this, and another person said I have inspired them to try polymer clay! That is so amazing to me)
















I had a leftover flower - well, it was my crappy prototype really so I turned it into a barrette:


I had some good ideas come out of -what I consider - this failure of a project. I did some experimenting last night to see if I could accomplish what I had envisioned for part of it and I don't have the skills :( But I am going to see if I can do the project without all the elements Ii had in mind. I am waiting on a Donna Kato book right now, so maybe I will be able to figure out where I went wrong in my experimenting and I will be able to include all the parts of my idea .

I HAVEN'T GIVEN UP ON YOUS YET

I am just lagging behind. I have photos of delicious crock pot chili, and french butter, and a couple of ideas to kick off my craft section of this blog, but for some reason, nothing has made it here. I even went so far as to get a card reader so I wouldn't have to lug my camera upstairs to get the pics off it.

Well, I guess it isn't a single reason why I have been neglecting the blog. There are a couple of contributing factors:



1) EQ2 is going well! We have just about caught up to where we were before we quit last time. My wizzy is 66 as of last night and we have entered the Kunark era of playing. We found an awesome casual guild this is both supportive of newbs, AND raids casually - awesome, hard to pull off combo, but they have done it. Also wtf is with this "great" sig that Sony provides. Only my stupid knees are showing. Grats, programmy-dudes.

2) Plants Vs. Zombies is freaking AWESOME goodtimes fun and I am very distracted playing it in the bits of time between playing EQ2. I am so tempted to download it on my work PC to play it during "break"

3) Work has been really awful lately. I already wear 3 very different hats, and a 4th one, although temporarily, was added a couple months ago and it is just mentally exhausting. All I want to do when I get home is nap (if I haven't already in the car) and then zone out playing for a few hours before going to bed. Bonus factoid: since we work for the State of Broke-Ass California, we just got word that we will be getting an 8% paycut starting in August and lasting for at least a year, and more likely 2. This is on top of already "losing" out on our yearly 4% merit increase last year, and not getting it again this year. Double sucks that we work in the same place so our overall income is being hit, instead of just 1. Oh well, at least we have jobs still. Let's cross fingers that stays

4) consider this a preview to the crafty tag: I am picking up polymer clay again as a hobby (didn't I just explain why I had no time to blog and now I am talkign about starting yet another craft? ISSUES) There has been so many changes and upgrades to the medium since I last played with it. I am just SO enamored right now. I have loads of links, several books, and pretty much all the materials. Now I just need to sit down and DO something with it instead of pining over things online I see like these:

More soon!

Things worth reposting:

I've lost my wallet.

which really sucks. I almost wish it had been stolen - but no charges on the ATM tells me this is not the case. Somewhere, between buying coffee at 9am at work, and getting ready for work the next day it turned up missing. I don't even care that I have to go through a rigamarole to replace my drivers liscense and whatnot. My wallet itself was AWESOME:And now I have to wait 2 week s for a new ATM card in order a new one from Tinymeat and they take for freaking ever to deliver =( so sad...

I am in an MMO limbo

which pretty much blows considering it's one of my four passions. The last two years or so has been a game of hopscotch jumping between free RPGs - which I invariably quit playing within a week or two - and resubscribing to pay games, most notable, LoTRO WoW and EQ2.

We just re-upped our EQ2 accounts (for the third time). EQ2 is a really superb game and I hope that I gain some of that obsessive mmo gamer attitude for it over time because it has been a long time since I have felt that. This time around I am playing an arasai wizard.

That is not my character and in fact looks nothing like her, but blogs are boring without pictures, imo. That is a picture of what is probably an arasai monk with premade wings that I pilfered from online. Last night, I rolled a gnome inquistor, and everyone who knows me knows I loathe gnomes, but Sony gave the option of Pipi Longstocking hair and I couldn't resist. I named her Gnugget.(update: Gnugget is no more)

One bad thing about going back to a game that has been around for 5 years is that a lot of people are already over it. The information (espcially found via forum posts) is years old and obviously out of date; web pages are no longer updated; UIs are not supported; yadda yadda. Oh well. All I can ask is that it holds my attention long enough for Aion to be released.

Queue epic publicity screenshots:



So yeah.. its really pretty and you can fly. But there is also all sorts of cool mechanics that I haven't really seen before and loads of lore if you are into that sort of thing.

Anyway, release date is set for "sometime this fall" which isn't the most accurate piece of information, but certainly gives me something to look forward to.

In other news, China's first sex theme park, aimed at improving both the sex education and the sex life of its visitors, has been torn down before it even opened.

People keep telling me

I need a point in order to make a blog. Or to get traffic. Or to keep people entertained. Well, phooey on that. It is what it is.

I never got to updating the looks of this thing. I will eventually. I see a lot of great templates out there, but I'd much rather create the images and do my own design rather than use someone else's stuff. I used to do webpages so why not try it here, amirite?

For someone who is supposedly busy as hell at work

my day has gone something like this:

• Start watching Fringe
• Play with Tweet Deck
• Answer the PoTD and watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsBfj6khrG4 again
• Introduce friends to http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/
• Discover the uncensored version of MotherLover and listen 3 or so times
• Rejoice that TFLN also has a Flickr
• Read the entire Wiki for The Lonely Island
• Lust after an Android and look at apps; also look up how much its gonna cost to get out of my stupid Cingular contract and ditch the blackberry ($175.00 YUCK)
• Play the "this chick is so hot" game with Brian -also find the filter by color option google images added
• Start a blog (lol)
• Update and play with a shared notebook with the hubs to keep track of stuff for EQ2
• Decide which deity to follow in EQ2 - after much research

And the rest of my afternoon looks like:

• Finish watching Fringe
• Watch Lie to Me
• Play with blog layout 'cos it is currently ugly as hell

And I never even got to my Reader today...

Everyone Else is Doing It...

I wonder how many bloggers start their first post like this, and are never heard from again.