On the Dearth of Works, Blog Posts, and Updates

Hi All,

I've been working my butt off with my mundane jobs unfortunately and have not had the time to do more than check e-mails and comments. If you leave me a message, I'll be sure to reply within a day or so like I usually do, but for the foreseeable future (through March at least), I'll be working more hours than I can sustain while also writing and working for Apocalypse Designs. So I'll be off from AD through March.

Thankfully, by doing this, I should be in a better position than ever to produce quality work and not have to worry about finances as much. It's amazing how much that effects my writing, and I am more amazed than ever by the "starving artists" types that barely subsist for their art.

Thank you for your support and I look forward to seeing everyone in March!

Best Regards,
~Zero

Reuben overload

I've had like 5 New Year's Reubens in the last week.

I can't stop.

They're better than an actual Reuben.

I'm concerned for my life.

There's only enough kielbasa for one more.

Sadness.

Cooking Secrets

There are two things that you hear time and time again that make good food amazing.

• Use the best and freshest ingredients.
• Butter. Lots and lots of butter.

The first applies to pretty much everything you can make. Fresh ingredients are always going to taste better than frozen, and if you can find a reliable source of a "good" ingredient, it's worth the extra cost if you care about taste (not worth the extra cost if it means you're not getting enough calories to live on obviously...well, maybe in some situations).

The second applies to only, well, pretty much everything also. Whatever it is that you're cooking, butter will probably make it better. Eggs, vegetables, fish, steak, pancakes, everything. If there's heat enough to melt butter involved in the preparation, then butter should enter into the mix at some point in the recipe.

And by the way, when I say use butter, I mean, a LOT of butter. You can't be worried about eating healthy if you want your food to taste the best, and any recipe that doesn't have butter probably has a poor substitute for one.

I recently made some chocolate coffee chocolate chip cookies and the recipe called for so much vegetable oil and water. Upon careful consideration, I substituted two sticks of butter.

I've recently mastered cooking pancakes (they're cheap, quick and easy and if you make the batter in a tupperware container, you can save it for future uses), and the number one secret is to add more butter for each pancake (at that point, you don't need to spread butter on them after either).

And, if you think that you can get away with skipping butter by using margarine, well you're correct, if you want your food to taste terrible and completely destroy the point of using butter in the first place.

Now, I'm not saying or advocating a butter only diet any more than I'm advocating a bacon only diet. I'm just saying that it tastes freaking amazing to add butter to your food while cooking.

By the way, I actually don't like butter as a condiment usually.

New Year's Reuben Recipe

Hello everyone!

Just a quick original recipe I'd like to share to help you get rid of your New Year's leftovers.

I assume everyone's made kielbasa and sauerkraut for New Year's Eve/Day, but if you haven't, then you'll have to for this recipe.

Twelfth Day of Christmas

Today is the twelfth day of Christmas! Traditionally (and I mean wayyy back in the day), this was the biggest party night of the year that brought to a close the 13-day long non-stop party that was Christmas (from Christmas Eve through the Twelfth Night).

Stay away from ValuTime Coffee

Just in case anyone was at all curious, valu-time coffee is in no way an acceptable substitute for ANY type of coffee. It doesn't even taste like coffee. It doesn't even smell like coffee.

I'm not going to say it was terrible, because Satan is terrible, but it's right up there near that level, or maybe I should say down there. It's terrible-lite. Maybe not Satan terrible, but perhaps a Mephistopheles level of terrible-ness.

It's just bad, and not in a secretly awesome way. I mean tattoos are "bad" but that just means cool. Valu-time coffee is hot, but not in a sexually attracted to way, just in the temperature sense.

I suppose it probably has caffeine, so if you're in an end-of-the-world, post-apocalypse, there-are-no-more-coffee-plants-in-existence kind of situation, then I would recommend training yourself to function without caffeine because there is no reason why you should be drinking this.