WQRob’s blog

Today my family and I went to the Dayton International Festival, which is essentially a bunch of local ethnic clubs and student groups hosting booths touting their various countries' culture, especially food.  It was a lot of fun, and of course educational.  They even had a program for the kids: each child got a "passport" with pages of each of the countries represented, and on each page was a trivia question that the kids had to ask or answer themselves.

The best moment was when my son, a serious Sinophile even at the age of eight, went to the booth for China.  "Can you name a major landmark located in China?" the woman asked.

"The Yellow River," said my son with a straight face.

The woman was visibly startled and said, "yes, the Yellow River is a major landmark." One whose flooding ended a lot more dynasties than the mongols climbing over the Great Wall, I thought to myself.  Then the woman stamped my son's passport.  "Shien shien," said my son, as the lady's jaw hit the floor.

My daughter had a great time looking at the costumes, and dancing with the Irish dancing group.  I wish there was a group closeby, instead of the cheesy "practice for working a pole at the local gentlemans' club" dancing school here in my area.

From Southernfood.about.com

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup cake flour
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 stick (4 ounces) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
• 3/4 cup half and half

PREPARATION:

Roll the dough to about 3/4-inch thickness on a floured surface. Cut out biscuits with a 3-inch round cutter. Gather up dough scraps, reroll, and repeat the procedure until dough is used up. Place biscuits on an ungreased baking sheet.

Bake biscuits in center of a 400° oven until golden brown, 12 to 15 minutes. Serve biscuits hot, with butter.
Makes about 12 biscuits.

Notes: I found the dough particularly sticky, no doubt as a result of the amount of cake flour vs. regular flour.  You may want to adjust the proportions.

Got the second unit finished.

orcwarband2

They're on the right (the first is on the left.  Now that they are done, I'm working on my Arrer Boyz next.  I'm going to take a quick break to read my new book--it has got me thinking about some things that I may mull around here.

I love Thai food, and this one is different than the typical Phad Thai

INGREDIENTS

• 1 tablespoon dark sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 cup (1 small) chopped onion
• 1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger root
• 1 fresh red chile pepper, seeded and chopped
• 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into strips
• 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
• 1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh basil
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 (10 ounce) can coconut milk
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 (12 ounce) package dried rice noodles
• 1 tablespoon heavy cream
• 1 lime, cut into wedges

I finished the first demi-unit of orcs for my Warhammer Warband.  It's not a full-sized unit because of the special warband rules.

orcwarband1

2 comments

I need to paint one more unit like them, a unit of Big 'Uns, a unit of Arrer Boyz, and the boss before June 1 (hopefully).

I suppose it is an "America's Funniest Home Videos" classic, but having a five-year-old hit a coach in the nuts with a bat is kind of predictable.  Put the kid in glasses and have him have some sort of attention problem and it just writes himself.  Thankfully I took most of it on the thigh.
Mostly I've been pretty busy with work and family to do much of anything else.  In my odd bits of spare time I've been putting together the late 2008 Warhammer Campaign for my gaming group.  I finally finished the details, including some last minute innovations I really like.
Unfortunately, I'm going to stay up to my armpits with stuff for the next few days so there probably won't be any new miniatures painted or buildings built for a while.

I am currently coaching my daughter's T-Ball team, and we had our first practice today.  I had gone out to the local book store and bought "Coaching Youth Baseball," read it cover-to-cover, and tried to mentally prepare myself for managing ten five- and six-year olds.

The practice went well, and the weather was beautiful, but I am dying because the day before I decided to take my bike out for the first time of the season, and now everything hurts.  Now I'm medicating myself with a rather bitter beer and a hot bath.

I mentioned a few days ago that I was hoping to get a mini painted (in Rastl's honor, if you will).  He's the last of my Castles & Crusades PC minis, a gnome thief named Xane.  The photo sacrifices the chest detail for the face.

xane

I like how the background turned out.

I thought I'd add more modules to the catwalk, so I built a corner piece.

corner/stairway piece

I'll probably do a second one, similar to this one.

Nothing like spending the day cooking and preparing my latest D&D adventure to help recover from a bad week.  Here's the egg and macaroni salad I made today: