o_o

[iamjacksbroken]

Easy, Healthy, and Fucking Delicious Butter Chicken Recipe

I designed this recipe to be as easy as possible, adaptable to your personal taste/health preferences, and also included some optional substitutions so you can use what you already have in your kitchen instead of buying everything. 

Basically you marinade some chicken for and cook it on a pan. On a separate pan you sauté some onions and garlic. Then you combine the pans and add tomato sauce, spices, & cream. Serve with rice or naan. 

(Total prep time: 40 minutes)

Ingredients

Spice Mix

2 tsp garam masala

1 tsp coriander powder

1 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp ground ginger (can use some chopped fresh ginger instead)

1/4 tsp turmeric (not necessary if you don’t have it)

2 tsp salt 

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp cayenne pepper (less if you don’t like spicy)

You’ll mix all these in a small bowl, use about 1/4 of the mix in the chicken marinade, and dump the rest in the curry. 

Chicken Marinade

2 pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces (try using scissors)

1/2 cup Greek yogurt or coconut cream 

1 tbsp lemon or lime juice

1 tbsp olive oil or butter

Combine these ingredients in a bowl with 1/4 of the spice mix, set it aside to marinade for a few minutes while you prepare the other ingredients.

Curry

1 diced onion

3-4 cloves chopped garlic (crushed/jarred is fine too)

1 can pureed tomatoes (15-18 oz)

2 tablespoons grassfed organic ghee or butter 

3/4 cup heavy cream 

Rice

1 cup white basmati rice (prepare using package instructions)

Instructions

Start the rice (boil 1.75 cups water, add 1 cup rice, reduce heat to low & cover, set timer for 18 minutes)

Combine all the spices in a small bowl to make the Spice Mix.

Cut up the chicken into bite-sized pieces using scissors.

Combine all the Chicken Marinade ingredients together and add 1/4 of the Spice Mix.

Heat some olive oil & butter in a pan. Add the chicken and cook for about 5-7 minutes on medium heat, flipping occasionally, until cooked through & brown on both sides 

Heat some olive oil & butter in a large/deep pan. Start sautéing the onions on medium/high heat, and add the garlic after a couple of minutes when the onions start to turn clear.  Once the onions start to turn brown, combine the chicken with the onion/garlic sauté. 

Add all the rest of the spice mix & the tomato puree, heavy cream, and the 2 tbsp of ghee/butter. Simmer on low heat until you’re ready to serve.

Serve the chicken curry with rice, yogurt, and store-bought naan if you have it. I like to buy some frozen saag paneer to serve as a second dish with no extra work :) 

[iamjacksbroken]

There is no secret to success. You just have to want it badly enough.

[iamjacksbroken]

Everyone alive should read this fable. We're wasting our time easing the pain of death with healthcare. We have a moral obligation to reverse human aging in our lifetime. 

[iamjacksbroken]

There are no Formics, but I wish there were.

You and I - we are the human race. 

Famine, disease, nuclear annihilation, depletion of natural resources, climate change, extraterrestrial invasion, asteroid impact. These are just a few existential threats to our species. Possible in our lifetime, all but inevitable in the span of human existence. And if these don't happen in our lifetime, it's because we're already dead.

What are you doing about it?

Ender had no choice but to save the human race. He poured himself into the task, utterly and completely. He saved Valentine, his parents, everyone he loved. He saved himself. He and his jeesh did this when noone else could have. What would you think of them if they had done anything less than everything to win? 

But today, we are all faced with a similar battle - less apparent than a Formic invasion, but ultimately just as dangerous. Humans tend to postpone necessity and ignore the future, so we often live aimlessly, with nebulous purpose and weak ambition. But if we do nothing to prevent our demise, sooner or later everyone we love will be dead. If we don't take on these challenges right now, we'll have no excuses on the day we find out it's too late. 

Aging will be the first killer. We haven't yet conquered death, but we know there's a possibility of achieving radical life extension within our lifetimes. If that's true, and if you believe that you can influence the probability of achieving radical life extension for yourself and those you love, then if you do anything less, you are accepting these deaths. Devoting your life to the pursuit of your own ambitions is an implicit choice to abandon the possibility that you and your loved ones will live long enough to prolong their lives many hundreds or thousands of years. 

But extending our lifespans is more selfish than altruistic. For the greater good, we must also find ways to ensure the survival of our species. Whether or not we die before it happens, there will come a day when our actions influence whether or not humans outlive the advent of disease or war, or the hospitality of our planet. There are many pieces to this puzzle. Space colonization is essential, so our fate is no longer tied to the fate of the earth. There are many intermediate steps, of course - all of which are are important endeavors themselves.

It doesn't matter what your value system is so long as you understand that without life, there can be no sentience in the universe. Without sentience, there can be no "good". There can be nothing. 

Every single one of us must live side by side as comrades in the struggle for the survival of our species. Death - our own, and that of our species - may feel distant enough to ignore. This is shortsighted. It may seem so inevitable that it's pointless to try and stop it. This is foolish and simply false. 

You and I - we are the human race. We are parts of a whole, a consciousness that experiences the universe. When we die, that consciousness disappears with us. All love and wonder and beauty gives way to nothingness. 

We are Dragon Army, with no choice but to achieve victory or die. We have a duty to push our physical and mental limits, militantly and relentlessly, every day of our lives. We must be strategic with our time and energy, playing to our strengths and natural predispositions as we make social and scientific advances for a common cause. We must not give up when the task seems impossible, or even absurd. Join me in this battle. Know that we can win, and let the skeptics sit on the sidelines as we achieve eternal glory for our kind.

If we are to win, we must be ruthlessly determined and recklessly creative. Remember: the enemy's gate is down. 

[iamjacksbroken]

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,  When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,  When the funds are low and the debts are high,  And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,  When care is pressing you down a bit,  Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns,  As every one of us sometimes learns,  And many a failure turns about,  When he might have won had he stuck it out;  Don't give up though the pace seems slow--  You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than,  It seems to a faint and faltering man,  Often the struggler has given up,  When he might have captured the victor's cup,  And he learned too late when the night slipped down,  How close he was to the golden cron.

Success is failure turned inside out-- The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,  And you never can tell how close you are,  It may be near when it seems so far,  So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit--  It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.

-       Author unknown

[iamjacksbroken]

You never really know a place until you experience it at night.

Daytime is loud, bustling, bright, busy. There's no time to notice the details or feel alone with a place. I walk down California Avenue many times a day -- in the morning on the way to the office, at lunchtime to find sustenance, and in the evening to travel home. Each time, I notice the people, the food, the signs and the cars. But tonight, when I walked the street well after sunset, I felt for the first time that it was a street with secrets, a personality, and a past. It was the first time I ever thought about the fact that I'll forever remember this street as an emblem of this era in my life. It's difficult to articulate exactly why these thoughts arise most often at night, but it makes sense to me -- I wonder if the opposite is true for 'morning people'. I wonder if other night-dwellers know the feeling I'm describing.

Night is quiet, cool, close, alone. Try traveling to a place you think you know well by daylight, and let me know whether you discover anything new. 

[iamjacksbroken]

Words on Paper

I’ve always thought that some day I would write. Even as I spent the uncounted days of childhood contentedly absorbed in tales of fantastical worlds, devouring page after page as I experienced the lives of a thousand different characters, I knew that one day I would write one of these stories. Each one of us is the direct result of the books we’ve read, the stories that we’ve been told, and the people that we’ve known. I’m certainly no exception. I’m now 21 years old, on the verge of ‘adulthood’, and a habit of self-reflection reminds me every day that my views, my tastes, and even my morality are unmistakably derived from (what I hope are) the best bits of every story I’ve ever experienced. And because of that knowledge, I’ve always aspired to some day create worlds and characters and stories of my own. 

Some day. 

I realized recently that for most people, “some day” never seems to happen. Children dream and wonder, and adolescents hope scheme and strive... and then, adults forget. A lifetime of some days gives way to the regettable inevitability of never.

So here I am. Because we are the result of how we live every day, and I see no reason why I’ll find it any less daunting to put words on paper twenty years from now, if I can’t find the courage to do it today, and in all the days to come. 

I’ll end with a quote, from one author who has inspired and shaped me probably more than any other.

"I think that most of us, anyway, read these stories that we know are not "true" because we're hungry for another kind of truth: the mythic truth about human nature in general, the particular truth about those life-communities that define our own identity, and the most specific truth of all: our own self-story. Fiction, because it is not about someone who lived in the real world, always has the possibility of being about oneself." 

— Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

[iamjacksbroken]

“A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.”

E.B. White