#medium difficulty

[my-devil-may-cry-brainrot]

Enjoy witnessing me succumb to the dumb death loop again.

[artos-the-bear-ii]

Not the biggest deal in the world, but I just completed a medium difficulty Sudoku puzzle for the very first time. Kinda proud of it.

[the-mspfa-200-favourites-project]

Medium Difficulty

Homestuck as a story is made up of gaps in knowledge of the reader. This is fine, and in fact necessary to keep the story moving along at a reasonable clip; we don’t need to see all the chicanery of the Meteor Crew or everything that happened in the Beta Kids session or the Doomed Session. However, these gaps present useful “what if” launchpads for stories, or practice for storytelling. After all, you know what preceeds the gap, and you know what happens after the gap, so you can extrapolate what happens IN the gap. Medium Difficulty is one of those stories, because it follows the Alpha Kids Session that was only briefly seen in Act 6 Act 4 and Act 6 Act 5 respectively.

So far, the execution is…good? I guess? Idk. I’m not that interested in following the Alpha Kids Session, tbh. Like, what I saw in Homestuck proper was good enough for me! It was enough for me to know that the Alpha Kids’ primary purpose in their game was waiting, and that’s what they did. That’s all I need to know, and Act 6 Act 5 did a good job of filling in anything else I need to know (like the Troll Fusion Sprites). It’s kind of like that writing advice, “if what you are writing isn’t the most exciting part of your character’s history, why aren’t you writing about that.” And the Void Session, in my opinion at least, is in fact not the exciting part of all of these characters history. That being said, this seems to be a reasonable approximation of that gap in history, so if you ARE in fact interested in what could have happened within that gap, then maybe take a look at this one? It has upd8ed in over a year, unfortunately, but with all of the fanadventures we’re talking about now in the modern era, there’s always the chance the author could pick it up again.

[bugbyte]

POTATOES.

I made this recipe with chicken for dinner tonight:

The Best Crispy Roast Potatoes Ever

These are the most flavorful crispy roast potatoes you'll ever make. And they just happen to be gluten-free and vegan (if you use oil) to bo

The title is extremely accurate.

The recipe is also flexible enough where you can kinda cheat here and there (I didn’t have all the exact herbs and stuff, and I microwaved the flavored oil mix subbing in butter + olive oil for other fat, which is a definite cheat but still tasted excellent) and even with a bunch of swaps and cheats they were still some of the most glorious potatoes I’ve ever eaten.

I made these once before, like years ago, but I need to get them back on the rotation for nights when I have the energy to prep a bunch of stuff. The texture is so perfect aaaaaaaaaaaaa

The chicken was whatever but I could have consumed a heaping plate of these alone and been happy.

[jjsanguine]

Foodie sanguine feat J Aqua: beef and black bean curry, fried rice and roasted chicken

J Aqua eating an already protein rich curry with fried rice and chicken is the type of greed they talk about in the Bible or on a gymfluencers Instagram during their bulk.

Ingredients:

170g Thai red Curry paste

400g diced beef

250g coconut cream or milk

1 can of black beans

A few handfuls of spinach

≈1 tablespoon of chilli flakes

≈2 teaspoons of salt

Miscellaneous amount of water

Miscellaneous amount of milk

Miscellaneous amount of White rice

Optional: Nigerian fried rice

Optional: grilled chicken wings

Notes

I just followed the instructions on the jar of curry paste, but since I was using beef and not chicken I boiled the beef with water first so that it wouldn't be all tough and chewy by the time the curry was done.

If I boiled with milk it would be so curdled by the time the beef was soft, even though it's oat milk.

I added milk to the curry sauce later so it wouldn't be too thick

I added black beans because using just beef is expensive and also I don't have mangetout.

If you aren't a gym lad then you can eat the curry with white rice like me.

[jjsanguine]

Foodie sanguine: salmon wrap that just about blew my nose off (positive)

We don't have vegetables in the house right now apart from sweet appears, scotch bonnet chillies and spring onions, and I should have used onions to fulfill my salad craving.

Ingredients

1 salmon fillet (1)

1 tablespoon of cornmeal

2 tortillas (2)

A few spoons of cooked rice

Chilli mayo

wasabi paste (optional)

A scotch bonnet pepper (3)

Tissue and a child drink for when you realise you've made a mistake.

Method

Cut the salmon in half.

Pour the cornmeal onto baking paper and roll the salmon in it so it's coated.

Grill the salmon for about 10 minutes, turning halfway through cooking.

Mix rice, chili mayo, and wasabi, then scoop and equal amount onto each tortilla you're using.

Dice the scotch bonnet and add it to the tortilla along with the salmon. (3)

Roll up each tortilla and grill them.(4)

Enjoy your wraps and realise that that thing about pepper going up your nose isn't a myth.

Notes

seasoned by J Florid with I don't know what, but her spice mix contains garlic and chilli flakes.

Or 1 if you have a large tortilla.

Ill-advised.

I have a grill/sandwich press but I suppose you could use a frying pan and spatula for this. If you're good at rolling tortillas you could skip this but I'm not, so do this so my wrap won't fall apart as I'm eating it.

[jjsanguine]

Foodie sanguine: mochi ice cream increasingly abstracted from cheesecake

A while back I bought mochi ice cream (actually fruit sorbet) and I must have been having some real nutrient deficiency because they're nearly half their weight in sugar. So they've just been languishing in the freezer and actually melted into a slab when someone left the freezer door open. But I found a use for them (and the too sweet biscuits I bought the other day.)

This is a modification of this recipe. But there's no eggs in this mochi version, so it's incidentally vegan.

Ingredients

6 balls of mochi ice cream or sorbet ≈192g 6¾oz (I used berry sorbet with no dairy)

250ml 8½ oz coconut cream (NOT coconut milk, coconut cream. Also don't use the organic stuff.)

250ml 8½ oz vegan whipping cream

60g 2oz flour

200g 7oz / 10ish oat biscuits

50g 1¾ oz butter

Pinch of salt

Optional: 50g 1¾ oz flour

Method

Preheat the oven as high as it'll go.

Crumble up the oat biscuits and mix with butter. (1)

Spread your biscuit mixture out in a cake pan lined with foil or baking paper. Bake in the oven for 10 ish minutes. (2)

Remove the cake pan from the oven and leave to cool while you work on the cheesecake batter.

Add the mochi ice cream to a mixing bowl and melt in the microwave. (3)

Add the mochi, coconut cream, salt, and 60g flour to a blender, and blend until smooth. (4)

Pour the mochi mixture back to the mixing bowl and stir in the whipping cream. Make sure it's fully incorporated.

Preheat the oven to 160°C.

Place the cake pan with the biscuit base into a larger baking pan that will serve as the water bath (5), then slowly pour the cheesecake batter into the cake pan. (6)

Put the baking tray with the water bath and the cake pan into the oven for 55 minutes, or until there's a slight wobble in the centre of the cheesecake.

Leave the oven door cracked so the cheesecake can cool for at least 30 minutes before putting it in the fridge to set. Preferably overnight but for at least 6 hours.

Enjoy.

Notes

Alternatively, you can mix 50g flour with the butter so that it's like crumble/streusel topping and mix that with the crushed oat biscuits, but that's optional.

I used a 20cm 8 inch pan for this.

Mine were already partially melted so I don't know how long it'll take, but you want the mochi to be soupy, but not like, boiling.

I suppose you could do this a hand mixer/whisk but you might end up with unincorporated mochi dough.

The original recipe link has a diagram showing how to construct a water bath even if you don't have water tight cake pans.

I actually spooned it in, because playing it in all at once scattered my base one time.

Mochi I used below:

[jjsanguine]

Foodie sanguine: enriched oat bread

A while back I was short on flour but had a craving for bread so I crumbled up some homemade oat cookies and added them to the flour. They were delicious but i didn't write down any measurements so here's an actually reproducible version that doesn't require you to put cookies in your spice grinder.

I assume you could bake this in an oven but I get better results when I steam bread. The bread isn't like a doughnut, more subtly sweet like a brioche.

Ingredients for 6 rolls

100g ≈3½ oz oats or oat flour

200g ≈7 oz Wholemeal flour

50g ≈1¾ oz cup plain flour, plus extra for kneading

7g 1½ teaspoons yeast

20g 4 teaspoons brown sugar or maple syrup

Pinch of salt

Pinch or two of baking spice mix (cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, ginger)

200g 7oz milk or water

25g 1½ tablespoons Butter

½ teaspoon Vanilla extract

Miscellaneous amount of water for steamer

Method

Add dry ingredients (oats, wholemeal flour, plain flour, yeast, salt and spices) to a mixing bowl and mix thoroughly.

Add wet ingredients (milk, butter, vanilla, maple syrup/sugar) to the mixing bowl and mix everything together. (1)

Cover the mixing bowl for like 45 minutes or however long it takes for the dough to double in size.

Put around 40g 1⅓ oz of flour on a chopping board or plate. Just in a pile, don't flour the surface.

Scoop roughly a 6th of the dough and roll it in the flour so you can handle the dough without it being too sticky. Repeat with the rest of the dough so you have 6 roughly equal balls of dough covered in flour.

Put room temperature water in your steamer. (2)

Flatten one ball of dough and fold it in half. Fold the ball of dough in half 5ish more times, and then roll it back into a ball.

You could either flatten the ball slightly with your hand or poke a hole in the center and form it into a bagel, but after shaping place this roll into the steamer. Don't worry if the rolls aren't that smooth.

Repeat steps 7 and 8 with the rest of the dough balls. (3)

Switch on your steamer to a medium low heat (4) and cook the rolls for around 15-20 minutes—you'll know they're done when the bread springs back slowly when you press it.

You could eat the bread right away but if you want a more prominent crust you can bake the rolls in an oven or air fryer for 10-15 minutes on high heat before eating. (5)

Notes:

I used the dough hooks on my hand mixer, but this dough is very wet so don't worry about kneading with your hands. You could just mix with a wooden spoon till all the flour is incorporated.

If you don't have a steamer then a large pot with a upside down pie tin in it would be effective. Remember to put baking paper on top of the pie tin.

It's best to cook all of the dough as soon as possible because overproofed dough won't rise as well, but you can keep raw dough in the fridge for a day or two.

This is so that the water doesn't boil away too quickly. The water heating up slowly will proof the dough, so you don't need to wait for that. Keep an eye on the steamer and add more water if it boils away too quickly.

I would recommend storing the leftover bread in the fridge in foil or an airtight container because of the moisture content. You can toast or bake the bread out of the fridge.