#the colonies

[hanover-mess]

The Yandere king is back!!

(Based on something I saw online)

[ethelnol]

no gestation without representation

[sw5w]

Ever Made Your Way As Far into the Interior as Coruscant?

STAR WARS EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones 00:51:29

The definition of the Interior as its own region comes from the 2019 Galactic Explorer's Guide which has a nice simplified map showing the regions.

I actually prefer this way of showing areas of the galaxy, based off of a geometric circular grid rather than the "wobbly" borders on other maps.

If we compare the borders of the Interior to the maps we have from the Essential Atlas, the Interior could be further broken into the Negs, the Northern Dependencies, the Southern Core, and the edge of the Hyperspace Anomalies we now know as the Red Honeycomb Zone.

[aaajaxolotl]

Feast Your Eyes: Fandom Cookbook Recipe Review #1

Are These Smuggled Goods? - Star Wars: The Ultimate Cookbook

Suddenly finding themself employed on a high-class spaceship, our intrepid multiverse-traveling chef Aurum Leuci prepares a traditional dish from the fungal forest planet of Narqui— along with some questionably-sourced side dishes.

Tonight’s menu: sourced from the Star Wars Ultimate Cookbook

Appetizer: Cantonican Cactus Bites, pg 163

Main Course: Narquois Rolls, pg 45

Dessert: Kullgroon Drops, pg 95

Full review under the cut!

Aurum Leuci’s Log:

[Begin recording.] Hey, uh, Chef Aurum here. Sorry I’m late. I think I must have miscalibrated my dimensional portal generator, because I absolutely did NOT intend to wind up on a Neimoidian ship orbiting some random colony world— Narq, I think?— much less in a kitchen full of apparently-smuggled Kullgroon fruit and Cantonican vegetation. Luckily, I can handle myself in a kitchen— so let’s hope for my sake the politicians on this ship don’t know their kitchen staff by name. I can at least make some kind of fancy dinner for them before I find a safe place to reactivate the portal. And besides— I want to try that smuggled produce.

I’ll check in with you after the next jump, once it’s safe. Aurum Leuci out. [End log.]

The Feast Your Eyes Recipe Rating Scale

In this series, I’ll be rating each recipe based on five factors, each of which can receive up to five points. These reviews will be written out-of-character, detailing my (AJ) opinions and experiences with the recipes detailed in the post. I eat almost entirely plant-based, so any substitutions related to animal products will be denoted in the descriptions of dishes. The rating scale is as follows:

Difficulty: How easy or hard was this recipe to follow? Harder recipes will score lower in this category, while easier recipes will score higher.

Ingredients: How easy or hard were ingredients to source? This category will be scored similarly to Difficulty, and any substitutions made will be denoted in the recipe’s section.

Immersion: How well does this recipe fit the universe or world that it’s from? High scores in this category mean high immersion, while low scores mean that it’s not particularly immersive.

Time: How much time did this take? Recipes that take less time will score higher in this category.

End Result: With the recipe followed as closely as possible (according to my dietary restrictions/ingredient sourcing capability), how did the final dish turn out? Higher scores in this category denote a better final dish.

Side Dish: Cantonican Cactus Bites

RATING:

Difficulty: 5/5

Ingredients: 5/5

Immersion: 3/5

Time: 3/5

End Result: 3/5

TOTAL RATING: 19/25

I came into this recipe REALLY wanting to give it a perfect rating. I love roasted brussels sprouts, and really, really wanted to like this recipe. It was straightforward to prepare, you could buy the ingredients at any grocery store, and it seemed like it would turn out really tasty. I was willing to put aside the fact that it’s just roasted brussels sprouts (not a terribly Star Wars-y dish) and was really hoping the taste would blow me away. Unfortunately, these turned out somewhat underwhelming. Despite following the recipe exactly, as you can see in the photo, these sprouts (and all of the tasty vegetables cooked with them, including fresh shallots and garlic) burned a little in the oven. This recipe definitely has potential- but as written in the cookbook, it’s somewhat middling.

Main Course: Narquois Rolls

RATING:

Difficulty: 5/5

Ingredients: 3/5

Immersion: 5/5

Time: 5/5

End Result: 5/5

TOTAL RATING: 23/25

This recipe was AWESOME, and a hit with my family. It only loses points on the sad fact that I wasn’t able to source enoki mushrooms (the main ingredient of the dish) and had to substitute in a mix of other mushrooms. Having done some research on the planet of Narq (also known as Narqui?), I don’t think this was terribly immersion breaking, since it’s a foresty, swampy planet with… large fungal forests! I would love to make it again with actual enoki mushrooms to see how those would have affected the taste and texture— these were delicious.

Dessert: Kullgroon Drops

RATING:

Difficulty: 5/5

Ingredients: 5/5

Immersion: 5/5

Time: 5/5

End Result: 5/5

TOTAL RATING: A perfect 25/25!

I was really skeptical about this recipe— it’s literally just frozen grapes and Jell-O dust. Surprisingly, this is my highest-rated dish from this review! Super easy, super quick (the only time sink is letting them freeze) and they come out delicious, chilly, and beautifully alien! They’d be a believable find in a snow-covered environment like Kullgroon, and they were absolutely delicious.

Tune in this Friday (6/7/24) for another fandom cookbook review!

[throwbackmovie]

Novie Edwards as Kit in the TV series THE HANDMAID’S TALE – 2018

[ecaloshay]

Bahasa

Bahasa is a funny thing. It literally means ‘language’, but when I hear people use it in the context of the name of a language, they mean Bahasa Indonesia, or Indonesian-Malay.

But Bahasa Melayu[1] is also a thing. Ask the Malaysians, Singaporeans, and Bruneians.

Regional variations aside, the two are almost the same[2]. Similar enough that a Malay-speaker could converse with an Indo-speaker, but different enough that occasionally there will be some words that just don’t work. My Malay is limited to the essentials[3] but I have been informed by my Indo friends that there are a handful of words which are completely different in meaning and some with variations in nuances.

There is also the minor issue where names for food are also same-same, but different. Don’t think that just because you know what a food item is in Malaysia, that if you ask for it in Indonesia that it will come out as you expect. Sure, it probably will most of the time, or it might have a little twist that you are unfamiliar with. Learn to be adventurous with your food.

One language-related experience I will always recall is when our friends went to Jakarta for another friend’s wedding. For convenience, group transport was organised to get us around.

On one such drive, one of my oldest friends, also Malaysian, stared thoughtfully out the window. Suddenly, her eyes lit up and she exclaimed, “Oh! It’s a hospital!”

She had seen a building marked rumah sakit. In Malay, rumah means ‘house’, and sakit means ‘pain’, so for the last minute she was trying to figure out what 'house of pain’ was.

I laughed because that perplexed me as well, and hospital was absolutely not where my brain went and the odds of that direction of the size of that building in that country was nigh on negligible.

An Indonesian friend laughed and replied, “Yes, it’s a hospital. Why, what it is in Malay?”

In unison, my Malaysian friend and I replied with a Malaysian accent, “Hospital”[5].

--

[1] Bahasa Inggris is English, for example.

[2] @disoriented has reminded me Indonesians also speak very quickly compared to Malaysians.

[3] Food and beverage, hygiene, and a few extra words and phrases[4].

[4] As the Malaysian immigration officer who noted the difference between my passport and my accent remarked after asking me if I speak the native tongue, “At least you know the important words.”

[5] I haven’t checked the etymology, but assume this was because of the British colonial influence in Malaysia and we adopted English words into Malay the way you’ll find Dutch words in Indonesian.

[agentianlegend]

I want to see a Revolutionary War movie from England’s perspective

Like just King George in a constant state of wtf are these colonial catkickers doing