#consuming food and media

[cupidsbed]

Ceviche Inspired Salad with X-Men First Class

I woke up today seriously craving salad. It's all I've been thinking about since I woke up this morning. Big problem? A few of my roommates absolutely loathe traditional salad, so I have to get creative. This recipe is heavily inspired by Mexican ceviche and I essentially turned it into a dish you can eat as a full meal rather than a topping! I paired the salad with some spice rubbed chicken and I think I ascended to the heavens. This recipe feeds around four people comfortably, or two particularly high people.

RECIPE

INGREDIENTS

For the Salad

1 can sweet corn, drained

2/3 can black beans, drained and rinsed

1/2 a small red onion

2 cups cherry tomatoes

3 large avocados

1 pinch tajin

1/2tsp basil

1/4tsp black pepper (white also works!)

1/4tsp dried dill

1/4tsp salt

1tbs salt (for the tomatoes)

1/2 lime

For the Chicken

2 chicken breasts

1/2 lime

1tsp tajin

1/4tsp cumin

1/2tsp paprika

1/4tsp cayenne pepper

1/2tsp black pepper

Hefty pinch of red pepper

1 tablespoon of cooking oil (I used olive)

Directions

Dump your drained sweet corn, and rinsed black beans into a large bowl.

Thinly slice your red onion and dump them into that same bowl.

Quarter your tomatoes and put them into a smaller bowl. Sprinkle your salt onto your tomatoes as evenly as you can and set them aside to allow the salt to soak up some excess moisture.

Dice your avocados and scoop them into the larger bowl. Mix up your bowl with a spoon or a fork, squishing the avocado slightly so it can stick to the other ingredients. I found this makes the texture a bit smoother and more cum in mouth worthy.

Add in your tomatoes and spices and mix again. Congrations! Your salad is done; now for the chicken!

Mix your spices for the chicken into a small bowl and set aside.

Slice your chicken into strips (size is your preference I like them fairly fat) and rub the spices onto both sides. You will have some left over that you can absolutely save and use later.

Line your pan with your cooking oil and cook your strips on a medium heat for about 4 minutes on each side or until cooked all the way through. Please keep in mind, I live in the mountains at about 5,000 feet in elevation. My chicken will cook a lot slower than someone at sea level or a lower elevation. Chicken becomes safe to eat at 165F (73.9C) if you have a temperature gauge please please please be sure to utilize it.

Plate the salad into a bowl, and place the chicken on top. Squeeze some lime on top and ta-da! You done it! You have completed your dish :)

A couple of notes before we move onto the nerd shit. You can very easily replace the chicken for something plant based instead. One of my roommates is vegan and I made this dish in a way that everyone in my household can enjoy. I cut him up a Morning Star Chicken Patty and cooked that in a separate pan and used the same spices (different mixture!! That one's contaminated!!). It'll give the same affect without leaving anyone out!!

I decided to pair this dish with X-men First Class. I've been pretty heavily hyperfixated on the X-men the past week or so after watching X-men 97' and I decided to start rewatching the entire series. I'm on the fifth movie in the series and I have been waiting for this one. First class is probably one of my all time favorites in this series. You can tell whoever wrote this script they grew up watching the cartoon or reading the comics. Obviously the writers and directors had their own take but I think it's such an amazing refresh from the nitty gritty of the first three (and the trash pile which was Origins).

During this time there was a lot of focus on World War II in superhero movies. And by a lot I mean the first Captain America came out the same year. I think it was very much needed. I don't even know how to put into words how horrific the Holocaust was and as a Jew seeing someone not only survive that, but rise and do incredible things means the world to me. Magneto endured horror beyond words, and he will always be a hero in my heart. He's the type of villain that has become the hero we needed because, in the words of 97', Magneto was right. We cannot expect acceptance without resistance. There is no assimilating into modern society. We are different, and we should celebrate those differences. In my case: I'm a bisexual trans jewish man and I'm so proud of who I am. I'm proud of my differences, I wear my yarmulke, my pride flags to show I will not fold in a society that is increasingly hostile against who I am on a fundamental level. I love the X-men series because it's not just a silly little super hero comic; it's a series that's full of diversity that's meant to empower the individual.

Thank you for listening to my ramblings, and please let me know how you like the food!

[dailyadventureprompts]

Every so often I'll encounter a piece of game design that makes me think "Oh, the person who made this has terminal math brain and has possibly never played at a table with people who are interested in actively having fun"

Case in point: this morning I was exploring options for tracking food/supplies in game and one homebrew had you calculating how hungry characters got by doing multiple levels of multiplication possibly involving negative or impossible numbers. Worse yet, the rules implied that not only should the party be tracking this every adventuring day, I as the DM should be tracking this for monsters and NPCs to figure out how hungry the party might be when they were encountered.

Add to this things like "Diet quality vs Appetite rating", a system for intermittent fasting, and a submechanic for detailing the statistical bonuses granted by the flavour profile/mouthfeel of certain dishes, what you get is a tangle of simulationist nonsense that'd torpedo the tempo of any session it was involved in.

Fundamentally what this homebrew gets wrong (and a lesson all you prospective homrebrewers should consider) is that it forgets that there's a difference between a game and a system: a system seeks only to model an effect, where as in a game we impose rules for the sake of creating a better experience. The hunger system starts from a good place (what if we overhauled the provisions system to make it a larger part of gameplay?) but fails to consider how you could make that fun at the table.

[pastasilly]

recent fandom-related art

(top - pacman and the ghostly adventures fanart: pacman x pinky fanart and how i think pinky would look with her body!!

bottom - bread barber shop fanart: its a screencap redraw of the heavy metal cupcake from episode 3!!)

[lore-grandma]

What would happen if you took a screenshot pressure washers, put it on it’s most powerful setting and just sprayed the shit out of a zombie?

[turkey-sandwich]

Shipping is like spice. It gives your media a nice kick. Too much spice is no good, however.

[screebyy]

Reading back through all my comic plans and unfinished ficlets and it's becoming blatantly obvious that the pinnacle of romance to me is eating food and watching tv together and I have literally no other thoughts about anything ever

[pa-pa-patato]

Every time I imagine any character eating they’re always eating with chopsticks cause the only time I actually see people eating is in anime :’D

[skunkes]

wishing i was any good at monster design so i cld kickstart figuring out talon's monster bat form if thats still gonna be a thing in his lore

[pencildragons]

opens firefox i am rotting how to stop rotting how to get the rot out of my brain how to be content how to stop feeling like something is hideously wrong how to identify the hideousness wrongness what is the rots identity what is the rot actually how to identify what the rot is i am rotting how to stop rotting.

[mrderbird]

"people should write dark fucked up stories because not everything has to be escapism" ok but what if the dark fucked up stories ARE the escapism. what then

[parme-san]

i always feel kind of let down when i see an opinion online that sounds like something my ultra-conservative-christian mother would have told me growing up

[amerasdreams]

Goebbels liked radio and movies as propaganda tools, he hated books--

He would have LOVED social media. Bite sized pieces of very basic info loaded with emotion? The masses will eat whatever we sell them! None of it even has to be coherent, we just have to highlight a grievance, get them hating, and we can lead them like sheep.

[amateuraspect]

all I do is consume, and it consumes me

[akkpipitphattana]

joke is so desperate for a romantic moment. he is so embarrassing

[fingertipsmp3]

A few times a year I get the urge to learn basically every language ever and then I give up because I get too ambitious. So my new rule is I’m never allowed to not be learning a language. I have to do at least one language lesson per day for the rest of my life

[imstillalexcomic]

This isn’t really meant to be a comic trashing my dad.

I do truly appreciate his commitment to education.  I do truly have a soft spot for his style of humor, which certainly influenced the development of my own.  I appreciate how he had this VHS-C camera that he was always bringing out and would let me use, sparking my love for movies and starting me on a path that led to me going to film school.

All those good things about him were real.

But so was the colossal amount of damage he caused.

If you happen to be a parent and are reading this right now, I’m going to ask that you consider this suggestion from a childless thirty-six year old:

You need to consider how you communicate with your child, and how communication doesn’t just mean the words that you use.

You’re telling your kids something with the foods you eat, the activities you engage in, etc…

…you communicate to your children with the media you consume.

The rhetoric against the trans community wasn’t as much in the spotlight when I was growing up, but every time my dad turned on the radio, he’d have my sister and I listen to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, or Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, etc…  One of the topics that’d come up frequently was queer people. 

Issues about Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, gay marriage, gay boy scouts…

The “gays” were an issue.  More than an issue really, they were a problem.  If someone was queer, these radio hosts were quick to villainize; “this teacher is going to turn their students gay,” “this troop leader is going to abuse his scouts,” you don’t want your kid to end up like that, do you?”

My dad would listen to these folks non-stop and nod along in agreement, all the while his extremely queer and aware of it child was sitting right behind him, listening to how she was some kind of monster.

So I hid. 

There could be no sharing about aspects of myself.  My parents would be listening to 770am or Fox News all the time.  If I share that I was queer, I’d be finished.  How couldn’t that be the case?  Every day they chose to listen to people that hate me, so they hate people like me. 

So I can’t let them know me.  I won’t let them know me.

Even though they never said that they hated queer people with their own words, they told me that they hated queer people every day with the media they chose, and in turn forced me to consume.

So again, if there are any parents reading this right now, consider my words.  Hate is a choice you make, and hate can be communicated with more than just words.

If for no other reason, you never know if that kid in the back seat is listening, listening to how you hate them.