Pashwar Naan & Mango Red Curry

Two and a half recipes today! Because it's Spring Break, I'm off work until next Tuesday (my birthday, by the way), and I was a little bored and I wasn't quite ready to get to grading on my vacation. Also, all this past weekend, Caleb and I and the rest of the Gamers Northwest gamers have been stuck inside the house during our Epic Disney Marathon. It was super fun, but also really exhausting. I felt like recharging a little by getting some time in the kitchen with my other favorite past time.

These two recipes today can definitely be made separately, but together, they make a fabulous Asian-ish fusion meal, which I had all to myself for dinner last night. Because I'm a lonely lady and the cat doesn't eat Asian-ish fusion. My point is, I have naan and Pashwar filling for days.

Healthy Foods: Cheesy Cauliflower Pizza

This pizza crust tastes exactly like the melted cheese on top of typical pizza, which is the best part, of course. I mean, for me, it's the part I can't stop nibbling on long after I've hit my 2-slice maximum.

This pizza crust is also extremely easy to make. To give a not too graphic example, I am currently under the heavy weight of yet another cold (that's what I get for teaching grade school), and I am also pleasantly full of delicious cauliflower pizza. This whole process took me about 30 minutes from start to finish to plate to mouth, and I even have left overs for lunch tomorrow!

Good Eats for Gamers: Fancy Pants Sam with Beauty and the Beast

These past few weeks, I've been stretching my gaming thumbs getting ready for the Gamers Northwest Disney marathon coming March 22. I've committed to playing a couple of different games I've been having some non-ironic and some ironic fun practicing. I signed up for Beauty and the Beast and Kingdom Hearts, both pretty different from what I'm used to.

I'll start with this: I didn't even know that there was a Beauty and the Beast game for the Super Nintendo! Belle was always one of my favorite Disney Princesses when I was little. It was between her and Ariel, because Belle has brown hair like me, and she really likes books like me. But Ariel is a mermaid, and damn that's cool! In Beauty and the Beast, you play as Beast, trying to persuade Belle to fall in love with you, while everything is trying to kill you... that's everything from wolves in the forest and some of the more malevolent enchanted household items in Beast's castle (which makes no sense to me, actually). It's a tough game (more on that later), and practicing it can work up a good appetite. For this game, being set in France, I felt a certain pressure to make a fancy version of my usual gamer fare: no veggie bologna sandwiches here. I came up with the poshest sammy I could: roasted tomatoes and grapes over caramelized onions, sautéed spinach and brie over toasted grain bread. I call it the Fancy Pants Sam.

It's delicious.

Fun Foods: Dani's Cheese Rolls

String cheese - it's a texture thing

Right now, my food cravings are pretty much only for the foods of my childhood. Mmm, (vegetarian) baloney and american cheese sandwiches with mustard, Gushers, Capri Sun, and string cheese. Oh goodness, string cheese!

I remember when I first saw a string cheese commercial in the 90's and I thought that was an inspired idea and I had to have some. Twenty years later, I still put string cheese in my lunch (of course, it's the light version now). This is why I can't be a real vegan. Also fish sticks.

Anyway, now that I am 26 27, I need more grown up ways to eat my childhood favorites. Here, now, is the homemade cheese roll or pizza roll (which is an ironic twist for string cheese since that commercial is all like "pizza without the pizza!").

Gamer Good Eats: Kraid's Cashew Cookies

Video games make me hungry. Well, everything makes me hungry, but video games frequently make me hungry because pretty much everything I notice in them reminds me of food, even the non-food objects. I swear the orbs in Devil May Cry and the health beads and munny in Kingdom Hearts give me the craziest craving for fruit gummy snacks.

This is a Chute Leech

And then there's Metroid... pretty much every enemy and environment in that series makes me think of food, whether it's tomato soup lava levels, or floppy pizza-like chute leeches in Metroid II. I've already made yummy fangy raspberry metroid cupcakes for Caleb's birthday last year.

But then, there's nothing like Kraid. He's the human-sized chubby crocodile that shoots things at Samus in Metroid I. While he himself doesn't really remind me of food, it's the things he shoots that get my tummy grumbling. During the game, he paces back and forth hurling his spikes at Samus. The spikes that come from his front are shaped like little syringes, but it's the spikes from his back, the ones shape like little crescents that I love. It weird, I know, but whenever I see them, I get an instant craving for cashews (they seem cashew-shaped and -colored to me). I get a hankering for some kind of cashew treat, so I decided to try out a cookie recipe to nom the next time Caleb does a Metroid run.

Kraid in Metroid