A minor obsession...

I've always preferred tea over coffee.  My dad never liked coffee, and still doesn't to this day.  My mom will drink it, but not as obsessively as a lot of people in America seem to.  I've been drinking tea since I was pretty young; my mom would make it for me any time I had a stomach ache. Today, it's almost soothing for me to drink it.  

I'm trying not to drink much soda and sugary drinks.  I never buy soda when I go grocery shopping.  I try to only drink it when I go out to eat.  I drink 3 things at home; milk, water, and tea.  I keep variety in my drinking habits by buying a whole bunch of different kinds of tea.  My favorites so far are lemon and vanilla :)

Hot tea is good when I'm home and I have time to let it cool off, but not when I have a half-hour break at work and I need to go to Tim Hortons and have a quick bite to eat.  I began ordering fresh brewed iced tea, and now it's all I ever order when I go there to eat.  It's refreshing, and even though I get it sweetened they don't overwhelm the drink with sugar.  I got an iced mocha once...It just didn't compare.  

My fascination with iced tea didn't start there.  I used to get tea lot in the coffee shop in the Buffalo State's food court.  One of the guys who used to work there would make iced tea out of the herbal teas they offered.  He was one of my favorite employees of Sodexo.  I was hooked...until he didn't work there and none of the other employees knew how he did it.  I was very upset, but I still had my hot vanilla red tea to keep me happy.

I went with my boyfriend last week to his house out in the boonies.  He had to get braces checked out and I was able to go with him since I worked early the day we went and worked late the day we went back to Buffalo.  His mom had bought me a bunch of tea when I was staying at their house once because I was sick and she knew I liked it.  She gave all that tea to be to bring back to Buffalo, along with some Lipton cold-brew iced tea packets.  I was super excited when I saw this and made it right when I got home.  I've been drinking it nonstop ever since.  

My birthday is coming up, and I asked for an iced tea maker.  I'm reeeeally hoping I get one.  There's just nothing more refreshing than fresh brewed iced tea.  It tastes so much cleaner than soda and non-real fruit juice.  Ever since I've started drinking a bunch of the iced tea from Tim Hortons, I can't get myself to drink fountain iced tea from restaurants.  It has a weird, tangy taste to it.  

I'm happy about my new obsession.  It's definitely a healthy obsession.  It keeps me hydrated and won't burn my insides like soda can.  Also, there's no calories.  Yay for healthy drinks.  I do have a strong sweet tooth though, and I can't seem to drink tea without some sort of sweetener in it.  Maybe I'm just a southern girl at heart and need sweet tea flowing through me.  Either way, it's delicious and everyone should drink more fresh brewed iced tea.  

An Age of Awesome...

It's been a really long time since I've played a game that really grabbed onto me and kept me playing for days and days on end. I thought I found one last year when Ben got me Final Fantasy XIII for me for my birthday. While I enjoyed it, the game was a bit linear and held my interest for a while, but not for the entirety of the game. I liked it, but it did not become one of my favorite games.

I did not get Dragon Age when it first came out. I had heard good things about it, but living on a part-time retail salary keeps me from buying games all the time. A few months ago I finally decided to get it, and since I kept hearing such good things I made sure not to play it until I was done with all my school work for the semester. Good thing I waited so long because once I started, I didn't stop.

I'm a big fan of the LOTR series, both the books and the movies, and this game reminded me of the movies right away. An epic adventure against a great evil that would destroy everything unless properly taken care of. A typical scenario that led to greatness. I was glad my main character had a decent amount of personalization. I knew I could play the game more than once and not get bored since I would be trying to create a different type of person throughout the game play. For my first play through, I made a good elven mage. I'm currently working on a good (yet sometimes sassy) human rogue and an evil dwarven warrior.

The characters in this game are amazing. You can tell a lot of work was put into creating characters, their stories, and the voice acting. Once I met Alistair, I fell in love. He was definitely one of the best characters in the game; a silly, yet noble warrior. There was not one character who was badly created within this game. Each playable character is given a specialization from the start, but the player still has control on how each character ultimately turns out. You are able to customize each character and make them specialize in certain fighting style or magic use. A character can be different through each play-through.

I also love a game with choices, and this game is loaded with them. You chose everything. You chose what your character will say and what your character will do in each situation. The different choices that are made affect the people and places around you. All the choices that are made ultimately determine what the ending will be as well. I had to sit and think quite a few times in order to decide which side to take or how to answer someone I was talking to. If you want things to turn out one way, you better hope you're reacting in a way that will help you get what you want. It killed me whenever I chose something that made Alistair upset with my character.

It's a good thing I wasn't in school when I got the game. I would have failed out of college. I spent a good few months playing though this game. I only took a few breaks. I bought a few other games that took up my time for a little while. I also would stop once I realized I was getting headaches from staring at the TV screen too long.

I sadly do not have any of the downloadable content at the time, but I do plan on buying it all. I need to get some more money coming in before I can buy the many different additional stories I need to play.

It's now almost March, and I decided to get myself a birthday present: Dragon Age II. The game comes out a day before my birthday. I already preordered and paid for my game. I very much plan on waiting on line for the midnight release and barely getting any sleep the day it comes out. I'll also be pretty miserable that day since I'll be going home for a few days. My mind will be occupied by other things, but deep down inside the gamer will be pleading with me to go back to Buffalo and continue playing Dragon Age. I'm beyond excited to finally start playing this. I need to play and beat this game before I start graduate school.

I played the demo for this game and I'm already impressed. It's a new and improved version of the old. Faster paced fighting, better graphics, and the ability to keep conversations flowing like normal people (like in Mass Effect).

I'm eagerly awaiting the arrival of March 8th. That day will be bringing me much good in my life.

Steering away from the regular...

I work part-time in retail, so I'm not exactly making the big bucks at the moment. I like to play with food and make new and exciting things, but for now I need to keep things simple until I get a different job and get enough money to really experiment and go all out with my cooking experiments.

For now, I stick with simple improvements to my dishes. It's easy and I still get to experiment. I've found a few tricks that give my meals a slight kick out of the ordinary meal box.

I've discovered that adding an extract to hot cocoa mix gives it an awesome flavor that ordinary hot cocoa just can't achieve. I've only tried it with two different extracts: vanilla and almond. Vanilla is essential for baking so of course I have it on hand, and I needed almond to make my delicious rainbow cookie cake. I have them both on hand but I don't use them very often. Nothing makes a cold winter night bearable more than a nice cup of hot cocoa, so I've been keeping it on hand. While making it one night, I saw my almond extract and decided to add a drop of it to my cocoa to see how it would taste. I was delightfully pleased. I tried vanilla the next time I had hot cocoa, but I thought the almond gave the cocoa a much more enjoyable flavor kick.

I've decided my favorite potato is the red potato. I buy them all the time instead of other kinds of potatoes. They're small and I've always been a fan of potato skins and they have the best tasting ones. I was bored of just boiling them in salt water, so I decided to add a little kick to them, Once I'm done boiling them I drain them, put the stove on medium and put them back in the pot. I drizzle a bit of olive oil over them and sprinkle them with dried basil (one day I'll experiment with fresh herbs). It's such a simple addition but it definitely makes the potatoes much more special. I've made them for Ben several times and he loves them.

I've gotten bored with regular sandwiches as well, so I like to make my own little versions of quesadillas for lunch. They sell corn tortillas at Aldis that are pretty gross when you don't do anything to them, but have a nice crisp to them when you fry them. I usually just add shredded cheese and some form of meat to them and have this for lunch instead of a regular sandwich. I plan on playing with more ways to make them in the future.

Until the day comes that I can make extravagant meals every night, I'll stick with finding little tricks to make simple yet wonderful improvements to my food.

On another note, I plan on making lemon cupcakes with strawberry frosting tomorrow :). I'll let you all know how they come out.