Cooking Up A Storm

Really cooked up a storm yesterday. Mostly because I started out misjudging how much raw food I needed... and ended up deciding to just cook it all and store for the future. I cooked 15 different dishes, plus a drink - Karela water. Karela (bitter gourd) water is very good for one's blood sugar.

Marinating paneer and swai fish fillet in slightly different marinades - both starting with tandoori spices, lemon, oil and yoghurt.

Beautiful New Zealand lamb shoulder cuts before I butchered them with my non-existent knife skills. These were used for the Kerala style lamb stew.

Sweet bell peppers being washed - I love those colors.

The bell peppers chopped two ways. The round slices were for a sweet chilli pepper dish, while the long thin slices go in other vegetable dishes.

Peas were boiled and half-cooked up front, then later added to different vegetable dishes.

A huge portion of Karela water. This came out from the pressure cooker used to cook the Karela. (Yep, no oil!). This will last me a few days - and boy is it bitter.

Spinach potatoes, cooked with very little spices. I had mistakenly boiled a lot of potatoe (10 large potatoes), so ended up using it in multiple dishes. This one is more about the taste of the spinach.

Green beans, potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach cooked in red chilli and tandoori spices. Its got a little bit of zing to it, so the potatoe (I'm going to continue to spell it as "potatoe", so screw everyone) helps calm that down a tad.

Broccoli, carrots, snap peas with garlic and zeera. All the vegetables were either steamed or blanched first, then stirred over a low flame with flavoring ingredients.

Bell peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, peas, carrots, spinach - a full vegetable medley.

Karela with grilled onions. A little bit of salt while pressure-cooking the karela made it slightly less bitter.

Pork stew with potatoes.

Garlic peas. Lots of garlic, lots of zeera, and curry patta.

Kerala style lamb stew made with New Zealand lamb shoulder chops, and a bit of pork.

Paneer cooked simply with just haldi and zeera.

Sprouts stir fried with onions and a dark sauce.

Sweet Thai chilli bell peppers.

Potatoes mashed with lots of garlic and chaat masala. This one is really tasty!

Masoor daal with tadka.

Paneer marinated in tandoori spice, dahi, lemon, oil.

Swai fish fillet marinated in yoghurt, tandoori spices, lemon, oil.

Oh, and topped it off with Bread Pudding, which turned out pretty well. I'll cook again in 2012.

Gunfighter at the Just OK Corral

Here’s the design for our main character.  Great work by Erika on creating these images.

We went for a Clint Eastwood-ish look, with open clean lines and colors.  Clint Eastwood was a no-brainer… after having watched the Man With No Name trilogy over a hundred times, I can’t think of any other looks for a main character in a western.

Oh, for those in the discussions, our man is not a smoker.  I know every western gunfighter worth his salt and riding to a Morricone theme would roll his own smokes.  But we’re sort of anti-smoking (except for the celebratory cigar, of course).

Anyway, here’s our man, in the opening scenes, when he’s challenged by a new gunfighter.

And here he is moving into his fighting stance, getting his overcoat out of the way.  Cool, eh?

Duel to the Death! (or to the Respawn)

A quick note on the game I’m working on.  Its a Wild West type  gun duel. 

You’re Clint Eastwood.  Or Lee Van Cleef.  Or Yosemite Sam.  Whoever you want to be.  And you have to work your way up as a gun-fighter in the wild west. 

I’ll post information about the gameplay, artwork, and music in a while.  Most of it is in a fairly advanced stage, I just need to find time to write about it.

Creating a New Game

I’ve been on Twitter for the last couple of years, in favor of blogging.  For a lot of topics, where only quick updates were needed, Twitter was working quite well.  And laziness helped – its far easier to send out tweets than to write a blog post!

I’m back now, to chronicle a journey to make an iPhone game. 

I’ve always loved video games.  Being drawn into a completely different world.  Expanding my mind, letting go of reality for a little while.  So now its time to work on a game myself!

This is definitely a first, and I’m a big data-collection and incremental-approach kind of guy.  So the first game will be a short and quick one, designed to be available to the public within 1-2 months. 

I’ll keep posting more about the game, right here, regularly.  And to quote Vic Romano;  Don’t Get Eliminated!

Research vs Plagiarism

Wednesday Workout

Cardio – Elliptical

Time taken = 1 hour

Distance covered = 5.41 miles

Calories burnt = 623

Weights:

Shoulders - 2 exercise X 4 sets, total of 16 sets

Back - 2 exercise X 4 sets, total of 16 sets

Wednesday Workout

Cardio – Elliptical

Time taken = 2 hours

Distance covered = 10.78 miles

Calories burnt = 1,240

Monday Workout

Cardio – Elliptical

Time taken = 1 hour

Distance covered = 5.38 miles

Calories burnt = 619

Thursday Workout

Cardio – Elliptical

Time taken = 2 hours

Distance covered = 10.94 miles

Calories burnt = 1,264

Wednesday Workout

Cardio – Elliptical

Time taken = 20 minutes

Distance covered = 1.71 miles

Calories burnt = 194

Weights:

Shoulders – 3 exercises X 3 sets each = 9 sets

Back – 2 exercises X 4 sets each = 8 sets

Quadriceps – 1 exercise X 3 sets

Calves - 1 exercise X 3 sets