Relic Short Story: The Castle on the Hill

My mom recently found an old box of memories, and I was really surprised to find them. The box had been packed away in some corner of our last couple houses, and unlike my existing tablets and things that I had organized and review out of nostalgia every few years, I hadn't laid eyes on any of these documents and drawings for decades. Among them was this short story, dated June 2001, that I must have written as a creative writing assignment. I'm fairly impressed. For a story written by a 12-year-old, it's not half-bad. At least compared to some of my other jokes of attempts at creative prose.

Recipe: Brazilian Black Feijoada

It's been just shy of 8 years since I wrote this recipe I invented which was my early attempt at making a simple, easy Brazilian feijoada dish. Looking back on it, I'm super embarrassed at how lazy I was. Well, since then, I have made feijoada dozens and dozens of times for my family meals and it's gotten better and better. I think just in the past few months I've finally perfected it. For years, I didn't think it was possible for a non-Brazilian to manage to make this dish—its specific flavor was so elusive, especially without authentic Brazilian Sazon packets—but now I think I finally figured it out. And if blue-eyed, white-skinned, Idahoan me managed to cook it, you can too, no matter where you're from!

Brazilian Black Feijoada

"Uma delicia auténtica!"

 Ingredients

• 3 slices bacon, chopped
• 4 oz. pork, cubed
• 3 beef hot dogs, 2 brats, or 1 smoked sausage, sliced
• ¾ large onion, chopped and divided
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 cans black beans, drained*
• ½ tsp cumin
• 1 tsp. smoked paprika
• ½ tsp cracked pepper
• ¼ tsp. ground coriander
• 2 bay leaves
• cilantro, chopped

Directions

1. Brown the bacon, pork, and hot dogs in a cooking pot over medium high heat.
2. Set aside meats and sauté the garlic and half of the chopped onions in the bacon fat.
3. Add beans, seasonings, the rest of the onions, and 2 cups of water to the pot* and bring to a boil.
4. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes, then add the meat and simmer for another 15 minutes or until the flavors are combined and the pork is stained from the black beans. Stir occasionally. Add more water if it starts to get too thick, or uncover if it's too thin for you.
5. Add salt, pepper, and water to taste and to the desired thickness, and add desired amount of cilantro (or Italian parsley if you don't like cilantro)—I usually go with a half a bundle or so.
6. Serve with hot sauce, farofa pronta, Brazilian vinagrete salsa, sliced bananas, mashed potatoes, pão de queijo, steak, chicken, or whatever else you want, on a bed of Brazilian rice. Click the links for good recipes for each of those.
7. Enjoy!

*If you'd like to do it with dry beans in a pressure cooker, instead use ½ pound (1 cup) dry black beans soaked for an hour or so, 2 teaspoons of salt, ¼ teaspoon of baking soda, and 2½ cups of water. Pressure cook all the ingredients together (except cilantro) for 35 minutes with a natural release.

YIELD: About 5–8 servings.

Washes down well with...  Guaraná, Sprite, or fresh mango, guava, or passion fruit juice.

____

*Found at some Latin food markets

Eden: Argaenothruzil Re-imagined

Have I got a crazy story for you.

Remember this map that I posted on here two years ago after making it? I forgot that I did this, but I posted that map online on the Inkarnate database just for other people to see it. Little did I know that this map would be the inspiration for an alternate reality of Argaenothruzil born in the head of a completely different person!

A guy named Nitsuj (presumably Justin, which is an oddly similar name to mine as well) wanted to create a homebrew D&D world but lacked the skills to make a world map, so he looked around online. He stumbled upon my map on a Pinterest board and decided to use it as a base to craft his world, "Eden," around. He made up backstories and lore for each location on the map and build a large group of people (West Marches style) on his Discord channel.

He eventually deep-searched me looking for the creator of the map and showed me his work. It was crazy to introduce myself to his players as the original creator of the map they all played D&D on, and weirder still to hear the stories he came up with for each location. Below are the locations and the differences between them in this shadow-world of his:

Adventures in Coding, Part 2

It's been a couple of years now since I made this post about my coding accomplishments helping facilitate being a Dungeon Master, and I think it's high time I gave an update on those projects and a couple new ones I made. After all, my coding course and externship are long behind me, and now I actually have a coding job! It's been a long journey, and though coding isn't my first career choice, I feel blessed to have it.

Recreating the Voice Lines from Warcraft II

I was listening to the album Legend of the Boar Knight by Careless Juja over the past week or two (really awesome and recommended, by the way—the type of thing I'd love to make myself some day), and in an intermission track in the middle, the narrator imitated the voices from Warcraft 2, and it made me want to try my hand at it.

Relic Speech/Essay: Zerzo Seewok

This is a speech I wrote in my speech class way back in 2005. The prompt was to create "Zerzo Seewok," which could be anything. It was a imaginative exercise where basically anything goes, and you would explain what Zerzo Seewok was, how you found it, its characteristics, and so forth. The delivery of this speech didn't go so well, and the prose definitely hasn't aged well (this was back when I thought that talking like an 1800s poet sounded cool) but it was fun to write. I'm also tempted to someday adapt it to an SCP Foundation entry someday.

365 Memories of 2020

At the end of 2019, I decided I would do a year-long project by writing a single line of memories each day in the coming year. That way I would have an entire year's worth of miniscule journal entries to look back on. I had no idea of all the hard things that would crop up in 2020. But looking back, it was fun to see how many good times I had amid all the trials of the pandemic and quarantine. Below is an image with all of the text of those 365 memories with a picture I took of the sunset. I think it represents the fires of last year, but also the closing of a long day looking forward to a brighter tomorrow.