CHEESY LEEK, ONION, AND MUSHROOM PIE

I based this recipe on one that Nigel Slater wrote up last November, but I wanted to add more vegetables, and I didn't have any crème fraiche. As such, the filling in my take on his recipe has little in common with Nigel's original. Despite being vegetarian, this is definitely more of a "comfort food" than it is "healthy."

OVERVIEW

Prep - Quick, less than 10 minutes

Cook  - About 90 minutes, in stages.

Serves - 4-5 as a main dish 

You'll need - Leeks, Onions, Mushrooms, Parmesan, Soft Cheese, Cream, Flour, Eggs, Butter

It's difficult to eat a 'reasonable portion' of this pie. You've been warned.

RECIPE

Start with the crust - measure out 180g of butter (about a stick and a half) from the fridge, then dice it into cubes about a quarter inch to a side. Add in 300g of flour (one and a quarter cups) and (with clean hands) squish the chunks of butter into the flour, until all your little butter cubes have been squashed/mixed into a semi-consistent "dry slurry" of flour and butter. Drop in an egg yolk and about 50ml of water (about a quarter cup) . Mix that up with your hands until it looks like dough, then ball it up and stick it in the fridge for a bit.

While the dough chills, slice about 2 pounds of leeks into half-inch rounds, then rinse those to get rid of any sand. Leeks are delicious, but they've got that unfortunate trick of hiding sand between their layers, like an onion that spent too long at the beach. Once cleaned, toss the leeks into a heavy pan with more butter (half a stick) as well as salt and pepper, cover them, and cook them on low heat for a solid 20 minutes, stirring once or twice as you go. You don't want much color on the leeks; cooking them gently keeps their flavor mild.

While the leeks cook down, grab about 15 button mushrooms, clean and quarter them. Slice 4 cloves of garlic thinly. While you're at it, slice up an onion into thin strips. You can probably put the cutting board away after that.

The leeks will probably be about done when you finish, so tip those into a bowl and replace them with the mushrooms and garlic. Those won't need a lid, just stir them occasionally for 10-15 minutes over low/medium heat while you return to the crust. Add salt and pepper; you probably don't need more butter - the leaks will have left a decent sheen on the pan - but keep an eye on the garlic so that it doesn't burn. As the mushrooms cook down, they'll (ideally) leak moisture into the pan so the garlic doesn't dry out, but such things are fickle. 

This is a good time to preheat the oven to 395f (or 200c if you can use the word "chuffed" in a sentence). Toss a large baking sheet in there to heat along with the oven, and clear a (lightly floured) space on your counter to roll out your dough.

Working slowly, flatten the chilled dough-ball on the counter with a rolling pin, enjoying the wonderful smells around you. Roll it out to a thin pie crust, probably a scant 1/4 inch. You want it to be a bit bigger than a dinner plate. Once it's there, transfer it to a sheet of parchment paper, but leave it on the counter for now.

The mushrooms & garlic should be done around the same time as your crust, so transfer them to the bowl of leeks, add a bit of oil to the pan (if needed) and then cook the onions. Again, low/medium heat will work just fine.

While the onions caramelize, prep the cheese. Start with parmesan - you're looking for 80g of parmesan (or 3 ounces) as well as about 140g of a soft and creamy cheese (5 ounces) - I used a package of Boursin since it was getting old, but goat cheese would work great here too. Grate the parmesan, and break the soft cheese up into smallish chunks.

The onions probably still need time, so give them a stir and prep your egg wash by cracking an egg into a small bowl, whisking it, and tracking down a pastry brush.

When the onions are ready (I cook the tar out of onions, since I prefer them to be a bit noodlish) you can add all the other vegetables to the pan. Add in a sprinkling of flour to help it thicken. Stir that all together, add in the cheeses, and pour in about half a pint of heavy cream (about a cup). Let all of that melt together for a bit, stirring frequently, until the cream is absorbed. 

Dump the filling to the center of your pie crust, then fold the crust partway up around it, working around the sides and leaving the center open. Brush the crust with your egg wash, then carefully transfer the pie (You can use the parchment paper to "slide" the pie) onto your preheated baking sheet.

Just look at that wonderfulness. Oozing creamy, cheesy vegetables.

Let the pie cook for about 40 minutes, then allow 10 more for it to cool. Enjoy!

INTERLUDE II - WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

This narrative interlude focuses on Trixie's background, and takes place between ANNIHILATION ADJACENT EPISODE II and EPISODE III.

PLAY NEON WHITE

Neon White was much more fun than it had any right to be. It was developed by Angel Matrix, a collaborative group of independent developers, and published by  Annapurna Interactive.

Annapurna has published some good stuff - they have an impressive catalog of games in their past; some that I recognize like What Remains of Edith Finch, Outer Wilds. Annapurna also published a few titles in my own backlog, like Sayonara Wild Hearts, The Artful Escape, and Stray.

DIVING RIGHT IN

On the surface, it's hard to say exactly why I enjoyed Neon White. As a first-person shooter, most of the game's levels are incredibly short - the longest take perhaps 5 minutes to complete, but most of them will be closer to 45 seconds.

There are no real narrative choices to be made in the game; but almost every level has a hidden collectible, and finding those collectibles (gifts for NPCs) drives the story forward with a given NPC. Tying the character-focused plot advancement to in-game collectibles makes the overall game feel sort of like a visual novel, but it works.

The intro trailer for Neon White is gorgeous.

The enemies aren't particularly imaginative - nearly all of them stand in a fixed location, firing at you when you come within range. They're not particularly complex either, most of them are just black silhouettes of demons and such.

THE STYLISH EXECUTION

The game is certainly stylish though; it opens with a slick anime sequence that explains the game's premise - that you're a sinner tasked to clear out demons who have invaded heaven. You've lost your memories from life - those gradually come back as you move through the game - and you're in competition with the other Neons (that's what they call sinners) to destroy the most demons.

That theme - fighting demons as a damned soul visiting heaven - is well represented throughout the every aspect of the game, be it through the level design (lots of clouds, golden arches, etc), weapons (more on that in a bit), art (Neons all wear white masks made of plot), and the NPCs.

In any shooter, the weapons your character wields are practically a character in their own right. Anyone who has played Halo would recognize the iconic pistol of the first game. The weapons in Neon White were clearly chosen deliberately. Each is a classic shooter archetype - a pistol, a sniper rifle, a submachine gun, a shotgun, an automatic rifle, and a rocket launcher - and is represented by a card. Fire ammunition, and your card will show a gradually reducing "meter" until you run out of ammo. 

Alternately, you can "discard" a weapon to trigger a traversal skill instead. Discard your pistol for a mid-air jump, or discard your sniper rifle to lunge forward and cross a long gap - many of the level "shortcuts" rely on efficient use of your weapon discards in order to navigate the level as fast as possible.

The game's real appeal comes from the careful crafting of the various levels within it - it's a speedrunning game (the first I've played) where it's sort of a given that you will be able to complete all the levels. The trick is in completing them as fast as possible. Every level feels like a race forward - often against a "ghost" representing your previous "best time" - where you run/jump/
shoot/etc in a headlong sprint to the end of the level. 

When you've completed the level quickly enough you'll rank on a global leaderboard, and can see how many other players have beaten your "best" time. When you complete a level in decent time, you feel like a badass.

After 40ish hours spread over a couple weeks, I did *not* 100% Neon White. I did manage to "Ace" each level, but skipped the "Level rush" modes you can unlock toward the end, and I missed a few of the more annoying achievements - for example defeating a few "boss fights" before the boss enters their final stage.

THE FRIENDS YOU MAKE ALONG THE WAY

Most of the game's story is told through conversations with the game's major NPCs - some of them are people your character knew in life, and others work in Heaven to help Neons with their tasks. They're all pretty compelling characters - the writers for this game had a lot of fun with their dialogue. Without going into too much detail, there are a lot of jokes in the game, and nearly all of them are at your main character's expense.

The dialogue in the game is definitely a mood.

At the end of the day, what I really loved about Neon White was the originality of it. I've never played a "speedrunning" game, and it was a refreshing way for me to engage with a shooter. It's also incredibly clean and polished - one of the benefits of their "basic" design aesthetic is that everything (the level design, jumping/discard systems, weapon balance, etc) feels satisfying and tight. It gets nine heavenly delights out of ten; against my better judgement, I'm pretty sold on Neon White.

ANNIHILATION ADJACENT - EPISODE II: OF PIRATES AND DRAGON TURTLES

This is the second recap episode for ANNIHILATION ADJACENT, covering the events of a game that took place on April 13, 2024. It takes place directly after EPISODE I.

INTERLUDE I - A CARVED DOLPHIN

This narrative interlude focuses on Buddy's background, and takes place between ANNIHILATION ADJACENT EPISODE I and EPISODE II.

ANNIHILATION ADJACENT - EPISODE I: TROUBLED WATERS

This is the first recap episode for ANNIHILATION ADJACENT, covering the events of a game that took place on March 30, 2024.|

AN ODE TO COSTCO ROTISSERIE CHICKEN

A roast chicken at my local Costco costs 5 dollars. Let's be clear - this product is not an ethical way to consume chicken. There have been numerous articles by qualified investigative journalists involving hidden cameras, lawsuits, and unhealthy treatment of their birds over the years. I in no way want to undermine their important work. I struggle with the idea of ethical consumption daily, and this post is my approach to consuming chicken.

Just look at that bird - it barely fits in the box!

AN ETHICAL DILEMMA

If you want to treat chickens with respect in the United States, you are at a crossroads: you can raise them (ethically) yourself, pay a premium to somebody else (who did), not eat them at all (go vegetarian), or compromise on your values in the face of capitalism (my choice). If you think there's a fifth option not listed here, we probably have different definitions of ‘ethical consumption.’

Personally, I don't lose sleep over this moral compromise. My wife has told me stories of her own experiences raising chickens, and of broiler chickens specifically. Every breed is different, but raising broiler chickens depressed her. 

Broilers have been bred for one purpose, to the point that they aren't really that interested in actually being a living creature. While most breeds will play, explore, wander around, relax in the sun, or do other chicken stuff, broilers want to eat. That's about it. They'll eat until they're too fat to move. They're usually slaughtered at 14 weeks, so they don't live long enough to have major health issues due to this lifestyle. Costco chickens are genetically modified beyond your standard broiler to be particularly enormous; visitors from other countries will remark on how there's no way they could just be regular chickens - they're too big. 

It's worth noting here that Costco doesn't make a profit on their birds - they couldn't, at the price they sell - they instead use them as a hook to pull in and retain members. They know that their customers think about those cheap and enormous chickens every time their membership card needs to be renewed.

To summarize, the idea of these chickens is kind of gross, but also exceedingly economical - if you're going to consume an land-animal protein with minimal suffering per dollar per pound, they're among your best options. Other stores sell (equally unethical) smaller birds for more money. Given all that, I would rather support Costco than, say, Tyson. 

Every so often I'll pick up a Costco chicken. Because as unethical as buying (any chicken at modern American grocery stores) can be, Costco chickens are a wonder. So let's dive into making the most of this ethically dubious purchase.

DAY 1 - BRINGING THE BIRD HOME

Wonderful smells. Delicate meat that falls off the bone. A ridiculously simple day for meal prep - you can spend the evening doing something fun, productive, or relaxing. 

Food prep doesn't really need much elaboration, just figure something out to round out the meal - you're looking for vegetables. Make a salad, or prep something like lima beans or steamed vegetables, and call it a day. A sheet pan roast works well here too. Everybody can have their preferred piece of chicken, dark or light meat. Celebrate the bird - think about Thanksgiving on a smaller scale, brought to you by capitalism and the American way. Various world cultures celebrate death with a party - a funeral without the morose decorum of western civilization. Costco chickens find little enough joy in life, but can still be honored through conscious thanks in their death.

DAY 2-3 - EASY MEALS FOR DAYS

In my own household of two people, there's still plenty of chicken left on day 2 or 3. This is the time for chicken sandwiches, quesadillas, or for low-effort fajitas. Start thinking about what you're going to do with that tasty stock once there's nothing left but bones.

My wife is partial to a chicken sandwich here - a bit of avocado perhaps, some lettuce, cheese, and a few slices of cheddar cheese - all tucked between a few slices of home-baked sourdough.

I'm more likely to snack on a chunk of chicken, grabbing a leg or wing as a snack when I walk past the fridge. 

Sometimes I'll make a pie instead - some celery, mushrooms, flour and milk as a base, with frozen peas and chicken thrown into the mix as I tip it all into a crust. Such things don't require a full bird - you can stretch a couple pieces this way to make a vegetable-forward confection that still packs plenty of carnivorous flavor.

DAY 4 - SOUP TIME

Day 4 (or 5, or 6) approaches the line for how long that tasty bird (or what's left of it) will still be good to eat. It's the point where I break down the bird - I dice up any remaining breast meat, and I separate light and dark meat into containers - my wife prefers the former while I prefer the latter. 

This is usually a snack-forward practice wherein I scarf anything that "looks too weird" to serve others. I'm that guy who will dig out and devour all the unmentionable chunks that aren't quite "meat" but aren't crunchy enough to be "gristle" either. This includes the kidneys, tucked in near the thighs in a hollow beside the spine. 

Once I've removed anything conceivably edible, including the crispiest and most delicious bits of skin, I toss the carcass - bits of skin, bones, etc (it's all delicious) into our instant pot. I tip in the bits of gelatinous goop as well - it's all flavor. 

There are a million recipes for stock online, you don't need another one. Think about what recipe you're going to use chicken stock for - for me it's usually something like a Chicken Tortilla Soup - I'll update this in the future with a recipe for that.

The soup ingredients can drive your stock add-ins, and will open up the ugly/weird/inedible parts of the vegetables for your stock. If you're making a soup with carrots, dice up the carrots (for the soup) and put the (otherwise discarded) carrot end into the stock pot. Same goes for the ends of your onions. Vegetable discards won't get you everything you need, but they'll give you a good base. You'll probably need to throw in half a carrot, half an onion, some bay leaves, some thyme if you've got it, salt and pepper. Use a recipe if you aren't sure, or experiment with something new. Ginger is a fun (and distinctive) herb to throw into a stock.

If you aren't ready to make a stock immediately, you can also save the carcass for a future soup - bag it, label it, and stick it in the freezer for later.

THE LAST BITES

Following a pattern like this one, I feel good about my Costco chicken experience. Meals for several days, with every part of it - bones and all - put to use; it feels like a respectful way to treat an animal that society has deemed unworthy of love.

It isn't a vegetarian mindset, but I'm also not a vegetarian - it's an ethical compromise I make in an unethically consumerist world. It's delicious. It won't change the world, but it helps me sleep a bit better (with a stomach full of chicken) some nights.

PLAY PLANET ALPHA

I found Planet Alpha to be a fun, short little game that was well worth the 4 dollars I paid for it. The game has no dialogue, but does a great job of showing rather than telling. You play as an alien explorer on a hostile planet. You can move, jump, time-manipulate, and crouch-walk your way through various threats in your consistent effort to reach the right edge of the screen.

A HOSTILE PLANET

The first thing emotions struck me upon starting up Planet Alpha were concern and regret. You start the game moving (very slowly) across a dead, featureless landscape. If I wanted that, I'd have moved to Arizona. Don't come after me; Arizona has some redeeming features... I just don't think humans should live anywhere where they're dependent on functioning climate control systems as a condition for survival. If a power outage is a life-threatening problem for you in July, I think you should move somewhere more hospitable, where there's also water.

Eventually the setting improved; the desert gave way to hills, valleys, forests, and more - and did so beautifully. Say what you will about Planet Alpha, Adrian Lazar (who apparently has little online presence to link towards) envisioned a gorgeous world in vibrant color that brings immediate comparisons to properties with proportionally enormous budgets like Avatar. 

The creatures of Planet Alpha are varied and fantastical, and include giant sauropod-like alien herbivores, soaring pink tentacled sky-whales, propeller-shaped color-changing bird-things, and all manner of creatures besides. Many of the flora and fauna mean you harm, but most of them are entirely peaceful or ignore the player's presence, existing on a grander or more removed scale in a way that makes you feel small and insignificant as a player.

By contrast, there are also robots that are entirely hostile, and always searching for you. The robots were clearly designed differently - they are much more conventional in a way that looks ripped from early Dr. Who or from Lost in Space. This means that they (probably intentionally) don't feel native to Planet Alpha at all. As they do battle with the planet's various flora throughout the game, they force you the player to feel empathy for the strange aliens they slaughter, and a sense of victory every time the robotic invaders explode. I'm into it - death to the machines!

Planet Alpha boasts some fantastic wildlife.

SURVIVAL BY TRIAL AND ERROR

In general, Planet Alpha is a side-scrolling, stealthy, puzzly platformer. Gameplay consists of jumping over things, climbing on things, pushing things around, and crouching to hide behind various objects. Enemies move in a 3d world around your 2d plane, which means that you'll end up hiding above, below, or in front/behind objects in the games fore and backgrounds. 

The game also features a neat time-control mechanic it uses for puzzle solving. This mechanic has nothing to do with objects in the world around you, but instead manipulates the astral bodies (the sun) in the sky overhead. Sometimes you use this to force nocturnal, fungal platforms to grow by switching day to night, in order to jump across their vibrant, mushroom-like caps. Other times you'll switch nighttime to day in order to encourage a diurnal alien creature to return to an area and attack nearby robots, giving you a distraction so you can sneak past.

Very often, you'll die horribly. There is no direct combat in Planet Alpha; you never get a laser gun, shield, or melee weapon. You're not particularly agile at avoiding enemies either, so you'll watch often as a robot fires a few blasts from their gun and blows you away. This isn't really a problem - it's just a sign that you haven't figured out (yet) how to get past that enemy/threat and move to the next one. You'll reload in the same spot to try again. I confess I did have to google a couple of the puzzles, usually to learn that their solution involved backtracking farther than I had considered in order to find a helpful tool (a pushable block, or a destructible tree, a broken elevator, etc) to find victory.

Your journey will take you into dark places.

REACHING THE END

My main gripe with Planet Alpha is that while the game is gorgeous, and it does a fine job of narrative without dialogue, and exploration is satisfying... I didn't really find the actual minute-to-minute gameplay to be that much fun. Interesting, compelling, surprising, but rarely joyful. I was curious to see the end of it, and glad that I reached that end... but I never really got lost in the game or wanted to live in the world it presented.

There are only eight chapters to Planet Alpha - each of them full of spectacle and exploration in a dangerous world. It isn't long, but it is a very smart game, in the way that Star Trek is a smart show. I definitely enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who wants to explore a vibrant and unique alien world for a few hours. I give it seven beautiful alien fungi out of ten.

CHEESY LENTIL AND MUSHROOM QUICHE

Quiche is probably my favorite breakfast construct. You can put almost anything into a quiche, which makes them super flexible and useful as a way to eat up leftovers. They also work double-duty as a solid option for either breakfast or dinner! I use this basic blueprint for most any quiche, swapping out approximate ingredients for whatever I have on hand.

It's worth noting that with all the cheese and heavy cream in here, this is not really a "healthy" meal. It's still kinda-healthy-ish though. Let's get cooking!

It's not the sexiest-looking quiche, but still pretty tasty.

OVERVIEW

Prep - About 30 minutes

Cook - 45 minutes, then another 15

Serves - 6 or more adults easily

You'll need - Cooked lentils, button mushrooms, shallots or onions, cheese, eggs, and a pie crust

RECIPE

Start with the oven, bringing it up to 400 degrees, or 200c if you call cilantro 'coriander.' You'll use that temperature for the mushrooms, and then again later the quiche itself.

While the oven warms, prep the 'shrooms; you'll need about 8 or 10 button mushrooms for this. You'll want to get any debris off of them with a damp cloth, trim the bottom part of the stems, then quarter them and toss them with salt, pepper, and a couple tablespoons of oil. Spread them over a sheet pan (you don't need to wait for the preheat to finish for this, just check them regularly) and pop them into the oven. They'll need about 20-25 minutes; you want them to shrink up, turn golden, and to lose a lot of their moisture. If you don't let them cook out their moisture, the quiche will be too wet.

While they cook, you'll prep your onions and/or shallots - you'll need about 1 cup of onions/shallots in total. You're looking for thin, regular slices, nothing bigger than a quarter inch thick, so that they break down well. Trying not to cry, toss them into a frying pan with 2 tablespoons of butter. Stir them regularly over low/medium heat and they should finish around the same time as the mushrooms, about 20 minutes. If they're browning too fast, turn the heat down and take your time.

While the veggies are cooking, crack 8 eggs and pour 1.5 cups of heavy whipping cream into a large mixing bowl. Whisk that (I use a fork for this, since I find whisks tedious to clean) until smooth, adding salt and pepper to taste. Once the eggs are mixed, grate up about 2 cups of cheese - I usually make this with 2 parts cheddar to 1 part whatever-I'm-using-up (in this case, it was a smoked gouda) and add that to the bowl as well.

Spread out your pie crust into a pie pan, pinching any cracked parts back together again so it forms a coherent surface for your quiche. Now you've just got to put it all together.

As they finish, add the mushrooms, onions (you cooked them with lots of butter, right?), and 2 cups of cooked lentils to the bowl, mixing until it's all incorporated. Tip that mixture into the pie crust, taking care not to overfill it.

Put the pie crust onto a baking sheet (in case it overflows) and pop it into the oven with a loose tent of foil overhead to keep it from burning. Set the timer for 45 minutes. Once the timer finishes, you'll want to remove the foil but leave the quiche in there for another 15 minutes, then check it. If it's looking nice and browned around the edges, and no longer (very) loose in the center, you can pop it out to let it cool, otherwise check it every five minutes or so until it's ready.

NOTES

On lentils. I tend to cook lentils in batches in an instant pot - they cook up pretty quick and easy that way, and I'll generally split the result and make a curry out of half a batch, with the other half reserved for a future use (like for this recipe). I used brown/yellow lentils here, but any sort will do.

Extra mushrooms. If you've got more mushrooms on hand than this recipe calls for, cook 'em up on the sheet pan and then reserve them after that step - you can easily toss them into a future soup, egg dish, or whatever else. Warm them and put them into a dish with some mint and olive oil for a tasty side to a future meal. I generally find that cooking food ahead of time leads to easier meal-prep the next day.

Onions or shallots? They're not the same thing, but I generally find them pretty interchangeable nonetheless. I initially planned to use yellow onions for this recipe, but one had gone moldy so I subbed in some shallots and liked the way it worked out.

Which pie crust? My (now) wife put me onto the pie crusts at Trader Joe's when we started dating about a decade ago, and I've never looked back. That said, any roll of pie crust will work for this, or you can make your own.

SUSHI WITH MY DAD

I grew up (in the 1990s/2000s) in a small town called Carnation, which is about an hour outside of Seattle, Washington. There were no sushi restaurants in the area, and my mom wasn't really into the idea of raw fish anyway, so the first time I had sushi was with my dad, on "Take Your Child to Work" day.

DRIVING WITH MY DAD

My dad worked a few jobs during my childhood, but for most of my life he was a salesman. More specifically, he sold energy-efficient lighting solutions to businesses. It sounded incredibly boring to me as a kid, but it's actually kind of a neat job, reflecting back on it as an adult.

He'd tour a potential client's facilities to determine the current state of illumination in various spaces - a hospital needs different lighting in their operating rooms, offices, waiting rooms, and parking lots. A dining area needs low ambient lighting in a warm spectrum that makes food look nice and sets a mood, but the kitchen needs brighter light so that chefs can see what they're doing. He'd interview employees to ask about what they thought of their current lighting situation, and what improvements they'd like to see. He'd gather and mark up blueprints for the clients' buildings, determining what wiring options were available for a space - what lights were currently there, and what could be installed in the same places to replace those lights. He'd also consider security features like exit signs, and exterior lighting around doorways that might be subject to a break-in. He'd crunch the numbers of electrical costs - how frequently lights needed replacing, how much energy various models would use, and how expensive utility costs were within a given area. Finally he'd determine the cost to his own company to do the work he'd plotted out, and then would pitch a sale to the client for comparison against other similar services, to see if his company won their business.

My dad didn't install the lights himself most of the time, but he did often end up transporting light fixtures around. He'd stuff them into his little Geo Metro, fitting enough electrical equipment into that little car, often poking out through rolled-down windows, that it looked something like a budget-version of Back to the Future's DeLorean.

Such was the day he took me, his son, to work with him. I was about 12, sitting beside him in the front seat of the car, my feet kicked up onto a box of 30 Watt Metal Halide bulbs, for the drive out of Carnation, through progressively larger towns and cities, on our way to Seattle. While we drove, my dad would talk about fishing, about camping trips, about the news, or about chores that needed doing around the house. 

He'd tell stories full of puns - nobody called them "dad jokes" back then - and would delight in my groans or (better) laughter. My father and uncles were a master class in wordplay for me growing up, and shaped my sense of humor into the warped and twisted thing that it is today.

All too often on drives with my dad, I'd make semi-interested noises in the manner of a not-quite-teenager, my mind drifting to thoughts of Diablo, Age of Empires, or Starcraft. I'm sure I wasn't great company, but he took it in stride. Gradually the view outside grew more urban, the pastures of Carnation and Fall City giving way to the forests around Redmond and Bellevue, as we finally worked our way toward Ballard in Seattle.

My dad was never really a fan of navigational systems; he hated computers and prided himself on a thorough knowledge of the Seattle area. Given an address, there was a good chance that he could jump behind the wheel and (perhaps with a bit of trial and error) find a place on his own. Some of that was a learned skill. He taught me that even-numbered highways run East to West, while odd-numbered ones run North to South. That 2-digit interstates (I90 for example) go directly through cities, while 3-digit ones (I405 for example) tend to go around them. He taught me that Jesus Christ Built Seattle Under Protest, that even numbered houses were generally on the north and west side of the street, while odd numbered houses were on the south or east. If all else failed, he'd break out a paper map or ask for directions. 

Some of his navigational skills were simply from experience - he drove a lot, back and forth between client offices and his own, in a career that spanned over 20 years. He had a habit of calling ahead in the evenings to tell us that he'd be home at a very specific time; he'd say something like "I'll be home at 6:43" in a time before Google Maps existed, before Street View would tell us what an address looked like, or how long it would take to reach. Usually he was right with those bogus ETAs. He used to joke that he always knew which direction was West, because he could "hear the crabs calling out" to him.

I don't remember much about what we actually did on "Take Your Child to Work" day. I expect we visited his office at Veca electric. I probably sat reading a book in the car at some point, while he chatted up a client in their office. Those memories are ephemeral now, their subjects boring to me at the time, but I do remember going out to lunch.

Sushi and New Year’s Sake, c 1810

ANOTHER WORLD

Going out to sushi with my dad felt like being allowed into a new and private world. This was something that I gathered he did all the time - eating lunch out someplace in the middle of his work day - but without the context of his family around him. Not beholden to the wants of his wife or children, his lunch was chance for him to pick a restaurant that appealed to him, rather than one that appealed to his family.

The smells were different; I had never eaten kelp in any form, or raw fish. I had never ordered from a restaurant with menus in another language. In retrospect, sushi is an excellent option for getting kids to eat something new, since everything is interesting, delicious, and easily shared.

Going out to a restaurant with my dad always meant listening to him second-guess the lighting in a given space. He'd talk about how the fixtures had too much white light, weren't warm enough, or used too much power. I'd sit embarrassed as he stood and examined a bulb or fixture, blathering on about wattage and lumens, leaking all sorts of peripheral lighting knowledge that eventually oozed into my own brain through osmosis. I miss that sometimes.

I was a picky little shit as a kid, but I loved seafood; I'd try something, sure, but everything was raw and weird and new and definitely to be distrusted. Raw fish was slimy; I remember comparing a piece of salmon nigiri to "a slug on a blob of rice." One of the rolls was just full of fish eggs, which I recognized (with horror) from a salmon-hatchery exhibit at my school. It blew my mind to learn that people actually ate some of the things in there - most of it wrapped in seaweed of all things! The whole trip was all wild and new to me, but whenever I'd turn my nose up at something, my dad would laugh, say something condescending about how "eventually my palette would mature," and would pop a bite of the offending dish into his mouth. 

To my frustration as an adult, he was sort of right. Things that I found repellent back then, the chewiness of a chunk of raw fish, or the textural mix of roe in a roll, make my mouth water today to think about them. Back then, that first time, the only dishes that really appealed to me were the plain cooked shrimp nigiri, or gyoza appetizers. I got better.

My dad taught me how to use chopsticks at that sushi place, though admittedly it wasn't with any proficiency the first time. He taught me to "try a bite" of new things; he enforced a "take what you want, but eat what you take" mentality to family dinners, which I'm sure he learned growing up himself in a household with 7 children. My parents both encouraged me to "eat something alive" every meal, referring to fruit and vegetables. I rolled my eyes a lot, hearing those words back then, and miss them today; I try to honor them in my occasionally pescatarian adult life.

I don't mean to say that my mom had no input towards encouraging me to eat like a healthy adult - she absolutely did. I think there was also a certain element to my home life, where my mom spent a whole day surrounded by her kids, cooking them meals and trying to keep our home under control, such that my dad had more energy at the end of the day to force us to eat the vegetables mom had prepared. It takes work to engage with a stubborn kid, and my dad always seemed to arrive home fresh and ready for that work.

LOOKING BACK

I think about that sushi restaurant trip often, but never really talked to my dad about it. I'm deeply touched that he took the opportunity to show me something genuine about his day, rather than grabbing a burger or something of my choice. It's something that I wish I'd spoken to my dad about, that I'd gotten a chance to thank him for in his life. 

My dad used to expound on the benefits of yard work, and specifically the "instant gratification" inherent in a garden freshly cleansed of weeds. Parenting is nothing like that - parents don't get to see what sort of people their kids will turn out to be for years, if ever; they have to keep faith that they're setting up a foundation to allow their kids to flourish after they're gone. In life, we often don't get to see the results of our labor. 

More than a decade after that first sushi restaurant trip, I went out to a sushi place for the first date with the wonderful young woman who would become my wife.

PLAY KENA: BRIDGE OF SPIRITS

It took me too damn long to get around to finishing Kena. I just kept getting torn between the core story, the various collectibles, and other games competing for my time. A full year (and about 28 hours of gameplay) after I initially picked it up though, it's finally time to write something up about it.

ARRIVAL OF A SPIRIT GUIDE

In Kena: Bridge of Spirits you play as a teenager far too much work to do. As a spirit guide, Kena seeks a mystical mountain shrine. On her journey to it, she's charged - by a spirit- with a quest to bring peace to the ruined village at the base of the mountain. It's an epic task; everywhere she goes, the world is covered in corrupted pustules full of evil creatures that seem to want her dead.

This is probably a good time to mention that everyone you encounter in the game is a spirit. Within the game's world, the dead linger as spirits if they have unfinished business, and Kena's job is to help them find peace. 

She does that with the help of Rot, adorable little blobs that react to Kena's instructions. Throughout the game, you'll use Rot to solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and rejuvenate the land. There are 100 Rot to find in the game, which each have a charming little animation when they're discovered. You can also unlock various hats for your Rot buddies, most of which are pretty adorable.

Kena is a gorgeous game.

Along her quest, Kena will also meditate, shoot things with her spirit bow, and indiscriminately throw glowing sticky-bombs at stuff a lot too. There are plenty of timed agility puzzles, hidden collectibles, and unlockable cosmetics - enough to keep completionists busy for a while.

WHAT CAME BEFORE

Kena was the first major game from Ember Lab, a studio that has a background in animation, not video games. This shows, which I mean in the best way. Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a beautiful romp through a gorgeously realized world, and Ember cut no corners in conceptualizing and breathing life into that world in a way that is a joy to play. In many ways, playing this game feels like playing a Miyazaki movie through a Pixar lens.

Ember worked with a Vietnamese studio called Sparx to produce some of the art for the game, and used ancient Bali and Japan as inspiration for the world. This comes across in the look and feel of buildings, runes, shrines, and flora throughout the game, and also characterizes the look and feel of the game's many foes.

As a piece of feminist culture, this game is powerful. Picking a teenage girl as the game's protagonist was sort of a risky move for Ember Lab - a bigger studio likely would have switched Kena to a male character or added a male option to "broaden the target market" or some nonsense. Kena is an incredibly strong character (literally the hero who saves the village) who spends much of the game fixing the problems of adult men and then helping them get over their failings. 

THE END OF THE JOURNEY

In a way, Kena: Bridge of Spirits feels a bit like a detective story. The game takes place in the wake of a horrible tragedy involving an explosion at the mountain peak, the details of which aren't fully revealed until the end of the game. It adds a certain melancholic beauty to the game when you realize that the town you're saving is dead, and cannot come back. The ghosts that inhabit it certainly appreciate Kena's efforts, but there's a sense of loneliness that feels palpable as she explores a world in which she's the only living person - a traveler in a literal ghost town.

In terms of genre, this is a combat-focused action-adventure game with RPG elements - I would compare it with something like Zelda (similar balance of combat/exploration) or Bloodborne (challenging enemies you can learn and anticipate) in terms of gameplay. Coming from a studio that hadn't made a game before, I expected the game to be buggy or unsatisfying, but I was happily mistaken on both counts. 

In my playthrough I didn't really encounter any major bugs, and found my gripes with the combat to be mostly my own fault. Some of the boss battles are pretty challenging, specifically around mechanics (like counter-attacking) which require precision timing. I gave up on fully completing this game's "challenge mode" but still pushed myself to finish the main story and most of the collectible content.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits does an excellent job of showing that small studios can produce fantastic, beautiful games. It's also a testament to the power and freedom a small studio has, to the narrative risks that a larger studio wouldn't take, that gives me hope for the future of the medium. It also scratched a certain Zelda-itch for me in a way that the (immense open world) newer Zelda games haven't, which I think says something about the strength of building games with a limited and focused scope. Without going into spoilers, I found the ending to be a perfect balance of satisfying and tragic. In short, I found this game to be incredibly underrated, and give it ten adorable hats out of ten. Go check it out!

A RANT ABOUT THE NEWS

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

― H.P. Lovecraft


INFORMATION HURTS

Knowledge gained can be a painful thing - it necessitates personal scrutiny, highlights our own limitations, and reminds us with each new thing we learn that we were lesser before learning it. 

Good news robs us of possibility; you got the raise you wanted, but now you have one less thing to look forward to in your career. It's been said that the worst thing than can happen to a man is to get everything they ever wanted - where is there to go from that point? Bad news is more evidently hurtful - at best it means that work must be done to avoid calamity, and at worst that such a calamity is unavoidable.

I've been thinking about the news a lot lately. I don't watch TV, but I follow a handful of daily news-based podcasts - mostly stuff from NPR, ABC's 538, Vox, The Verge, Axios, and The Guardian. Of those, I lean most heavily on the first and last, and check both webpages a few times a day. My sources all skew moderate-to-liberal, but they also report factual data rather than the trash on Fox. 

It's a depressing echo-chamber though, and not just because of their liberal bias; it feels as though I'm watching the implacable decline of the free world to forces that cannot be properly considered, let alone defeated.

The ever-faster decline of the Amazon rainforest, by people desperate to improve their stations in life at the cost of vegetation that takes generations to grow. As a planet, we're losing complex ecosystems faster than we're able to catalogue them. For what? Beef? Mining? Money? Ephemeral, useless gains we use as justification to perpetuate ecological rape. It's happening half a world away, but still has disheartening ties to the food I eat and the products I buy.

The slowly unwinding horrors of wars that are new in my life, both in Ukraine and in Gaza. "The war in Iraq" was a regular part of my childhood, and felt as though it would last forever at the time. Now in my adulthood, it seems like the seats have changed on a bus that's still trundling merrily along. "Terrorist" is a word that has lost all meaning. My own country is supplying weapons to Israel where they're used to murder civilians in Gaza. That might be semantically inaccurate - murder doesn't strictly apply during wartimes. But it's substantially accurate, in that innocent people are dying, killed by weapons, fired by other people who hate them. At the same time, we're scaling back and bickering over support for Ukraine, a democratic country under attack by one of our historically oldest sociopolitical enemies, Russia. How does a regular person begin to combat something like that?

The self-serving political system within the United States that keeps a small handful of influential people in power long after their effective usefulness to the people they served has run its course. We're a nation of more than 300 million people, but we're regularly presented with the same aging handful of established (house, senate, etc.) political candidates, forced every few years to choose the lesser evil in yet another existential race. We have a Democrat in charge at the moment - and honestly I don't think he's doing an awful job - but that hasn't stopped the decline of women's bodily autonomy, brought sanity to the inhumane treatment of immigrants to our country, or brought our climate aspirations any closer to reality. We're looking at a collapse of ocean currents with devastating ramifications for life on earth.

The constant funneling of resources from ever-emptier pockets into the hands of a new capitalist royal class. People (you can guess who) are making millions of dollars an hour, while educators are resorting to sex work - not out of choice - but to pay for school supplies or pay their college loans. Jobs that pay for an agreeable wage are disappearing, or are being outsourced to countries that put up nets to prevent employee suicides. We used to have an economic framework in the United States that supported the idea of a single income that would pay for a family of dependents, but that framework is substantially dead.


KNOWING IS DEPRESSING

I wouldn't know about such things if I wasn't regularly consuming the news. It doesn't make me happier to know that China is still committing genocide against Uighurs. It doesn't "spark joy" to learn that a new small desert country is being manipulated into something against their best interests by corrupt leadership.

 
That information - that knowledge - is painful. It makes me feel powerless, tired, and overwhelmed. It throws the vitriolic response to climate science into stark, relatable relief. After all, who wouldn't rather live in a world where the oceans weren't rising, the ice caps weren't melting, and where the biomass of wild animals globally wasn't less than 6 pounds per human?

"Clearly that's wrong - otherwise it would be horrible! Clearly that train isn't coming down the track we're parked on, otherwise we'd need to move the car! So Fuck you, keep your hands off my cheeseburgers and my big trucks. Keep your brown people out of my country and let them drown in their own problems! It's more important that my life goes smoothly, certainly, than that people of the future have lives at all."

It's the sort of irrational, infuriating cacophony of ignorance that has led to the stoning of intellectuals through history, be they astronomers with new ideas about cosmic geometry, writers who refused to be silenced in the face of religious pressures, or women - branded witches - cursed only with the courage and gall to treat those who came seeking their aid. It's the song of of ignorant hate in defense of what was, what we used to have, and the rejection of what the future might be.

Belief in an existential problem requires action to avoid it. Without that action, there's no belief in the problem. A society that collectively refuses to take action against an existential threat must therefore not believe that the threat is existential. The civilized world, as a collective, doesn't believe that global warming poses an existential threat. 

I'm no better - if I were, I'd spend all my time and energy combating climate change. I'd quit my job, I'd campaign against the plastic and oil industries, I'd stop buying clothing that was made without care for the environment, and I'd be less of a hypocrite. But I like soft materials, fresh food, internet access, and the other various comforts my participation in the climate apocalypse affords me. All that said, at least I'm aware of that participation. I can write about it. A few people might read about it.

New York Daily News, c 1888

ACCESS TO INFORMATION IS OF EXISTENTIAL IMPORTANCE

The news, however painful, is critical. Knowing what's going on is the only way to make informed choices when wielding what power we as citizens of the world still can. In the United States, that power is through voting and political action. In other parts of the world, it's through taking up arms against your own militarized police force. Action without information is guided by the hands of whoever's already in power, for reasons unknown. Correct action hinges on real, true information, and folks in power don't want that information to be out in the world.

I opened this post with a quote from HP Lovecraft. He was a racist, bigoted asshole, but I also believe his fiction was decades ahead of his time, and I'm immensely grateful that his writing is freely available to me today. Should his writings be banned because of his disgusting and racist opinions? Absolutely not, though I'm sure that hard-liner religious folks would disagree. We are talking about the father of the Cthulhu Mythos after all, full of elder gods and dark sacrifices. The quote I sampled was intended to hint at maddening knowledge of secrets at the edge of our perception, but I'm using it here to draw a distinction between the pain and chaos of knowledge as compared to the relative peace of ignorance. 

We live in an age when censorship is being wielded like a political cudgel to keep the minds of the underprivileged ignorant of their place in the world. There's a clear and obvious reason that conservative voices smear the "fake news media" as though it were butter on toast. If you want to control a population, one of the best ways to do it is to take away their understanding of what's real.

In the face of ignorance, the strongest weapon we as people of the world have is education. A free press. Access to knowledge of the world around us, painful and horrific and repulsive as it might be. Every book that's banned, every URL that's flagged as inappropriate, every topic viewed as unsafe to discuss in mixed company, is a piece of wisdom denied to future generations.

So as painful as it is to know what's going on, read. Check sources. Support free journalism. Support your local library. Keep books in schools. Keep the internet free and open. Talk about it. Write about it. Share it on social media. Participate in the organized opposition of those who seek to silence young voices. Seek out the translated works of writers with whom you don't share a language. 

It hurts. It keeps you up at night. You should probably get a therapist so you don't end up raving on the streets, because the world is a dark place sometimes. Spend time with people you love. Give people (but not organizations) the benefit of a doubt. Go outside. Try new things. Whatever helps you to balance the horror around you. Then, when you're ready, keep reading.

It's easier, and emotionally cheaper, to watch TV.  Board rooms full of executives have focus-grouped a wide array of palliatives to keep you comfortable on the couch. That way lies the slow and peaceful death of truth in a new dark age, but you do you.

KIWI, TOMATO, AND AVOCADO PANCAKE SALSA

I'll admit it - this is barely a recipe. It's really mostly just a tasty way to use up extra kiwis and to salvage half of an old avocado. Sue me. Or better - don't.

OVERVIEW

Prep - Quick, less than 10 minutes

Cook  - Cooking is not part of this recipe. Pancakes are quick though, and there's a link for them (not mine) in the first note, below.

Serves - 1-2, as a topping piled on pancakes

You'll need - A kiwi, a tomato, half an avocado, salt and pepper

RECIPE

Grab your cutting board, and dice up half an avocado - or in my case, whatever portion of the avocado is still good when you get around to eating it. You're looking for small cubes - about half a centimeter, or whatever you can keep consistent. Push it over to the side of your cutting board, there's no need to dirty up a bunch of bowls for this.

Once the avocado is diced, peel a kiwi (the fruit, not the bird, you monster) and then dice it into similar sized cubes. Mix the kiwi and avocado together a bit on the cutting board; the acid in the kiwi will keep the avocado from turning brown. Acidulants are magic!

Next up, dice the tomato. I used a Kumato (see NOTES below) but any medium-sized tomato will work fine for this; you can also use a handful of cherry tomatoes. Whatever you can dice into small chunks is fine. Mix it all up on the cutting board, add a bit of salt (not much, you'll add more later) and pepper, and you're ready to roll. 

When you put it on your pancakes, add a bit more salt - this is a hack to reduce your overall seasoning, since you'll mostly only taste what's on the surface of a given bite, it makes more sense to "under-season" the mixed-up salsa.

Pile it on to your pancakes (or dip chips in it I guess, you do you) and enjoy.

NOTES

But... why? What's wrong with syrup? Nothing! My wife makes excellent sourdough pancakes. I don't have her recipe - but it's probably a lot like this one. She also mixes up whip cream to go with 'em, and they're delicious. That said, I'm not really that into the idea of "dessert for breakfast" that classic "American pancakes with syrup" kind of implies. Instead, I usually make up a savory pancake topping. 

Peeling a kiwi. I find that it's easiest to peel a kiwi by cutting off a short side, and putting the fruit cut-side down on the board for the rest of the process, slicing along the skin in downward cuts along the length of the fruit, working your way along. Then cut the skin squarely off the top. If you miss some skin, don't worry about it - the skin is totally edible and good for you, it's just also hairy and kinda off-putting.

Kumato? Kumatos are not new. They're a hybrid tomato owned by a Swiss company called Sygenta and will probably never be sold as seeds to the general public. This person likes them. This person does not. Both of those opinions were written in 2011; neither's really wrong. I've found them to be tastier than your average grocery-store tomato, and therefore a solid option when you can't grow your own tomatoes, or pick them up at a farmer's market. For the record, the best tomatoes you'll ever eat are the ones from your own garden.

PLAY TURNIP BOY COMMITS TAX EVASION

I ignored this game when it released in 2021 - which was probably a mistake. It would have been a cheerful diversion from Covid lockdown. As it is, I picked it up on a PS5 sale recently, and finished it over the course of a couple evenings. According to my console, it took me 4 hours to hit 100% completion - at least the last hour of that was spent picking up the last couple trophies/achievements.

THE SEED

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a top-down puzzly hack-n-slash game in the style of old-school Zelda games. It's also kind of gorgeous, in a pixelated, soft, painterly way. If you're terrible at those sorts of games, take heart! There's a "god mode" difficulty option just for you! 

As one can surmise, you play as Turnip Boy - an anthropomorphized turnip - a man of few words. The titular Tax Evasion takes place within the first seconds of the game, when you the player tear apart your overdue tax notice - mutely calling out a "fuck the system" that you'll continue to embody throughout the game. There's corruption afoot, and that corruption will wilt beneath your beady-eyed, vacant stare of justice.

That said, you need to get powerful first. Starting off, your only ability is to trip and fall over. For most of the game, you're performing errands for the mayor of your vegetable town, since you owe lots of unpaid taxes. You're an efficient but objectively terrible assistant, driven by a problem with authority you can only express through violence.

THE FIBROUS CRUNCH

You quickly find a weapon and a watering bucket, the two tools that you'll use most through the game's puzzling and hack-n-slashery. There are other abilities you'll learn, but most of the mechanics relate to watering plants and/or poking things with your weapon.

You also rip up documents. All the documents. You can't not rip up documents. Some of them aren't really bad documents, either. But you rip them up anyway. I was (much like said documents) a bit torn over this. Extending that sad pun a bit further, it seems plausible that your character isn't "Turnip Boy" at all - but "Torn-up" Boy ...since you to rip up so many documents. ...I'll move on.

TBCTE was a surprisingly deep game - I didn't really expect the tax evasion element to foreshadow anything, but it does. I didn't really expect the simplistic nature of many NPCs to foreshadow anything, but it does. There's a sinister mystery behind the game's placid town, and a history that the game repeatedly hints at in ways that only make sense toward the end. I don't want to spoil them here.

THE SATISFYINGLY NUTRITIOUS FINISH

There's a surprising number of things to do when the game is complete. There's a feline advisor who will help you find any missing (unshredded) documents. There's a sort of secondary boss battle at the end, unlocked only when you've found all those documents. There's also a cool train that serves as a sort of "infinite battle" system, with its own boss (and secondary boss) contained within it. There are many hats.

Even so, I sort of wish that TBCTE had been a bit longer; it would have been neat to see a couple more areas/bosses squeezed into the middle of the game to stretch it out a bit. I don't often say that, but the game definitely wrapped up before I was quite ready to say goodbye. That's hardly a bad thing to say about an indie game though; mostly it means that I'll be keeping an eye on Snoozy Kazoo to see what their next game looks like. I'll definitely check it out.

I give Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion nine compulsively-ripped-government-documents out of ten.