Ahh, it took a minute to get back into it, but what can I say? I'm just so damn excited! I finally got a PS5 the other day and have been storming through the new Spider-Man game I bought for it months beforehand. It's shockingly short, I'm already 60% finished it, but its satisfying as hell, and I still have plenty of other games to use it with. Now, back to our regularly scheduled cookery.

Chapter 8: Flavorful Friends

OR

Spice Up Your Life

It is said, that scampering through the grasses without a care in the world, exists a creature so cute you'd just want to gobble them up. Small paws too big for their bodies send these little miracles sprinting over the land through massive showers of ketchup and mustard to adorn themselves with, all collecting on a perfectly puffed up and presented coat! These, are Fully Loaded Weiner Dogs! You can't stop at just one.

When you've been adjusted to extreme temperatures for a few years, its easy to forget just how much what weather did to a person. Oh sure, rainy seasons were a universal annoyance to most, and colder weather required thicker clothing, but that was just the surface level interactions.

Creatures, people included, huddled around sources of food and shelter to sustain themselves in extreme conditions. Snow can be tightly packed to provide pockets of warmth where ones share body heat and provisions, leaves and trees can be turned into houses to shade the body from intense heat, and this was an instinct present in every being's instincts in some way, shape, or form.

Minks lived in shared burrows deep below the far more dangerous tundra above, feeding their young off the roots of begrudging plants and mushrooms trying to break through the ice sheets above, while the adults of their species trek out to gather meat and prepare new burrows. They hydrated themselves through a combination of chewing frozen snow as they burrowed and the occasional underground spring, which they guarded reverently from other creatures, often to the death.

Thus, the ideal way to trap a Sugar Mink was to present a better place to form a new den, often through the use of space heaters, flavored vegetables or meats -to a certain limit!- and a general non-aggression based approach. Attempting to chase a Sugar Mink through the snow is a futility only met with death neither short nor sweet, whether by the weather or the Marshmallow you'll inevitably run into.

This was what I read from 'The Little Fuckers And You: A Guide Of Their Ass To Your Wall' as Zachery and I waited for our area to be set up. The book itself was remarkably detailed, going into the life cycle of the Minks themselves, different preferences they tended to have and how one could tell them, a list of all known crossbreeding's currently as of the time the book was written that had been attempted and what they had produced, and the final chapters were dedicated specifically towards how to harvest their sugar from their fur without hurting the Mink through the use of a high-powered blow-dryer comb.

It was honestly a treasure trove of information, every tidbit serving a purpose and even producing several methods that might help the Chocolate Squirrels back home, alongside any other small mammals that come our way. I was making as many side notes in my journal as I could, and would have asked to bring it back home with me, but that bit was sadly closed off under the claim that it was 'Ice Hell' required information, and I refused to pay 500,000 M for the rights and ability to copy it word for word. Thank god for summaries and the inability to completely monitor every area of a freezing cold tundra.

Thanks to this wonderful book though, we now had a solid plan. Trap And Relief: Mark 2, as I was referring to it in my own head. Basically, I would have a grand old time reading in the tundra on a nice chair while radiating a consistent Braising through my feet to warm things up, all while I 'stood' guard beside a fine meal of Silver Grizzly slices with Blue-Grass Green Onions and a fine layer of Aural Saffron, courtesy of Zachery. Blue Grass Green Onions were a specialty root based onion that grew deep within the earth and had an incredibly fresh and earth-scent, which the Aural Saffron ensured would spread and maintain in intensity even with harsh snow and winds to try and dampen it.

From there, it was just a matter of waiting until the prey we wanted came by for a snack and got a nice lap full of pets. I liked this plan. I liked it a lot.

END OF CHAPTER

BEHOLD! COOKING! And, the book WAS useful! Never forget to check out your local library kids, even in these weird-ass times. At a minimum cause you can rent free games from them for most any system. Don't believe me, try it yourself, its kind of nuts the selection they have.

Anyway, you aren't here for THAT kind of life tip, you're here for food tips! So, here we do, my TTOD.

I call this section: Cooking For One Is Horseshit

The ONLY time you should bother using something with 'meal for one' on it are those little frozen meals to keep around for quick work lunches or when you don't know what else to have for a bit. Outside of those? Complete waste of time and money. Allow me to explain.

So, let's start with the oxymoron that 'cooking for one' implies. For starters, cooking your meals one at a time, with no crossover between them? That costs SO much money, and often for substandard results because it never really feels like enough because the 'one' the meal is for can mean a guy or gal a third your size, because they don't know your life. So here's the simple solution not many people think of. Don't cook for one.

A good meal, and one that saves you money in the long run, is something you can enjoy more than once, or you can transform into something else super easily, and there are a few ways you can do this.

The first, and simplest way? Have base ingredients ready that you can swap and enjoy any way you like. A prime example? Ground beef. Don't bother getting a small package, portioning it out or paying outrageous prices for a single pound, fuck that, get the big set and put it all in a pot with some steak spice, break it up and cook it until its all a nice brown, take what you want for the night then put the rest in a sealable bag and freeze it. From that alone, you can make an amazing pasta, tacos, omelets, sandwiches, any order or any way you want, whenever you want now. You just need to have some of the other stuff. Other stuff you can do this with are fish, pasta, chicken, turkey, ham, and bread. Confused about the bread? French Toast, bitches.

Now, the second way you can do, and I feel like people will have an easier time with this, is using leftovers to your advantage. Stretching and transforming a meal so you enjoy it more as you go. Make a large portion dish, enjoy it as you want the first day or two, and then if you still have some left around, mix it up so you don't get sick of it. Let's continue with our last example with the ground beef. Say you made a nice spaghetti, you mixed your ground beef with a can of crushed tomatoes and really enjoyed yourself, but now you're bored. The solution? Put your pasta in a deepdish pan, cover the top with cheese, and pop that bad boy in the oven for an hour and a half until it becomes a nice, gooey lasagna. Fish or other meat leftover? Mix it up with a nice bed of rice and some kind of crisp vegetable, maybe beans, maybe broccoli, maybe some brusselsprouts, and you have yourself one hell of a base bowl to drool over.

Options exist as far as you're willing to take them, but its important to understand just how much even little changes like this change your lifestyle. All of the meals I talked about above cost, on average, $15 to $30 and last you between 2 to 4 weeks. Compare that to a restaurant or food court where you would pay that same amount for a single meal, and not have much else later to show for it. The difference adds up in no time at all, and they don't take long at all to get used to either.

This is something I've given a hell of a lot of thought to this subject, mostly because I've been writing a book about this and a few other things these last few years. It's still a work in progress, especially as I focus more on my stories here cause, let's be honest, they're hella fun, but there's so much about life that people struggle with when they don't need to. Take the advice. Help yourself. Enjoy your food, and all that follows.

Until next time, all the love, and I'll expect the same back.