I Gotta Get Away!

Oh, how I wish I were there!

Actually, since that is currently not an option, I will be taking a break from blogging for a week.

Expect the next article on July 3rd.

No worries, I am in good health and just need to gather my thoughts.

Talk to you again real soon

Music Was My First Love...

Normally on Thursday's I've had an article about comic books and such. But as I'm having a difficult time finding something to write about today, I decided to be a little lazy. 

With all that is wrong not only in America, but in the world at the moment with the rioters and trouble makers trying to bully us into submission through fear,  I've got to ask when will the point come when we say enough is enough? When will we finally say "We're Not Gonna Take It"?

I know I said music, so I'll leave my frustration out of this. But I need your help with that.

I ask you to please post your favorite songs from the 80's

And let's try to...

Thank you :)

Sleepless (Poem)

Sleepless

Another day has come to pass

And I’m lying here alone in our bed

Counting all the things I could have done

Or all the things I might have said

Sleep comes hard for me now

My heart lies heavy in my chest

Though the pain is insufferable

But still I wish you all the best

Time just seems to slip away

As if half my life has passed me by

Now yesterday just seems like history

I couldn’t have changed if I tried

For how can I blame you?

There’s only so much one can take

You packed your bags and left me

The hardest decision you had to make

So wherever you are right now

There’s one thing I must confess

If time really heals all wounds

I hope you can find happiness

Tales from the Dorkside Episode VIII: "Back in the New York Groove"

Have you ever read A Cricket in Times Square? It was a popular children’s story written in the early 60’s. It was so popular that Chuck Jones, who was responsible for bringing us Tom & Jerry made an animated version of it in the 70’s. The story revolves around a cricket named Chester who accidently travels from Connecticut to New York City with the train. Chester was overwhelmed with the size and all the noise of Manhattan, it was such a scary place for this country cricket. I’ve been that cricket.

In the later part of the 80’s, my high school music department announced that we would be planning a weekend trip to New York City. I was pretty excited about it, because I’d been in Pittsburgh once or twice before, but this was NYC – the Big Apple. This was a whole other league. Of course there was no way for us to pay for the trip out of pocket, so we had to sell candy bars and other candies to raise the money. I won’t even go into how much of my allowance had to go into my “sales envelope” to pay for what I miscalculated, let alone consumed. But I managed to scrape the money together.

The bus ride was exhausting, but we finally were crossing one of the bridges into Manhattan. With all of the kids pushed up against the windows of one side of the bus, I was suddenly afraid the bus was going to tip over. When we got into midtown, I had already developed a crick in my neck from staring into the sky. It was something that I hadn’t seen before, it was like 10 time Pittsburgh. The skyscrapers seem to go on forever. We visited the Empire State Building, the Chrysler building, and of course the World Trade Center observation deck. I still remember the horror I felt when I saw them fall in 2001.

But for me, what I really wanted to see was Times Square. I had seen it so often in movies, I’d read about it in books, and in Spider-Man comics. All the lights, all the billboards, and all the people. Yes, I, like Chester the cricket, was overwhelmed… But not really in a good way. It was very loud, which I had expected, but it was scary. There were so many people packed in such a small place, people were pushing, they were rude, and it smelled bad – everywhere. One of my classmates lost his wallet somewhere along the trip. Stolen? Maybe. I’d never seen so many homeless and strange people. One of which was talking to himself, yelling at who knows what, and kicking garbage around. Needless to say, “The Big Apple” appeared to be a rotten one, and I swore to myself that I would not be coming back.

Over 20 years later, I found myself in a position where I was required to go back there for a collaboration between the German and the New York offices of the company that I worked for. My boss told me that they needed to send me there for 3 weeks! I could hardly handle 3 days, let alone 3 weeks. I had considered trying to get out of it, but I knew that would be noted in my record. So what choice did I have? My boss tried to reassure me that NYC was not that bad and that she had been there often in the past couple of years. 

When I got there, I was positively surprised how it had really changed. I didn’t see nearly as many homeless people on the streets, the streets also appeared cleaner, but then I saw some crazy guy talking to himself and yelling. But then I noticed the earbud, the guy was on the phone! While on a stroll past Central Park I actually bumped into Tom Selleck. I was pretty excited, but I realized that he wasn't there to sign autographs, he was just another person on his way to wherever he was going, so I didn't bug him. I was surprised how tall he really is. 

But I couldn't get out of my head how different this New York was compared to the one I visited 20 years earlier. So I asked my New York counterpart about these two New Yorks. She told me that this improvement was largely thanks to policies that Rudy Giuliani had implemented during his time in office as mayor of NYC.

I only had to work Monday to Friday, so I had the weekends for myself. I was really surprised how nice it was there now, don’t get me wrong, it still smelled bad. I walked the entire island, seeing sights, doing the tourist thing, hanging out in Central Park. I even walked to the Apollo Theater in Harlem and nobody bothered me about the color of my skin. The trip really changed my opinion of NYC and I looked forward to going back, on the company’s tab, of course. I went back a couple times, the last time was in 2013 and I haven’t been back since.

I hadn’t given much thought to NYC in the last couple of years, so I wasn’t really aware of how far they had fallen until I saw the riots in early 2020. I never really followed the whole “Occupy Wall Street”. But the more I see in the news about New York City now, the more I realize that either the real New York was masked so well that I only saw an illusion, or the city has regressed so quickly and so badly that it reminds me of that John Carpenter film and we’ll soon need a wall for that island. Judging by the way they are handling the Teddy Roosevelt statue in front of the Museum of Natural History, I believe it to be the latter.

I hope you've enjoyed this episode of "Tales from the Dorkside".

Be sure to recommend, if you did.

Thank you

You Are Being Watched...

You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people; people like you. Crimes the government considered 'irrelevant'. They wouldn't act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You'll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up... we'll find you.

— Season one opening voice-over by Harold Finch
The "Tel-a-vision" series Person of Interest aired 5 seasons between 2011 and 2016. The plot focused on an artificially intelligent system referred to as "The Machine." which listened to and surveyed everything and every one and made predictions in a kind of "Precrime" reminiscent of Philip K. Dick's Minority Report. But unlike Dick's story, The government only cares about possible terrorist plans. Anyone else that The Machine identifies as a probable victim of a violent crime that is not terror related is shit-out-of-luck.
Luckily for these would be victims, The Machine's programmer, Harald Finch does care. Knowing that the government would try to get rid of him, Harald programmed a backdoor in order to still acquire the information on victims the government consider "irrelevant" in order to try to save them.
This is no easy task, which is why Harald decides to recruit a long thought dead CIA agent who also served in the Army as a Green Beret - John Reese. As the series progresses, the team grows as well.

Though I really enjoyed the show, I have a sneaky suspicion that it's not really all that far-fetched. There are cameras everywhere, in stores, in banks, on the streets, and people taking selfies and posting them to the internet. I can hardly imagine that there is not one adult on the entire planet who hasn't been photographed and cataloged by one agency or another. (Adjusts his tinfoil hat for maximum comfort and effectiveness)
I only watched up to season 3 before the idea just got so creepy and my own paranoia started to get the best of me. I started to, periodically, adjust my appearance - Short hair, long hair, mustache, clean shaven, or hipster beard. Pretty soon, even I forgot what I looked like. But no matter what I did, people on the street kept recognizing me. They'd call out to me "You Dork!" or I'd hear them talking about me "Hey, would you look at that Dork!". I didn't know what else to do. When I typed "surveillance" in my search engine, my antivirus informed me that Microsoft Edge is using my webcam. Wait, what?!?

But seriously now, I do think that technology is moving in that direction, if we are not already there. WE are being watched

But what do you think?
Did you watch the show, and what did you think about it?
Is our tech and our government leading us into this Orwellian nightmare?
Let me know in the comments below. 
And please be sure to recommend!

They're here...

Are they? Really? There's been a lot of talk over the years about the possible existence of extra-terrestrial life, if they it exists, have they visited us in the past, or even more are they actually already here.

Still the most famous "conspiracy theory" is the Roswell incident back in 1947, where according to the U.S. Military, a "weather balloon" crashed and was mistaken for a UFO. To this day the government denies that it was anything other than a balloon. And of course we know that the government would never lie to the people. (since you can't see me, I'm sitting here with my tinfoil hat holding up my "sarcasm" sign).

And of course there's Area 51... 

This is, of course, only a highly classified U.S. Air Force facility used for testing experimental aircraft (naturally, of terrestrial origin) Because we don't have a hidden UFO that we've been secretly reverse engineering there since it was recovered in Roswell. 

No UFOs there, just a lot of top secret next gen tech being tested there, that's why they've got signs warning you that "photography is prohibited" and that the "cammo dudes" are authorized to use deadly force. 

I have no doubt that there is a lot of mind boggling tech being developed, but the question for me is, where'd it come from...us...or them?

And what did President Trump have to say about it? Well, see for yourself...

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

And please be sure to recommend!

WTF is a Ottsel??

When trying to help a friend... 

Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (PS2)

The plot of the story revolves around two friends (that's right, you guessed it Jak & Daxter), who are searching for a cure for Daxter. You see, Daxter fell into a pool of dark eco, a mysterious substance which transformed him into an Ottsel. 

A what? Oh yeah, an Ottsel is a mix between an otter and a weasel. And the only one who can help change him back is the Dark Sage, Gol Acheron. Finding Gol is one thing, but getting him to help, now that's a whole different ball game. Because it seems that Gol plans to flood the world with this dark eco, and it's up to Jak & Daxter to stop him and save their world.

The player controls Jak, who has a wide variety of moves; while Daxter stands on Jak's shoulders. The game doesn't have levels. Instead it's a huge open world platform with only a few loading screens, making the game revolutionary for its time. (2001)

To advance through the world, you need to collect power cells, but, in order to get power cells, you need to help the NPC (Non-Player Characters), solve puzzles, and complete platform elements.

This is one of my son's all time favorite games for Playstation 2.

Do you have a favorite PS2 game? Or was your favorite on a different platform all together?

Let me know in the comments below.

And as always, please be sure to recommend!  

BIG Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

These are actually probably my favorite cookies. They are similar to your typical Oatmeal Raisin but with dried cranberries and they're BIG. I know there are a lot of recipes already out there for this, but this one is my wife's recipe. Hope you enjoy these as much as I do.

BIG Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups butter (softened)

1 cup packed dark brown Muscovado sugar

1 cup raw sugar

3/4 tsp Sea Salt

1 1/2 tsp Vanilla extract

1 Egg (Large)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

3 cups rolled oats (not the instant kind)

2 tsp Baking Soda

1 cup Dried Cranberries

1. Preheat oven to 325°F

2. In a large mixing bowl beat butter, sugar (both), salt and vanilla extract for 30 seconds, add egg and beat at a medium speed until mixed and fluffy.

3. Stir in oats, flour, and baking soda with a wooden spoon and mix until combined. Add cranberries and stir until mixed in as well.

4. Form dough into rounded, 3 inch wide, 3/4 inch thick forms (see picture below) and place on baking sheet 3 inches apart. Bake for 14-17 minutes until golden brown.

Enjoy!

Amazing...

Spider-Man first appeared in the comic book Amazing Fantasy #15 from 1962. About 20 years later, I was buying my first comic book. I always liked Spider-Man, every Saturday morning I would watch his cartoons, the one with his "Amazing Friends", and even that PBS short they had on the Electric Company. I was disappointed when the live action TV show got cancelled. I really wanted to see a cross over with Lou Ferrigno's Hulk., but unfortunately the Spider-Man series only lasted 12 episodes (13 if you count the pilot).

I knew his origin story already, I had seen it in the cartoons and in coloring books, but I wanted it in a comic book. I started looking around and realized that saving my allowance was a waste of time, no way I was going to be able to afford it. Heck even early issues of the Spectacular Spider-Man were an arm and a leg. So I didn't see much chance of getting any early stories at all. I did manage to get my hands on issue 10, but in rather poor condition.

In 1993, Marvel started the reprint series Spider-Man Classics, the series ran 16 issues an captured a few of those early story lines. (This was actually the last comic book that I bought for myself). I finally had it, the origin story just as it was printed in the original Amazing Fantasy comic over 30 years before. The original, which I have seen go in Ebay for 10,000 dollars, is still outside of my budget. But that's okay, I got what I wanted out of the reprint. Spider-Man Classics was definitely not an investment. I bought it for $1.25 and I could buy it today in Ebay for $1.32, but that wasn't really why I bought it any way.

As much as I enjoyed the origin story, I'm glad that in the movies, they didn't do show it again with the MCU Spider-Man. How many times do we have to see poor Uncle Ben die?? 

The comic also had the origin story from Dr. Strange, who I didn't follow and didn't really know all that much about before. So that was my big introduction to him as well. 

Did you have any early issues of Spider-Man comics? 

Or any other big name comics?

Let me know in the comments below.

And please be sure to recommend!

Sinner (Poem)

Sinner

Through the trees I can hear your song

Calling out “You’ve done me wrong”

A fading cry of days gone past

It seems my time has come at last

 

A sinner’s life, they say I’ve led

So many hurt and left for dead

You think me mad for what I say

But soon will come my judgement day

 

I will not beg, and I won’t repent

I don’t care now just who they’ve sent

Not quite sure what you think I’ve done

Don’t need forgiveness and I’ll ask for none

 

They’ll draw their rope and hang me high

And none shall mourn, not a soul shall cry

But through the trees they will hear my song

Calling out “Now you’ve done me wrong”

Tales from the Dorkside Episode VII: "Objects In The Rear View Mirror..."

We all have probably known that kid. You know the one I’m talking about, that strange kid that didn’t quite fit in anywhere. He wasn’t an outsider, really, he got along with the jocks but he wasn’t very good at sports. He got along with the brainiacs, but his grades didn’t stand out. He hung out with the band kids, but didn’t play an instrument. He even got along with the difficult kids, the trouble makers, but again he was not considered one of them either. That drifter who didn’t fit in a clique, yep, that was me.

I always prided myself on the fact that I could connect with people who were so different from each other. We didn’t have to be carbon copies of each other to be friends, we just had to find common ground. This usually manifested itself in hobbies, music interests, parents worked in the same place, or family situations. Such was the case with my friendship with Tommy.

Tommy was one of those difficult kids. He’d get into fights, he’d draw penises on his notebooks, and his grades were slowly rolling into the gutter to keep his mind company. So you may wonder what common ground we had, and no I was not a talented artist who could depict the human anatomy so prominently on the covers of my text books. No, our common ground was that we were children of divorced parents. Now this didn’t mean that kids of divorced parents are all bad, it’s really the question of how they deal with the situation.  Tommy’s method for dealing with it was to rebel. 

It was a Friday afternoon, school was out and I was waiting for the bus to go home. Suddenly Tommy pulled up in his dad’s old Buick. My classmate, Sean was in the back seat already. No big deal, right? Except we were 15 and none of us had a driver’s license yet, not even a learner’s permit. I wasn’t crazy about the idea, but after a couple minutes of being heckled by those two, I finally gave up and got in the car. Like my father, Tommy’s father worked late shift that day, so nobody was really expecting us at home.  We decided that we’d go to Mickey D’s in the neighboring city and afterwards cruise the diamond. 

We decided to take the back roads to avoid being notice by someone who might recognize us, or even worse, the town cops. The roads were pretty empty, flat, and straight. So it wasn’t much of a challenge to keep the car on the road. Sean found a bottle of vodka hidden in the back seat, so we broke that open too. Tommy enjoyed hitting the breaks every time I had the bottle to my mouth, needless to say I ended up with more than my share of that bottle.  Everything was going as planned. We hung out at Mickey D’s, did a couple of rounds at the diamond without issue. But it was getting late and Tommy’s dad was going to be home in about 2 hours, so we decided to get some gas and head back.

We had to take a shorter route as time was running out, so we were speeding along pretty good too. I was pretty familiar with the road, and I warned Tommy that we were coming up on a sharp curve and that we were going too fast. But Tommy, over-confident as ever, said “Bet I can take this curve doing 80!” I braced myself in the seat with my hands stiffly on the dashboard. As I’m sure you can imagine, he didn’t make that turn.  No, the car flew out of the curve landing sideways at a 45 degree angle in the ditch. 

I thought my thumbs were broken but other than that, I was okay. Sean also seemed okay, he was looking for the vodka bottle. Tommy’s head was resting on the steering wheel and I ask if he was okay. “No, I’m dead, I’m so dead.” At that moment the radiator popped and steam was rolling out from under the hood. As drunk as I was, I saw the “smoke” and the orange light from the turn signal which was bent inward. “Fire! The car is on fire!” Sean climbed out of the cars and took off down the road, Tommy just sat there waiting for the end, and I had to climb out over the backseat to get out of the door Sean had just exited. It was already dusk, so it was a little hard to see. But I saw Sean fly backwards all of the sudden. It looked so comical, but a second later I hit the electric fence too and flew backwards.

After we got our bearings, I walked to the next house down the road and called a tow truck. The driver was surprised to see 3 drunken teenagers without licenses, but he didn’t give us a hard time. I guess he was just happy that we were calling him and not an ambulance. He towed the car back to Tommy’s house, and Sean and I went home. The rest of the weekend, I waited for that call. The one which would change my life forever, the one that would say we stole a car and totaled it. But it never came.

On Monday, I met up with Tommy and asked him what happened. He told me that he told his dad that he took the car and crashed it. He never told him that he wasn’t alone. His dad was pissed, of course, and Tommy spend the next few years working off the damage. But I never forgot how he took responsibility for it and kept me and Sean out of the picture.

Years had passed and we went our separate ways. I joined the Army, Tommy joined the Air Force, and Sean stayed and got a job at the local factory. I was on leave and went back to visit my family. I ran into Sean down at the tavern and we started talking about the old days. I asked him if he’d seen Tommy lately. The color ran from his face as he realized that I didn’t know. Tommy never made it back from Iraq. I never found out what had happened, and I could never face his family to talk about it. Every time I’m home and I drive that old road, I can still see Tommy grinning at me. I miss you, brother.

I hope you've enjoyed this episode of "Tales from the Dorkside".

Be sure to recommend, if you did.

Thank you

There is Too Much Butter on Those Trays

Manuel : No. No, no, senor. Not... not "on... those... trays"... No, sir.

Manuel : [counting the trays instructively]  "Uno, dos, tres".

I didn't have a chance to watch a whole lot of British comedy growing up. Our choices were pretty limited, when it came to T.V. shows from the UK, we had Benny Hill, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and MTV brought us The Young Ones.

Later when I moved to Germany, I became familiar with others such as Mr. Bean, Blackadder, and Keeping up Appearances. But I absolutely loved John Cleese and his humor. Growing up, I only knew him from Monty Python and A Fish Called Wanda. So I was completely unfamiliar with Fawlty Towers.

I actually only learned about it when I was trying to figure out what my wife wanted to watch in English. I had started importing movies from the UK to Germany on DVD, As not all German DVDs had English audio tracks at the time. She said Fawlty Towers, and like I said, no idea what that was so I looked for Faulty Towers and found no hits. 

Then my wife suggested looking for that actor, you know the one from Monty Python. Which one, there were like 6 of them? Eric Idle? Michael Palin? When she said John Cleese, I thought she was mistaken. Glad I was wrong. When we got the DVDs I started watching and didn't stop until I'd binged the whole series.

I was shocked and disappointed recently as I learned that the "Cowardly and gutless and contemptable" (As Cleese referred to them) BBC was removing the episode above "The Germans" from 1975 due to "offensive language". If they removed every movie or tv show that had content which somebody considered "offensive" then they might as well run those damn Teletubbies 24-7 for those oversensitive souls. And I would proclaim comedy as truly dead.

But it looks like they may have backtracked on this now:

Article on The Wrap

Be sure to watch it, before they change their minds and it disappears forever with a Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah like Disney's "Song of the South."

Secretary Ben Carson also said recently “We need to move away from being offended by everything" and that "It really gets to a point of being ridiculous after a while”.

I can only agree.

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

And please be sure to recommend!

Something Wicked This Way Comes?

Over the past couple of weeks it seems more and more of theses images are coming to light. Last week I shared with you a picture from the lightning storm that hit Washington DC. In the comments some of you posted other pictures of strange lightning storms as well. Last night, there was a very strange storm over the Frankfurt area, and I have to say I've never seen a storm like this before, no rain, very little thunder, and the flashes of lightning were really like that, flashes. It's hard to describe it, and unfortunately I didn't film it.

But its just I can't get it out of my head, it is as if there is something bigger going on. I have seen recent uploads in Utube (intentionally misspelled). about strange occurrences, they may appear to be random, but are they part of a bigger picture? Are these just pieces of a bigger puzzle?

I've seen a lot of videos out there and I don't know if there are digitally creative people messing with us, or if this is real. I honestly don't know where I stand at this time on the matter. You can dismiss it as bogus, this is your choice and no one should take it from you. 

The first video is about strange cloud sightings:

The second video talks about strange sound heard around the world in the past few weeks:

Something Strange No One Seems To Be Talking About

And the third video has to do with the magnetic poles shifting position:

Our friend Doc Farmer posted something about this over at Pud's The Sputniks Orbit as well. 

Be sure to check that out too:

 https://thesputniksorbit.blogspot.com/2020/06/space-s0-20200614-magneticpole-shift.html

Anyway, there seems to be a lot of strange stuff happening. Seismic activity, odd UFO sightings, and other strange things. 

Are these hoaxes? 

Is it real, and if yes are they related? 

Let me know what you think in the comments below.

And remember, as always I ask you please to recommend!

You Rebel Scum!

In 1998, LucasArts released a strategy game for the PC called Star Wars Rebellion. I may have mentioned this a time or two before, but I'm a big fan of Star Wars, especially the Original Trilogy. So for me of course, this game was a "must have". The retail price at the time was 75 Deutschmarks (approx. 50 dollars) which was steep for me at the time, but seems to be cheap now, compared to what new games cost. Being in Germany and buying games often had draw backs, especially if you didn't speak German, which at that time, I had basic very basic German skills, so sometimes instructions in games were a nightmare. Fortunately for me the game itself was in English, but the instructions, (I want to say booklet, but it seemed like a novel. The thing was 5 times thicker than any of the game instructions that I had seen before) was completely in German, so I had a tough time getting started.

The story started out directly after the first Star Wars movie, so the Rebel heroes, Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie all start out on Yavin 4, And  Mon Mothma, the leader of the Rebel Alliance is on a secret hidden rebel headquarters. The Emperor is on Coruscant and Darth Vader is on a random system in the Galactic Core. 

The objective is:

Empire	Capture	Mon Mothma	Luke Skywalker	Destroy	Rebel Alliance HQ
Rebel Alliance	Capture	Emperor Palpatine	Darth Vader	Capture	Coruscant

To achieve this goals you are able to recruit other characters to your cause. Each have their own skill set, some are better at diplomacy to sway popular opinion to your cause, some better at leadership which makes it more difficult for enemies to preform their missions, and also helps them to start uprisings on enemy held planets, some are better at sabotage missions to undermine the enemy's infrastructure, and some are fitted for special missions like research and development to improve your offensive and defensive capabilities. So after taking me a while to actually understand who could do what and how, I finally was able to start playing. I was never big into this kind of strategy games, so this made it even more difficult. Apparently I was not alone because I found there was a "Strategy Guide" was available for the game. 

So I started filling in some of the gaps and slowly Star Wars: Rebellion became my favorite game. Not long after that, I found that there were game editors that I could use to rename the planets, change stats, or add characters. So yes, I did give myself a slight advantage over the computer, I mean afterall, the Empire is supposed to be stronger than the Rebels.

Below are some of the Imperial character cards (for example)

I played the game for years tweaking different scenarios some for the Rebels, some for the Empire. I changed names of planets to reflect planet names introduced in the Prequels. I added new characters, such as Baron Soonir Fel, the best Tie Fighter pilot in the galaxy (Though some say Vader is better).

Unfortunately the game was 16 Bit, which means it is not compatible with the newer 64 Bit computers, so it won't run on them. I played it on my old computer until the old box went dark and died on me. There are companies which offer a version that will play on newer computers, but I can't use my editor, and I've heard they don't really run that stable.

I am a little disappointed, but that's life, suck it up and drive on. Maybe when I'm back stateside I can find an old junkyard PC that will still run my old games, guess well see :)

Do you cheat with video games sometimes to give yourself an unfair advantage? (Me? oh just against the computer!)

Have you ever used any game editors before? 

Used cracks? (No, I did not ask if you used drugs ;) )

Or simply used cheat codes?

Or do you stay completely on the straight and narrow when it comes to these games?

Let me know in the comments below.

And as always, please recommend!

 

Chili Cashew Cookies

Sounds kind of crazy, right? But we have seen other sweets with chili before. This may not be for everyone, but I'm going to throw it at you anyway. Truth be told, it's a little more work, and cashews aren't cheap, so if you're not committed to this recipe I'll understand. 

Part 1: Cashew Krokant 

Ingredients

1 2/3 cups chopped Cashews (finely hacked, not pulverized!)

1/3 cup butter

1/4 tsp sea salt

2 tbsp. raw brown sugar

1/16 tsp cayenne pepper (more if you wish)

1 tbsp. honey

1. In a metal skillet on a low heat, lightly brown the cashews in butter and salt. Stir constantly to avoid burning. 

2. When cashews are lightly browned, add brown sugar and cayenne pepper, continue to stir until cashews are browned (Not burnt and not blackened). 

3. Add honey and stir until mixed through. remove from heat and let cool.

Part 2: Chili Cashew Cookies

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

2/3 cup butter (softened)

1 cup raw brown sugar

1 tsp honey

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1 1/2 cup Cashew Krokant (See above)

1. Pre-heat oven to 325°F.   In a bowl mix flour and baking soda and set aside. 

2. In a second mixing bowl, beat softened butter, brown sugar, honey, and vanilla extract at a low speed until fluffy. Add egg and beat until mixed.

3. Beat flour mixture into the butter mixture until combined. 

Stir in Krokant with a wooden spoon.

4. Cover dough and chill in refrigerator for 2 hours.

5. Roll dough in 1 inch balls and flatten, place on ungreased cookie sheet 2 inches apart. Bake for about 10 - 12 minutes, or until golden brown.

tip1: remaining krokant stored in an air-tight container for up to a week and can be used as to topping for chocolate ice cream, for example.

tip2: If this recipe is too mild for you, add chili flakes to the dough for the wild effect ;) 

Enjoy!

Be sure to recommend!