Pilgrim's Bounty

This is the time of the year where Food and Glory coincide. Yes, it is Pilgrim's Bounty again, the WoW world event that mirrors Thanksgiving. While the reason for it is completely negligible, it is one fantastic event to get your cooking skill up. You can buy a series of recipes at the festival, along with the ingredients for them (except the turkeys, which you'll have to "hunt"). These recipes will get your cooking skill from 0 to roughly 340 in an efficient and ridiculously cheap manner.
One important thing to remember is that some of the ingredients can only be found with specific festival vendors.
For the potatoes, go to Darnassus or Thunder Bluff.
The cranberries can be bought in Ironforge and Orgrimmar.
The pumpkins are sold in Stormwind and Undercity. You will also find the turkeys in Tirisfal and Elwynn.
You should buy 60 or 70 of each before you move on, since there are 60 skill-points between the recipes, and they turn yellow for the last ten points. Nothing is more annoying than having to go back to Darnassus because you're missing two potatoes. Also, since you need around 70 turkeys anyway, you might want to give The Turkinator a shot. After killing each turkey, you have a 30 second window to kill another one. Kill 40 turkeys in a row, and become a turkinator. I would tell you to go places where there are few other people trying to accomplish the same thing, but the fowl only appears in Elwynn and Tirisfal, so your best bet is to try it at three in the morning.

So, I just leveled my rogue's cooking to 350. 'Tis the season.

Combine all your foodstuffs into this stylish Cornucopia.

Fast Food

You know how it is. Sometimes, food just needs to be ready RIGHT NOW.  Because you're about to starve. And the raid starts in 15 minutes. Yesterday was one such day, and I opted for fast food of the Asian variety. It starts with the ready-made bit:

Japanese noodle soup. Usually comes with noodles, soup-stock, and sometimes flavouring-oil.

I chose noodles with prawn flavour. To make a real meal out of those though, some additional ingredients are necessary. I heated a bit of butter in a small pan, and added a thinly-sliced clove of garlic, and a handful of prawns, as well as some leek I had lying around. I cooked them until soft, then added the water and followed the instructions on the box, so to speak. Et voilà:

Fast food. Raid-ready.

The Art of Burgers

A good burger is one of the greatest things in the world. Which is why we went to Helvti Diner last week, as they promise exactly that. I was gratified to see that they even asked me how I wanted my burger (raw!), and offered a series of sauces to go with it. There were the mandatory fries as a side. A side you pay for, but okay. The burger, which comes in three kinds of meat (Angus beef, Wagyu beef, or Swiss), can be augmented with bacon, cheese, a fried egg, or all the above, I guess.
So, an ordinary burger with bacon and fries costs 23.50 CHF, without a beverage, which in Switzerland, btw, is not on free refill. I ordered my burger rare. I got a medium plus, to put it mildly. The staff was as inattentive as can be expected of a newly hip place, but I did get another coke on my third attempt. When questioned about the state of the meat, they did offer to bring me a new burger. As time was of the essence, though, I got a cheesecake on the house. Which was a good thing, because I had wanted to try that. And it was an okay cheesecake, but at 14 CHF, wildly overpriced.
No, I'm probably not going back there any time soon. However, the tastiest burgers are probably the ones you make at home, anyway, right?


Burger à la Nahret

Burgers and buns courtesy of Migros. I take the ones with sesame.
The buns go in the pan with the burgers, for the sake of crunchiness and taste.
Add, in the following order, building from the bottom:

• mayonnaise
• lettuce
• thin slices of a tomato
• the meat
• sliced pickled cucumbers
• bbq sauce
• fried onions

Voilà! Way better. And so much more... economically sound ;)

I didn't feel like lettuce after all, so I added corn with the mayonnaise. 

My Fancy Dinner

Sometimes, all it takes is a new perspective. Instead of cooking the vegetables in this dish to death in water, I sprinkled them with oil, salt, and pepper, added some thyme, and put them in the oven to roast. Awesomeness ensued.

Potatoes, carrots, and bell pepper. The latter is best placed on top, so as to avoid it touching the hot dish.

Yes, I let it burn a bit. I like that. But that's up to you :) By the way, having a steak "well done" is just needlessly adding insult to injury for the poor cow. Don't do it.

Aaaaaah....

Number Six: Spiritwalk

In related news, I just reached 85 on yet another character, namely my tauren druid, Spiritwalk. What do you mean, the name is cliché?? Alright. I checked the armory, and there are 44 characters on European servers with that name. As expected, 18 of those are shamans, and eight are druids. It is also unsurprising that best-respresented race is tauren, with thirteen entries. Shockingly, there are ten humans by that name (humans are spiritual? what the?), most of which are priests. How the name seemed fitting for a death knight, I'll never know.

But, back to MY Spiritwalk:

Isn't she pretty? Cows are awesome!

And she's a tank. I know, right. Who would have thought?

Er, sure, I'm totally looking forward to gearing up yet another character. However, druids are awesome. I've been having a lot of fun leveling her, and I love tanking the heroic instances. By the end of the day today, I should be ready for the Zandalaris. They bore me to tears by now, but it can't be helped. There's shinier gear there. Here's hoping we'll eventually find a raid :)

Ragnaros. Down.

This is it. We are proud to announce that, on this day, November 7th, we of Hall of Fame, and our friends of Göttlicher Pakt and We Arr Pirates, have vanquished Ragnaros, the Firelord.

Behold, our Glory.

In this picture: Caleb, Doomhunter, Dagoneth, Nøva, Pryde, Samûm, Leôna, Rahena, Sayae, Mâgus.

Harvest and Preserve

Ah, the time of the harvest is upon us. A workmate received ten kilos of apples from different sources, upon which she brought us an apple pie yesterday - her fourth this week. While musing about what to do with the rest of the apples, it occurred to me that chutney is one of the greatest things ever.

The experiment is on the stove. Updates as events warrant.

Update: For a first try, this turned out quite nice. The balance of sweet and sour is generally okay, and I'm pleasantly surprised about the perfect viscosity. Now, to the things that went in it: apples (duh), red onions, grated fresh ginger, red wine vinegar, shitloads of sugar, roughly ground black pepper, and a smattering of dried chili. There are no precise indications of quantity because I didn't pay attention. As a rule of thumb, use just enough vinegar to wet the ingredients, and you'll need more sugar than you'd have thought possible. Seriously, I used up half a kilo on this, I'm sure.