Mend Pet

It’s pretty simple and customizable.  Both the beer and the BBQ sauce are Canadian, so you’ll have to substitute your own favourites if you’re not from the Great North!

Beer Basted Boar Ribs

Makes about 2 servings, feel free to scale it up to satisfy your Orcish hunger.

Ingredients:

• ~900g (~2 lbs) of Crag Boar Ribs
• 6-pack of Rhapsody Malt*
• 1.5 cups of Goblin Rocket Fuel**
• Pinch of Mild Spices***
• Pinch of Refined Deeprock Salt

Directions:

1. Cut ribs into individual sections of 1 or 2 ribs. At the same time bring a large pot of water to boil.
2. Add salt and spices to the boiling water, and then boil the ribs for about 20 minutes in the seasoned water. Drain.
3. Pre-heat the broiler while the ribs cool for a few minutes.
4. Put the ribs on a baking sheet (I’d recommend covering it with tin foil) and brush the ribs lightly on both sides with some of the Goblin Rocket Fuel. (be careful with the Rocket Fuel if you’ve got a gas stove! Masks are recommended.)
5. Broil the ribs for about 8 mins on each side.
6. Put the ribs in a slow cooker. Add the remaining Rocket Fuel and one bottle of beer. Cook on high for 3-3.5 hrs.
7. Have a good time drinking the remaining 5 bottles of beer while you enjoy your ribs!

BBQ Sauce + Beer = BFF!

You can use a BBQ instead of the broiler and/or the oven at 375 instead of the slow cooker. But I work with what I’ve got And I love my slow cooker!

*Rhapsody Malt: I’d also recommend your favourite Porter or Stout, I used John Sleeman’s Fine Porter.

**Goblin Rocket Fuel: Bull’s-Eye Guiness BBQ Sauce is great  (official BBQ sauce of the Calgary Stampede!)  Feel free to use your favourite BBQ sauce… preferably one with an alcoholic touch (Bourbon, maybe?)

***Mild Spices: some crushed red pepper and black pepper would do well, but feel feel free to ramp it up to Hot Spices if you need an extra kick.

Unemployed has always had a thing for food.  We talk about it, we watch Top Chef, we post our favourite recipes, we discuss the raw milk debate and I am frequently asked to explain the concept of milk in bags.

A few weeks ago, I announced to Unemployed that we’d be holding a cooking contest.  The idea was this: Create a meal/food/drink based on in-game items and recipes.  An example I gave was the recipes featured by WoW Insider’s World of Warcrafts such as Kibler’s Bits.

I decided to make the prizes extra appealing… instead of just some non-combat pets and nice little things like that, I figured since this required extra effort, I’d include extra special prizes.

1st Place: A 60-day game time card

2nd Place: 1000 gold

Runners up: A week’s supply of raid consumables (of their choosing):

• 9x Flasks
• 20x Buff Food
• 5x Health or Mana Potions
• 1 stack of reagents (arrows, candles, dust, ankhs, etc)
• 150g for repairs

Everyone was given 3 weeks to design and submit their recipe.  After the submission period was over, the entire guild was given 1 week to vote on their favourite recipe.  The results were:

1. Layniana’s Warsong Victory Northern Stew
2. Brajana’s Beer Basted Boar Ribs
3. Tigerfeet’s Dwarven Mild
   Guinesa’s Delicious Chocolate Cake
   Pilsner’s Fish Feast

With permission of the recipe creators, I am going to post each recipe here on Mend Pet, and I’ll update this page with links to each recipe.  Please feel free to test them out and let me know what you think!

Many of you I’m sure are aware and perhaps even rabid fans of the Looking For Group fantasy web comic series by Ryan Sohmer and Lar DeSouza.  Well, they’ve decided to hold a Charity Auction selling LFG-inspired art works to raise funds for Le Cafe, a great Montreal-based charity.

They’re also even auctioning a chance to get yourself a guest spot in the comic… the honorable position of getting yourself killed by Richard!

Unfortunately I’m in no financial situation to be donating nearly the amounts I’m sure these wonderful pieces of art will go for, so I figured helping get the word out is the least I could do! (See what I did there?)

So check out the beautiful artwork and help support a great charity!  My favourite is certainly Richard: Fire or Cold by J. Leigh, but they’re all great.

1. It is not a good idea to try to ride a bike with no air pressure in the tires.
2. Tires will lose air pressure after sitting in a hallway unmoved for 6 months.
3. Pumping tires to 65 psi is quite a workout in itself.
4. Biking is extremely enjoyable and invigorating!
5. Do not bike until you get tired.  You still have to turn around and go all the way back.
6. The Experimental Farm is quite hilly and windy.
7. The cows aren’t out in April!
8. My bad hip joint does indeed still hurt when aggravated.
9. My bike seat is much less kind on my tush than my desk chair, which has been its home for the last 6 months.
10. I think I will enjoy my bike ride much less when I wake up tomorrow morning.

I made a big decision this weekend.

I’ve decided to reroll my entire account.

This is no vacuous choice… I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have a reason.  Long story short, the account I play on isn’t in my name or e-mail address.  I don’t even know what the e-mail and name are.  This account used to belong to someone else who bought it used online.  When I started playing on it I didn’t think too much about the implications of playing on an account that wasn’t mine, but the longer I’ve played, the more of a concern it’s become.  It always makes me uncomfortable knowing that every time I log in, I’m violating the TOS.  I can’t make any changes to my account that requires e-mail confirmation, I can’t contact support for any reason… heaven forbid I was ever hacked, there would be no chance of me getting any piece of the account back.

And now with the impending Battle Net account merge, it’s essential for this to change.

So I figured this is as good a time as any to start anew!  The game’s a bit slow right now while we wait for 3.1 and Ulduar to go live.  So it gives me time to reroll my main and get her ready to raid in place of my ‘old’ main.

So I’m using the Recruit-a-Friend with Gadgets to reroll ALL of my characters.

It’s quite a daunting task certainly, and it’s very scary to think about deleting the character I’ve been playing as my main for the last 3 years… losing all the achievements and items and statistics I’ve acquired over time.

But what I need to keep reminding myself of – it doesn’t matter if I’ve still got the shiny achievements and the flashy mounts.  I will remember the experiences and no amount of rerolling will take that away.  You might inspect the new me and think I’ve just started playing – but I know better.

But what I am going to do is try to do some sort tribute to the old Brajana through the blog.  A recap of achievements that mean special things to me, my favourite non-combat pets and stories that I won’t be able to show off any more.

I’ll also write about how I’m doing my leveling.  I’ve gone from 1 to 34 this weekend already, hoping to hit 60 before the end of the week so I can spend the weekend in Outlands.

Wish me luck!

I’m gonna need it.

PS – Blizzard needs to reduce the cost of the World of Warcraft Battle Chest or something.  I spent over $100 on the game + expansions, and that’s quite a lot to ask someone who is new to the game to pay!

UPDATE: After getting a comment here from Nordhbane and doing some extra research (which I should have done before) I think I’ve discovered that when you merge accounts, you don’t get a confirmation e-mail address to the WoW account holder e-mail address.  This means I can merge both accounts and then from there I can transfer my characters to my new account!  It kinda sucks that I spend all the money already… but I still want an account I can access with my own e-mail address.

If anyone can confirm this for me (before I attempt it) that’d be super.