Archive for July, 2010

Dawn of Empire

Author: myrmillo

Jul 26

Sam Barone; Morrow 2006

After reading a ton of Warhammer 40k books, both good ( Gaunt’s Ghosts) and bad (Blood Angels whatever), i needed a change. A drastic change. And since I’d recently read the reviews for Sam Barone’s Dawn of Empire and it fit the bill of no elves, no chaos cultists, no magic and no purging any heretics, I figured i would give it a go. And it wasn’t that bad after all.

The book takes place in ancient Mesopotamia, when people were beginning to grow their food instead of hunting/gathering. It tells the tale of Eskkar, a barbarian chased away by his own people who ends up a guardsman in Orak, a community of agricultural oriented people on the banks of the Euphrates that are on their way of building the first real walled city in the history of mankind. Read the rest of this entry

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marinated grilled chicken

Author: myrmillo

Jul 15

This is a more or less original recipe, though it draws its basic inspiration from something a friend once showed me in the States. The original recipe involved Italian dressing, which is quite available over there, and not that pricey. Not the case here. Therefore, when Knorr came out with their salad dressing powders, I decided to improvise a bit and see what happens. It couldn’t turn out bad after all. However, i guess any sort of italian/herb type dressing would work, be it powder or already made.

Now, we all know chicken, and that it basically lacks any sort of taste, especially the breast.  Putting spices on it before cooking might help, but they won’t really get into the meat, and on the inside it’s still gonna..well…taste like chicken…. However, it is a healthy meat, and it is summer time. We all know grilling is fun and easy, whether you do it outdoors with charcoal (great flavour), or with an electric grill like I have to.

Marinating is one way to make that chicken explode with flavours, and make the meat even more tender to boot. The only downfall is that it takes time. If you like waking up, and randomly deciding you are going to grill some stuff today, then marinating isn’t for you. The preparation time is about 10 minutes, but it needs to spend the night in a soft and comfy fridge to achieve any result. Read the rest of this entry

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Impact review

Author: myrmillo

Jul 10

Impact
Douglas J. Preston; Forge 2010

I’ve started reading books by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child a few years back, after buying Brimstone in an airport bookstore, in preparation for a 12 hour trip. And I discovered that  the book was what i wanted: the perfect airplane/vacation book. Or in other words, fluff, easy reading, something to keep you occupied while you are travelling, relaxing during a vacation, don’t feel like reading anything more meaningful or just need to take a break from sci-fi / fantasy. Over the years I’ve read the other books by those two authors, and also some of the stuff they’ve published separately.

Impact is by one of the pair of authors, Douglas Preston, but you really don’t feel the other one missing, except maybe for the lack of supernatural/mystical elements. Without spoiling it too much, this one’s got aliens…of sorts..instead of voodoo or whatnot. The plot is OKish, nothing spectacular, with a few twists and turns that you might not necessarily anticipate. At least I didn’t. The places the action takes place in are…meh…not that diverse…Cambodgia for a bit, some New England fishing village, and a couple of Washington DC offices…nothing spectacular. The action scenes are also decent…some fights on boats, during a big storm, some fights not on boats, guns, knives, and my favourite, a hammer as a murder weapon…

The characters are sort of cliche, and prone to doing things that make no bloody sense at all. You have Wyman Ford, ex-CIA dude that now does freelance work for various government agencies, and that appeared in previous Preston books. He’s supposed to be a tough guy and so on, but ends up being more of a whiny do gooder that is devastated by the sight of exploited peasants and chooses to risk life, limb and mission to save them, then sends packages with confidential data to major newspapers because it’s a global issue that affects the whole world, and everyone has to know…yeah right…i’d buy that from a hippie…or someone else…but an ex-CIA undercover agent thinking like that? hmmm

Then you have Abbey, the 20ish year old african-american girl adopted by a New England lobster fisherman, who went to Princeton but then dropped out and who apparently learnt more in all her time there then it seems possible…there was at the beginning a hint of her not fitting in because of being in an all white community..but that gets barely mentioned afterwards.

There’s also Abbey’s pot smoking rather slow friend…i’m not sure why she’s in the book but eh..whatever…there’s the psychopathic killer with a violent past that could have been a more interesting character but that also doesn’t get developed at all…and more characters that are as one dimensional. So perfect for a vacation/airplane book that you will read, enjoy for the moment (and it is enjoyable), and then promptly forget until seeing the author’s name again on his newest paperback.

In the end,  this is a book for reading on a warm beach, being abused by the sun, with a cold drink next to you and without a care in the world. It won’t make any impression on you whatsoever, it will just float through your life like a duck…with barely a quack.

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Space wolf review

Author: myrmillo

Jul 7

Space Wolf
William King; Games Workshop 2007

Since posting this, I’ve managed to read the first three books of this series by William King, so instead of writing about just the first book, I’ll do the first three. They make up the first Space Wolf omnibus anyway, so consider it a review for that.

The books tell the story of the first years of Ragnar Blackmane as a Space Wolf Space Marine, from being selected as an applicant to becoming a full Space Marine, and beyond. Compared to the previous books about space marines that i’ve read, the Blood Angels series, these were like a breath of fresh air. They are not the best books I’ve read by any means, but for mass market paperbacks based on a preset world, they aren’t bad at all.

For those not familiar with the background, the Space Wolf space marines are based on vikings and wolves. They are genetically modified soldiers that gain wolf-like qualities, such as enhanced smell, hearing, and function in small pack-like units. I’d write more, but you can read it all here.

The characters get a bit of development, are not whiny, and furthermore have some sort of internal dialogue where they actually question things. Ragnar might be a space marine, but he’s not the mindless killing machine that other authors tend to portray the space marines as. He even has flaws..he’s claustrophobic.Overall, this character doesn’t bother at all. The other characters can be a bit one sided though. You have Sven the friendly brave but stupid guy, the tough but wise and with a golden heart sergeant and so on. Still, this does not remove from the readability of the book.

What is annoying is what the author calls “banter” between characters. I’m all for that, but…come on…how many times can you make jokes about how stupid Sven is, or about how he is always hungry. Once…twice…but at some point it’s time to invent something new. And it just makes the characters sound more like school boys on an outing than like tough dudes able to kill anyone with one finger…Oh…and the fart jokes…those confused me for a bit…was this an attempt at humor…I hope not…thankfully those just happened once.

Another strong point of the novels is the variety of the locations and the enemies they face. Sure, due to lore constraints, the Thousand Sons chaos marines have to be there, but nothing becomes repetitive. For example, the first book takes place on an island, in a fortress, inside old abandoned ruins, and a chaos temple, the second involves an ork infested jungle, a space hulk and an eldar pyramid, the fourth books happens on Terra. There are inquisitors, chaos marines, orks, eldar, a jolly plague demon talking with a decidedly British accent and so on, you get the point.

The plots are also ok-ish..nothing really extraordinary, but not bad either. Overall, the books make for an enjoyable read. I didn’t even have to force myself to go through them, like it happened with the Blood Angels novels (yeah..those really marked me…too bad they had nice covers). I’d recommend these books to anyone looking to get into the WH40k world (which I’ve enjoyed a lot lately…damn you, Dawn of War video games!!!), or those who are already familiar with the setting, and are looking for more books to read.

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cheesecake…

Author: myrmillo

Jul 7

Time for something both yummy and so very easy to make: cheesecake. The original recipe was obtained from here, but i’ve modiffied it a bit to correspond to the locally available stuff, as well as to my own tastes.

yummmmmm

Total preparation time is about 30 minutes (even less once you stop bumbling around), cooking time is 35-40 minutes. Now…you might think that in one hour-ish, you have a delicious cheesecake…ah, if only it were so..but nope…then you have to let it cool in the oven for one hour..then let it cool outside for another6, 7 hours, then stick it in a cold fridge for another 7, 8 hours. So in order to enjoy the cheesecake, you need serious planning. In addition to all the ingredients, you also need a mixer, and a big bowl, as towards the end the stuff gets liquid and tarts flying around like you wouldn’t believe it, baking paper, and some sort of container to put it in the oven.

The ingredients (that I use..feel free to improvise):

for the cheesecake:

  • 5 200 g Mega Image cream cheese boxes

    The ingredients

  • 100 grams of sugar
  • 4 spoons of flour
  • 4 eggs (if you get the small, regular kind..otherwise, if you manage to get jumbo eggs, use 3 and one yolk)
  • one little bag bourbon vanilla sugar
  • the grated zest of one lemon
  • 250-300 ml 25% fat sour cream (I use the napolact one)
  • 2, 3 teaspoons lemon juice
  • you can use any other sort of flavouring, since the cheese is more or less neutral. I was thinking about going for rum, or coffee, or whatever you fancy
  • Raisins. Yumm..Or chocolate sprinkles…or whatever…use your imagination

for the topping:

  • 250-300 ml 25% fat sour cream
  • 3 spoons sugar (I use brown sugar for some reason..not sure why)
  • one teaspoon of lemon juice. Don’t use too much, as it might make it too liquid, and that ain’t fun

The Preparation

First the topping. For this, mix well with a fork the sour cream with the sugar and the lemon juice in a small bowl/whatever, cover it with some tin foil and place it in the fridge. The sugar won’t melt right away, but by the time you actually put it on the cheesecake, it will be gone.

Then the cheesecake”

  1. Put all the cream cheese in the bowl

    The cheese in the bowl

  2. Whip it with the mixer on low speed for about 3 minutes
  3. Pour in the sugar, while mixing continuously. Make sure you scrape the cheese that gets stuck on the edges. The mixture should be getting more liquidy now
  4. Add the flour, and mix well for about 1 minute
  5. Add the lemon zest, the vanilla sugar, the lemon juice, or whatever other flavouring you have, and mix so that it goes in evenly
  6. Add the eggs…one by one..meaning you add one egg, then mix a bit, then another and so on. be careful..this is the part where it starts getting really liquid
  7. Add the sour cream, and keep mixing on low speed. It should be fairly liquid by now, with some air bubbles.
  8. Add the raisins. Now, to make sure they don’t all go to the bottom when you pour the mixture in the oven recipient, you can coat them in flour. I’ve also added them as I was pouring the mixture in the oven recipient (pour a bit..add the raising..pour a bit more, add more raisins, and so on)
  9. Coat the inside of the oven recipient with some butter, then wrap the baking paper on the inside

    Container wrapped with baking paper

  10. Pour the mixture inside…all of it..scrape the inside of the mixing bowl
  11. Preheat the oven. This is where it gets a bit funny. The BBC site mentions 200C/conventional 240C/gas 9. If you have an electric oven or an oven thermometer, I guess it’s all good. However I have neither, so what I do is just turn up the gas to the maximum. Mine goes to 11 :D
  12. After the oven is hot enough, place the cheesecake inside
  13. Wait 10 minutes
  14. Reduce the temperature of the oven. BBC says 90C/conventional 110C/gas 1⁄4. I turn it to rather low.
  15. Wait 26, 27 minutes
  16. These times depend on a lot of factors..what kind of container you use for the bowl..the oven kind, and so on…If you follow the guidelines of 10 minutes as hot as possible, followed by 25 minutes of fairly low, you should be fine.
  17. Turn off the oven. Leave the cheesecake inside for one hour

    After I stopped the oven

  18. After one hour, take the container out of the oven. be careful, it is still hot. Place it outside (covered) for another 7, 8 hours, so it cools down. Overnight is usually a good guideline
  19. Cover it with the topping
  20. Place it in the fridge for another 6, 7 hours. The colder the better
  21. Enjoy :D

after munching on it a bit...

After the sugar and flour

After adding the flavours

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