A New Year comes..

Over the past year I had done quite well with my resolution. I had gotten further to my goals then any other year before hand. On top of that I managed to stay off the streets so that is a plus ( A few weeks in 2012, I had gotten a good camping experience in the urban realm so to speak.)

With the new year once again I wish to get closer to my goals. So that would be my resolution and what that means is a bunch of smaller things I am aiming for because if your going to make a resolution, might as well go big.

Da list

Get cookbook published

Get a MtG Grand Prix or Pro Tour top 8 finish

Start my cooking blog

Start my cooking videos

Get pro wrestling training

Make enough money of my writing to have as a job

Draw more (100 for the number)

Make money off the zazzle store

Get more social

Hold executive chef status  – ( I have been every thing else including baker and dessert chef, but the big hat seems to elude me)

Get in to more cooking competitions

L.o.L team gets set up and starts winning tournaments

Get my music recorded ( small project just to do it)

Make a couple new inventions

Get in better shape

Ya. It’s a list of stuff to do. Joyous 

Got to keep going big. Use your typing instruments to tell me your big goal for the year. If we can help each other then next year all of our resolutions may just come true.

Here is a picture of my trout sauteed in honey lemon sauce and finished with almonds. Have a great year everyone ! 🙂

Working in a national park

For those who have never had the experience of working in a park let me tell you what it is like. You and a group of people living, working, and hanging out together. I worked at Mount Rainier as a cook for a couple seasons. If you do not have a car then you will be stuck in one spot a lot or you will get really good at organizing car pools. If you want to work one to get a try of it be aware it is seasonal work, bu often time working the full season will allow you unemployment.

There are some good things about it though. I met a lot of people there that I would have never talked to otherwise. My friends list is beginning to look like a United Nations cast. You will to as for the most part people do not want to burn bridges here. I’m not that much of a social person, but I have gone drinking with Turks, ran obstacle courses with a blond Canadian, worked on cars with the Sengalese, and partied with the Jamaicans, not including the times I had with my British, Chinese, Thai, Czech, and other American friends I made here.

I got my camera working now and here are some of the pictures I took while I was on the Mountain for the 2013 season

If you like the view then you will like working in parks. Many times they have things you can do provided you are not working. Writing or drawing pass the time quite well. You have to bring your own entertainment, but some areas in park have wi fi for workers only.

Hope your holidays went well. Just needed to put this up and get some nice pics on here.

Hitting the books – What I want to write

As I may have alluded to I want to do some publishing somewhere before my funeral.

One is something called 100 Ingredients: Home Edition. This book would be just talking about how different ingredients are handled and common applications over different recipes. This is going to be for people who are not the most comfortable in the kitchen. I was hoping to do more books in this line of thought with different sets of ingredients. That’s putting things too far ahead though. People who know how to cook will have something to gain from reading it. It has recipes in it, but it will be more focusing on the ingredient so you ( the readers ) can come up with your own recipes a lot easier.

The second is called Life, Love and Cooking. It is set up so you can read one page for every day of the year and it goes over dishes, experiences I have had in the kitchen, Working in the industry and some of the adventures I have gone on. Other cooks can laugh at some of the mistakes. People who want to get in the industry know some of the goings on. People who burn water will hopefully not and every one wins.

The typing is done on both and I have gotten some good returns from agents just not good enough to be contract worthy. Yet.

So tell me what you think of my book ideas? Like? Hate? Let me know because I would like to know.

Cooking for the holidays.

So. I still have problems believing this. I got the fudge done my mint marshmallow fudge, no problems. The ganache is set and all i need is the cocoa powder for the rolled truffles. Well doing all the work with chocolate you get it on you. So I asked my friends to see if they could give me a hand just packing together the popcorn balls. Three grown adults should be able to figure this out no problem while I can go and freshen up.

I say SHOULD because not only did my black cherry popcorn balls not get made no one had any idea what to do. Pour warm syrup over popcorn pack into balls and let chill. I have gotten grade school kids to do this without any hiccups. So I get all clean and I walk out of my room in the fortress of nerditude and two of my friends have popcorn stuck to their clothes with only two balls made. Minus all the syrup they start asking how everything was supposed to happen. I take whats left of the syrup and warm it up again before making one in about a minute.

Everyone just stops right there after putting together that I had everything ready for them and was gone for a half hour. I got one done in less then a minute. My roommate looks over at the other two ( he was supervising due to his bad hand)

“Wow, who feels like an idiot?”

The others raise their hand and I face palm hard enough before having a good group laugh with everyone. We all know that stupid moments happen so we made dark chocolate and cherry flavored popcorn instead. Which tasted pretty well after melting the chocolate to drizzle the cherry popcorn as well as all the spare popcorn another friend told me one thing.

“We cannot cook at all, but we should have told you that beforehand?”

Me and my roommate laughed.

Everyone then went out to subway for dinner.

Happy holidays folks, its good to laugh every once in a while.

Shop and project update. Random misadventure

Well I would have pictures here of my ganache for truffles except my old camera has finally went and died on me. Glad to see murphy’s law is in full effect still I almost thought chaos would rain if it ever left. Got another ten designs for the store done which you can see on the links page if i did it correctly or

zazzle.com/Spiritgamerware*

Ya that works too. So after the first few rounds of query letters sent in December I got a couple nibbles, but nothing for a publishing contract yet. So as soon as I can a new camera will be in my hot little hands and more pictures for all who read this humble little blog of mine. That food blog got pushed back because of equipment failure.

So I got back from a meeting and I saw some whatever you call it sprawled in paint in front of a max schedule kiosk. for those who are not from Oregon the max is like our subway. Seeing as I had nothing else to do for a few hours I took an eraser and began to very carefully erase the graffiti from the glass. All it takes is a random eraser when it comes to graffiti on plexiglass and glass. It takes a lot of time but does not smear or tint the glass at all. In full cook’s uniform I sat there trying to clean up the graffiti with no other reward other then I wanted to remove an eye sore and make the schedule visible again. I got stopped by four gang banger wannabes who were more like high school kids with an attitude problem a half dozen others who were so complacent that they called the cops on me because they thought I was marking it. The cops were actually quite nice though. A guy in a cook’s jacket and black slacks using a regular white eraser to get rid of graffiti on glass for free. It makes me wonder what kinds of things have we gotten so complacent with that really should change. Or it could be my lack of caffine talking. Anyway graffiti cleaned and + 2 on the counter of how many i have done.

Happy holidays

A moment in life

So bouncing from one thing to another like a rubber ball on a sugar high I realized something.

In this holiday season many people are suffering through hard times. All you have to do is open the door and take a step before getting within ten households of abuse, hunger, poverty, and other mood wreckers. I understand that not everyone can be happy during this season. I have had more experience with the previous list then I would like to admit. All this illustrates that no one seems happy anymore.

We are in a season where we are supposed to spend time with family, loved ones and enjoy each others company as well as do things everyone can enjoy. For example in our household because people would get so stressed over the holidays we have our own. We have a holiday where if you give gifts they have to be something you either already own or something cheap that the person would like. If you can’t then its not an insult because everyone celebrating it here is trying to get further to their own goals. Families follow the same rules and often we all make different snacks so they can snack on it while their gift giving. You can celebrate this on top of your own holidays make it your own thing if your winter holiday whether it be Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, or Christmas just doesn’t feel like a holiday and instead feels like more of a routine.

Happy holidays folks.

To be a cook in portland

One of the problems cooking in Portland is how deep the competitive pool is. Just taking the culinary schools you have AI, WCI, and OCI. From there you have groups of three hundred per program times two to three for each separate program looking for a free externship close by. Just from that there is a pool of about 2500 hundred people who are asking to work for free in most cases. Add on top all the smaller schools and you can easily add another 2000 people on top of that.

So in Portland there is a minimum of four thousand people every six months looking for experience and are able to not be paid for that time versus actually hiring people. Because after those externship times are done they enter another pool constantly growing of people who can cook to order but nowhere for them to do so. True, after some externships some people will be offered work no doubt.

It’s not like I’m new in a kitchen myself. I have done a large bit and a short amount of time and nearly have a decade of experience around the pacific northwest all before my twenty-fifth birthday. It is just I love to cook. I love to make food because food is something all cultures around the world had. Everyone had to eat and through food you can learn a lot about the past as well as the future.
There just seems to be so much wrong with what I love that sometimes I ask is it worth it. It is of course ( it always is).

Long story short. In food, in portland we should either get ready to change with the times or be ready to be passed by it.

If you agree or disagree let me know. I would love to hear your opinion. If you think i need to take another cup of coffee before typing because I may be out of my mind then go ahead and message me too 🙂 Happy holidays.

 

Zazzle store

So using the pain.net program i had taken to making a couple designs for t shirts. The banner above is something I made and it is simple, but I think some of the products will be fun enough for people to buy. I also made sure to try and keep the cost low comparatively speaking.

Fanfiction

Fanfiction is the act of taking a previously made set of characters from a media source and using your own imagination and writing style creating a story from it. Often times fanfiction will push certain characters as a couple or have another plot outside of the series or game it came from. Fanfiction is a very popular form of entertainment for some of the more devout fans of a series or game. The stories ore often held either on websites for a certain category or pairing with a couple being open to many different kinds of fanfiction.

I use it to try different things as well as writing styles I’m not comfortable with. So when I have some time and the thought to add to a fanfic or stop a couple I don’t think I can save right now then either way I can learn from it. In either case if you want to read some fanfics of mine I tend to go for more romantic fanfiction with a couple action adventure ones mixed in. clicking the link at the bottom will take you to my fanfiction.net page and as soon as I can figure this out I will have it permanently set on the main page with other projects

https://www.fanfiction.net/~simonanderson

Trying to get published

For those who never wanted to write a book you have to talk to people called literary agents. Often times they will have to go through these massive piles of people’s work just to get to yours. Even if they get to it there will be a rather a high chance that they will not like it. This does not mean your work is bad it just means that your work does not fit in to their business model. Some people will rant about not getting published saying how some of these people may be heartless, and maybe some are.

I don’t know them personally though so I won’t judge. I just have to think to myself that they are doing what they believe are the best moves for their own businesses. Can you blame someone for trying to eke out a living? I really can’t most times so I just sign it off as they may not want it now, and try again either later in the creation process or after another round of editing.

Often times all they will see of your work is two chapters tops as well as a query letter. which essentially amounts to a lottery pick if they have an opening, and winning it if you get a contract. Nothing wrong with a little luck. You will get aggravated, maybe even full fledged angry. Just try to do something where you can pour in your frustrations before coming back refreshed with the right mindset to continue moving forward. It can be worth it if you try enough.