evanroberts.com

Breakfast / Lunch

• Small chicken Caesar salad with real bacon bits - (Dominion - 250g)
• Light Caesar dressing

Dinner

• Small chicken Caesar salad with real bacon bits - (Dominion - 250g)
• Light Caesar dressing

Snacks

• One Cadbury egg (BAD!!!)

As some of you may or may not have been aware, during some of my lunches I usually play Quake against some fellow co-workers. Quake has been around for over a decade, and I’m still amazed at how awesome this game is. Now, let me be clear: I am talking about Quake, the first one, not Quake 2 or Quake 3: Arena, or even the recent Quake 4. I’m talking about Quake… the one that started them all.

Anyway, after many game of Quake, and even some Red Faction (another old-skool game, but not as popular), my co-workers and I were looking for a change. We decided to try out another game that as of yet we hadn’t gotten around to, yet, was just as good, if not BETTER than Quake: Unreal Tournament.

Now, just like when I was talking about Quake, with Unreal Tournament I’m not talking about UT2K3 or UT2K4… I’m talking about Unreal Tournament. The first one of the series, and in my opinion, still the best.

One thing I’ve noticed is that with some franchises, and with some players, they expect the flashier graphics with the big explosions, the crazy weapons, etc, yet they’d trade gameplay for all of that. I just don’t understand this. It’s becoming harder and harder to find games that have good gameplay. Some of the old-skool games were amazing for this. Sure, the graphics weren’t that great, but they certainly weren’t that bad, and they focused as much on gameplay as they did with the graphics. Large franchises like Halo still have what it takes, but other like Crysis are just insane.

Anyway… enough ranting. Let’s save that for another day.

Today, we played Unreal Tournament. The game was just as awesome to play as it was when I played it endlessly back in 2000. The weapons were familiar like the back of my hand, the levels were just as I remembered them, and even though I was playing against only Simon at this time (Mike will join in tomorrow, I’m sure), we had fun pot-shots at each other, and as we were playing capture the flag on Facing Worlds with low gravity (personally my favourite level and config), I’d opt to go for the flag and win the game… while Simon could only watch. That’s right, Simon… you were no match for me today. 

Anyway, tomorrow should be a blast, as playing games during lunch is a great stress reliever, and what better way to change up the routine than welcoming back an old-skool friend into the mix.

Unreal Tournament. Awesome.

After the success of last night, you’d better believe that I have a craving for steak again!

I’ll be stopping off at Dominion on the way home and picking up a flank steak (if they have one) and a top sirloin for Molly. She said she was going to make some roasted vegetables tonight (peppers, zucchini, asparagus, etc) and will be picking up the fixings for that.

I tell ya, some of you may have known all about broiling food in the oven, but I sure as hell didn’t. All this time, I could have been eating steaks and other such foods which usually could only be made on the BBQ. For those of you saying “Yeah, I knew that… you didn’t?”, I ask you:

WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME!?!?

Okay. Time to get those steaks. My mouth is watering just thinking about them.

*Homer drooling sound*

For the longest time, I’ve thought that living in an apartment sucked as I couldn’t have a BBQ, and thus, couldn’t cook a decent steak.

Well, I was wrong. All this time, and I’d never tried broiling a steak.

Molly and I are taking steps to try and eat better, which should hopefully result in loss of weight. This includes cooking more, and ordering out or eating out less. For this to work, we’ll need to eat more of the foods we like that are good for us, but there are so many that we thought we couldn’t cook in our apartment. Steak was one of them.

The law here in Toronto is that you are not allowed to have a gas BBQ on the balcony. I can understand why from an insurance standpoint; the owners of the apartment complex want to reduce the chances of a tenant affecting the structural integrity of the building should there be an accidental detonation. But, when was the last time you heard of any BBQ equipment blowing up? There are safety values on the BBQ tanks and the BBQs themselves, and the tanks are usually exchanged when you refill them. However, I can argue this until I am blue in the face, and it won’t change the fact that if I want to stay in my apartment, I can’t have a BBQ. I have a George Foreman electric BBQ that my Mom got for me, but I’ve never been able to cook anything on it but burgers (which taste amazing, BTW).

So, tonight, Molly and I wanted steak. She had bought two strip loin steaks for us, and I came across this on the Food Network site:

Preheat oven on broiler setting. Make foil ’snake’ out of aluminum foil to use to keep oven door slightly ajar so that broiler won’t turn off if it gets too hot. Brush steak with oil and salt and pepper, to taste. Place a piece of foil on the bottom rack as a drip pan. Place another rack in the position above this and put the steak directly on this rack. Cook steak in this position for 5 minutes. Flip steak and cook for another 5 minutes. Move rack with steak to top position in oven, moving rack with foil and drippings just underneath, and cook for 3 minutes. Flip 1 last time and cook for another 3 minutes. Transfer steak to wire rack and rest for 3 to 5 minutes. The above times are for medium doneness. Adjust cooking times up or down as desired.

So, we just did up the steaks as we wanted them, heated up the oven to “broil”, and put the steaks right onto the oven grill with a cooking sheet below for the drippings. I set the timer for six minutes per side, and they came out all crispy, juicy, and for me, medium-rare. I had some mixed vegetables as a side, and we ate while watching “Enterprise”. Good lord, did my steak taste good. Not as good as on a BBQ, but on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being a BBQ cooked steak, it was an 8.5. Leaps and bounds over a pan-fried steak (which is just WRONG in my opinion), and any other way you can cook a steak sans BBQ.

We’ll be having steak MUCH more often now. Awesomeness!

Here I am… yet again… installing a fresh version of Wordpress. Why oh why do I do this?

I do not know.

It would appear that I *just* can’t get into the groove of posting daily like I used to. Eventually, I get bored of the idea of posting, or someone doesn’t like what I post, or I start to realise that I’m sounding like I bigot, and I stop updating the site altogether.

Perhaps this time will be different? I always say that.

Who knows if I mean it now.