Rhythm Quest development has still been going along smoothy!  It =feels= like I slowed down a bit, probably just because the first week of working was all the backdrops which seemed really noticeable and was a low "effort-to-impact" ratio.  I had one or two days this week where I was busy with other stuff as well, but eh, still managed to get enough done to feel pretty good about it.  I think I caught another cold though...=(

I finally mastered how to make shui zhu yu...(spicy sichuan "water-boiled" fish).  It's been such a long time in coming, since this is a dish that I've tried many times before, with quite mixed results, but I feel like I really have it down now.  One new addition I have to the process is to strain the broth after adding chicken stock to the fried/mixed doubanjiang paste.  This isn't very traditional, as far as I can tell, but getting rid of all the chili bits and seeds from the doubanjiang makes the dish way easier to eat.

I'm using "facing heaven" chilis for this dish along with green sichuan peppercorns (both from mala market) and I'm finding that you can be quite liberal with both (depending on spice tolerance, of course).  It feels like it actually takes a bit for the mala flavor to infuse into the dish, especially for the fish (I'm using swai fillets), so it can probably help to give it some time to sit and/or just use a heavy hand for those flavors.  Well, that, or you can just use a ton more oil than I did.  I may also experiment with dumping the peppers into the oil as opposed to dumping the oil onto the peppers at the end, that may be nice.  The leftover broth can easily be used to make a second serving, which may even turn out better than the first...

I am slowly trying to get acquainted with various types of cheeses after having been gifted a charcuterie board and knives.  It's been so long since I've had many types of cheese (if ever) so I feel like there are so many that I have no idea what they really taste like.  I like gruyere and parmagiano-reggiano i know, and cheddar is...cheddar.  Brie is nice, and mt tam is even better (mm, triple cream cheese), but for example I got to try out some aged gouda recently.  Not bad but I think not really my favorite.  I think gouda looks really pretty though!

Have another trip coming up soon, as well as (unfortunately) a bunch of dental work (boo), but I guess things are pretty ok overall.  I haven't been knocking it out of the park in terms of keeping up with music, letter writing, all that other stuff, but I've been working at it from time to time, which is all that I can really ask for anyways.  Feels like ages since I've found the time to stream any ALttP though.  Chickies seem to be doing okay too, though I had to give whitechicky a bath because she got poo'd on =(  Feels like I'm continuously iterating on their living quarters...they've been living together for the time being (and doing fairly well at it too), but I'm going to be splitting them up since it's better that way for my trip...