Now if you read the title and thought “What? Gross, I thought this was about cooking!” then read no further. I thought I’d change things up and throw out a quick game review for something that I thoroughly enjoyed.

I picked up Condemned 2 for the PS3 on a whim when I went to GameStop with my roommate (He was picking up Gears 3). I wandered over to the used PS3 games, as always, and found this sitting on the shelf with a big sticker on the front that said “Used : $7.99”

I’m not one to pass up the opportunity to try a new genre for eight bucks (Seven and change with my Rewards Pro membership) so I picked up the Survival Horror game bought it. The guy at the register described it as a “survival brawler, and you can’t carry ammo. When your gun runs out, you’ve just got to pistol whip guys until it breaks.” The most important thing this told me? Weapons have damage limits. And boy, do the weapons have damage limits…

At first, this was just a fun game to mess around with. The brawling is incredibly fun, very intuitive, and combos are easy to remember, though hard to execute, which is pretty much how it should be. Weapons include everything from bricks to stun guns to those little gumball machines they have in barber shops (and probably elsewhere, that would be an odd monopoly for the barber shop industry).

Combat uses the L and R bumpers as your hands, swinging independently and blocking with both as you strafe around your enemies, dodging hits and landing them when possible. Weapons are found scattered throughout the levels, which are hallway crawler types with lots of little nooks and crannies for baddies to pop out. The bludgeons will last maybe a dozen hits, enough to take out three or four guys, anyway. They can also be thrown, which does a good deal of damage for anyone on the receiving end of the blow. The graphics are pretty great, too, once you get past the fact that everyone you fight looks like a meth head and everyone on your side has the face of a toddler slapped onto a thirty-five year old body.

After getting to the first forensics section, the game got so much more interesting. It was so fun that I turned to my roommate and said “There should be a game that’s just this part. The whole thing.” He replied “Play LA Noir. I’ve got it.”

Fast forward three days of playing LA Noir, and I was back to Condemned 2 with the mission of playing through the thing before getting distracted again. The long and short of it?

-Great forensics levels, really top notch stuff.

-Goofy little collectible system for those of you who like spending an hour trying to find a trophy or chase down a sound. It’s intuitive enough to find everything, but it won’t kill you to just ignore it.

-Reward system for how well you do in a level. Gives you a bonus for getting questions right in interviews or doing secondary objectives, and these will help you with later gameplay.

-Good combat system, particularly in the museum level where you can find swords and axes and other fun things.

-The story made NO sense without having played the first game. Which I didn’t. Usually I play games almost exclusively for the story, so the fact that this was so good that I kept playing even though I had no idea what was happening should tell you what you need to know.

-Creepy. It’s just creepy, and I wouldn’t play it alone if you’re not into a lot of jumping and just a little carnage. 

If you get the chance to play this, you should take it. I treated it more like an arcade shooter than anything else, so don’t expect to get wrapped up in the story like a good book; The gameplay is fun enough to make up for this, though.

Here’s a great example of trying things you don’t really know how to do, and making something wonderful in the process. Today I went to the Davis Meat Lab, a campus Deli of sorts that sells inexpensive and fresh meats. I picked up some particularly good looking kielbasa, quail eggs, cheese, and cured ham. For dinner, I decided that those sausages needed to be cooked, and I was just the guy to do it.

I started out by cleaning ten large Russet potatoes, poked some holes in them, wrapped them in foil and tossed them in the oven for an hour on 375. Then I heated a pan to medium high, added canola oil and cooked those sausages. Yes, I know that I should have waited for the potatoes to be almost done, but i was excited to try these things out. When they were done, I snagged a bite (Wonderful!) and cooked two slices of ham in the fat. After I pulled them off, though, I was left with a problem. A big pan full of tasty browned bits that I didn’t want to waste. So I thought, those potatoes could use a gravy…

Now, I’ve never made a gravy. I didn’t know what to do, until I remembered that people tend to deglaze their pans with wine. Along dash of red wine later and twice as much water, I threw in a half teaspoon of dried basil and a few dashes of garlic salt. It seemed to be lacking at this point, so in went half of a Knorr beef bullion cube. That’s when I realized that there was nothing to thicken this thing. At a loss for flour and no thickening agents coming to mind, I dashed upstairs to grab a new product I had just gotten. Knorr homestyle stock cups. For those of you who don;t know, the difference between a stock and a broth (as far as I am aware) is that stock has gelatin. Good, rich, gravy thickening gelatin. In goes one of these Pudding snack styled cups of stock jelly, and down the whole mixture cooks for another few minutes.

I didn’t know what I was doing at first, but this gravy ended up the highlight of the meal. It was a good texture, fantastic flavor, and pretty easy to make. My mind’s been made about these Knorr stock cups, and next time I see them at the store they’re coming home with me.

I was making my way through downtown Davis the other day when I stumbled upon one of my favorite stores, Kim’s Market. It’s a great little Asian food store that I’m happy to stop by any time I get the chance. As many times as I’ve been there however, I apparently hadn’t ever just gone straight in from the door to the back of the store. If I had, would have already known about their awesome little produce section.

Three bell peppers for two dollars? Yellow onions at fifty cents a pound? Spinach and Broccoli in good sized bags for a dollar each? Needless to say, I left with a few heavy bags and an intact bank account.

What that left me with was a fridge full of produce and the question, “What am I going to do with all of this?”

Pan fried Zucchini and peppers-

This one is super simple if you own a mandoline slicer, sort of a fixed blade that allows you to slice things to the same width very quickly.

What you’ll need:

Mandoline (or a sharp knife and some free time)

spatula

large pan

canola or olive oil

three small zucchini

one large red bell pepper

three cloves of garlic

1/4 teaspoon dried basil

a dash of salt and pepper to taste

Directions from here are simple. Wash the produce, remove the stem and seeds from the Bell peppers, set the mandoline to 1.3 or 2 mm, and go ahead and slice everything up. Pepper, zucchini, garlic, all sliced nice and thin. Toss it all in a big pan with the oil on medium heat and cook it down, moving constantly to keep the thin slices from burning. When everything begins to soften, about 3-5 minutes, throw in the basil, salt and pepper. Cook this for 1-2 minutes longer and remove from heat.

That’s it, short, simple, and tasty. Enjoy.

If you’re like me, you like food. Maybe you like cooking it, maybe you just like eating it, but in some way you’ve got a soft spot in your heart for the stuff. That said, you probably don’t want to spend any more money getting it than you have to. As a result I’m on a quest to develop a good variety of low cost, filling, and simple meals using as few tools as possible (for better clean-up).

First up, a staple in any college student’s life should be ramen noodles. I’ll come right out and say that I’m not a huge fan of the flavoring packets that come in those sleeves of noodles. In this recipe, keep those aside and save them for later. Sometime soon I’ll try to figure out a recipe that uses these.

Like onions? Like sausage? Give this a try, you won’t be disappointed.

Ramen Sausage Stir-Fry

What you’ll need:

A big pan with a lid. Just about the biggest you’ve got.

Medium sized pot

knife

spatula

2 sleeves ramen noodles, no packets

1-2 large yellow onions

2 cloves garlic

half a bell pepper (any color, though I prefer green)

Sausage. I like those Jimmy Dean rolls you can get at the supermarket, but any sausage will do. try to get plain (or spicy, if you prefer) rather than the sweetened breakfast variety. Discard the casings if you use cased sausage, you just want the filling for this.

a bit of canola or olive oil

Salt, pepper, paprika (really, whatever you like will be fine. Feel free to change around spices, maybe add basil instead of paprika, omit the salt, whatever. I won’t judge.)

cheese (optional)

Start up by peeling the onions and slicing into rings. I usually use 1 1/2 to 2 onions, depending on size. Cut the rings in half so you’re left with a big pile of strips of onion. Remove the stem and seeds from the bell pepper, slice lengthwise in long strips. Peel the garlic as well, if you have trouble throw the cloves in the microwave for three seconds. When they come out, grab both ends of the clove, twist apart and it should slide right out. Dice up the garlic. Put about a tablespoon of oil in the pan, crank it up to medium high heat, and throw in your onion, pepper and garlic. Make sure to keep this mixture moving throughout the cooking process, you don’t want the garlic and onions to burn.

As that’s cooking down, go ahead and make the ramen as stated on the package. It will be done very quickly, and make sure to keep from using the flavoring packets. When it’s done, Drain and rinse with cool water. You want to stop the cooking process or it’ll get mushy, and that’s not a good thing.

When the onions start getting translucent, throw in your sausage( I’ll use just over a third of one of these rolls, or about a cup of meat if I had to venture a guess) and keep cooking and mixing this up (breaking apart the large sausage chunks as you cook) until the onions start to get nice and soft (they’re just getting sweeter and sweeter the more they cook now) and the sausage is almost done. You may want to turn the stove down to medium or even medium low now, depending on how hot your stovetop gets. Toss in that pasta you had set aside, throw in spices of your choosing, I enjoy a bit of smoked paprika, some salt and pepper. Mix it all up and turn off the heat. If you’d like cheese, now is a great time to throw your cheese on and cover for a few minutes. It’ll get nice and melted with the heat that’s left.

This serves two pretty well for a good one dish meal. My roommate and I are both big guys, over six feet tall, and this was great for a light dinner.

Rice Pilaf-

This makes a great side dish for a lot of different dishes, and its versatile enough to mess with at your leisure.  Anybody else grow up with Rice-a-Roni? Same basic deal, but cheaper to make from scratch.

For this, you need:

2 tbsp butter, margarine, or olive oil.

1 cup orzo

1 cup rice (I use jasmine, but any long grain is fine)

4 cups water or broth

spices(I use garlic salt, dried basil, salt and pepper)

Large pan with a lid

spatula

This one’s pretty simple. Put the pan on medium and add your rice, pasta, and butter. when the butter melts, saute this until the orzo gets mostly browned. Add water and spices, I don’t usually measure my spice but I’ll end up with about a quarter teaspoon of basil, 8th teaspoon of garlic salt, and salt and pepper to taste.

Bring the water to a boil, then turn the heat all the way down to low and cover. let that simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the pasta looks nice and soft but not too moist. There shouldn’t be water left. Kill the heat, and you’re done. Want to make it healthier? Consider tossing in a few broccoli florets when you add the water, they’ll cook by the time the rice is done.

This dish is great as a side for about four and will run you about two bucks if you get your rice and pasta on sale. Not bad in by book, not to mention my checkbook.

So, I guess I should get this thing started with a sort of an ”About the Author” deal.

My name is Steven Mekler, and I’m an undergrad at UC Davis. I’m an english/history double major studying to figure out just exactly I’d like to do with my life, but I’m aiming towards trying my hand as a writer. I mostly go for science fiction when I write, but I’ll read just about anything.

In my free time, I cook (hence the food blog), read, write, and play video games. I’m a huge fan of the board game Risk (1980 rules, please) and wouldn’t mind setting up a tournament here in Davis if I find time and willing participants. Paintball is also a hobby, but it’s an expensive one so I don’t play as often as I’d like.

As for the food, I’m pretty much all over the place in terms of style. I like baking, but I’ll usually prefer cooking. I’m just as happy seeing what I can do with a nice cut of salmon or a seven bone roast as I am trying to put together a meal for several people for under five dollars. It’s all about what’s available, and being a college student I’m into the one pan budget meals. Don’t worry though, when I find a special occasion to cook something extraordinary, you can be sure I’ll post it here.

I’m hoping I can keep updating this fairly frequently. Expect recipes, original and recreated, maybe a few game or book reviews, and hopefully plenty of surprises.

-Steven Mekler