Stargrace

Do You Use the Wishlist Feature?

Just out of curiosity, how many readers out there actually use the Steam Wishlist feature? What do you use it for?

I tend to wishlist games I want but can’t afford at the time, or want and don’t want to spend money on, or want and just.. want. Sometimes an incredibly generous friend gifts one to me and I try to return the favour as often as I can (which isn’t nearly as often as I want, I can tell you that). I try to keep the wishlist up to date and as recent as possible, weeding out games that I don’t REALLY want and that I can’t remember why I actually wishlisted (probably had something to do with a steam sale guiding my hand). My wishlist is a mixture of early access games I don’t want to forget about, and older games that I’m just waiting to go on sale.

If we’re not friends on steam yet, we should be! You can find me there as Stargrace.

Dragon Wings

In the market place today I noticed that there were some chests for sale – but the first one was free (one of each type that was being offered). I love free things (who doesn’t!) so of course I excitedly claimed them to see what was inside on each of my accounts.

I got an account bound pet, some food and oils, and some bits and bobs that you could use to claim other things – if you wanted the really good things you’d have to invest in more chests though. It just so happened that I had enough to purchase some awesome looking holographic dragon wings that fit over the backpack slot as an appearance item. Neat!

I don’t plan on purchasing any more of the chests for gems, but it was a great way to entice players to spending some gems (or gold, or real life cash) that’s for sure.

Pictured above is my Chronomancer (Mesmer) – Blesse. I haven’t played the character for quite some time, not since HoT came out I believe. I think at the time I was finding the class too difficult, and I wanted to swap back to my guardian so that’s the character I made next. I boosted a Charr ranger to 80 with my PoF boost, and I had enough random boosts to move my elementalist to 30 (from 20) which wasn’t too shabby. I also created a norn necromancer bringing the total characters on the newer account to 5, one of each race. I’ve never really played anything except my Guardian and the Mesmer, so I don’t have a lot of experience with those classes, but it’s always fun to have options.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Before You Know it, 10 Days Have Passed

There’s a saying I’ve heard a few times now since my husband left for depot, and that’s “the days are long but the weeks are short”. I haven’t seen him in 5.5 weeks now, and it’s been 10 days since I wrote here on my blog. The days are incredibly long and very difficult as I attempt to raise our 11 month old son alone, but then I look back and wonder where the time has all gone. I can only hope that I’ll have the strength to keep pushing forward like I have been. Some days are filled with nothing but tears – but they end, and the next day begins and it’s not usually as difficult as the previous one.

People keep telling me it gets easier but I’ll be honest. It doesn’t. Having my partner gone has not gotten easier at all. I cry just as much. I find doing certain things just as difficult. When my little one picks up his Cat In The Hat book and yells for ‘da da’ over and over, it breaks my heart and I cry no matter how many different days he does this. Sometimes it just doesn’t get easier and I truly believe that this is one of those times. That being said, the days DO still pass, time keeps moving forward, and so do I.

I had a bit of spare time today and I was able to log into GW2 – yay! These little moments help keep me sane. I mentioned before that I have two accounts, and I recently acquired PoF on my second (newer) account – a deluxe version of the game, which meant a new outfit and a special area I could get to. My older account has more history (Hall of Monuments, more birthdays) but doesn’t have collectors edition nor does it have any gems. Thing is, I’ve got a lot more “completed” on the old account, but a lot more perks on the newer one. If I stuck with the newer one I wouldn’t be able to catch up exactly (no hall of monuments and no making time pass faster for birthdays) but I could at least catch up in story / world discovery etc.

It was nice to play. I love looking at my characters, working on crafting, exploring the world, and just relaxing. I haven’t actually DONE a lot – I haven’t been working on my dailies and I still don’t know what I should aim towards as far as weapons go (legendary? I have no idea) but I still really enjoy myself in game. There’s still tons to do waiting for me if / when I want to work on it, and again the fact that there’s no subscription to pay for means I never really feel that much pressure. The world is beautiful, the story interesting, and I’m glad I decided to stick with it as my game of choice while life is in this really weird phase.

As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!

Mine vs. Theirs (Chefs Plate #3)

Today I made the third and final meal from Chefs Plate – garlic noodles with squash and spinach, and some toast with ricotta cheese and cherry tomatoes. It was incredibly delicious and unlike the other two meals the portion felt huge (I had enough for 3-4 plates like the one you see above). The noodles were fresh, and now that I’ve had fresh pasta I’m not sure I can ever go back to the boxed stuff. It was light and fluffy and full of flavour.

It was one of the easier meals to cook and prepare, and as far as value goes it came closest to what I would actually consider paying $10.95 per plate for. It was also their vegetarian option, but you could always add a little chicken or something to stretch the meal out if you wanted.

Final thoughts? Well, Chefs Plate is just not aimed at people like myself. Solo parent of an infant, with no time to cook. It would be great for someone just learning, who wanted to impress themselves (or friends) with delicious meals. Someone who has a bit of time to cook, but no ideas of what to make, and of course, who has the cash. I do like that we can keep the recipes, I’ll make them again in the future using my own purchased ingredients and customizing them the way I prefer. It also gave me some good ideas, like using lime to flavour a slaw (the carrot & cabbage slaw was delicious) and how you don’t need complicated meals to have big flavour. I think the instant pot is geared at me in a much better way – less time in the kitchen, less time watching my food cook and preparing it. So I’ll look for more instant pot meals instead and maybe I’ll post one here weekly (or maybe not, I have no idea if people care that I post food things on my gaming blog).

In the end, I’m very glad I spent the $32 to try Chefs Plate out – but there’s no way I’d pay full price ($65) for three meals (6 servings total). That’s almost my entire weekly budget for groceries, and doesn’t cover lunch or breakfast (or even 7 days of dinners) or anything for my kid. That being said, if you want to give it a try you can get a discount on your first order by clicking here.

Lets get back to some gaming posts!

Theirs vs. Mine (Chefs Plate #2)

My second Chefs Plate meal was fish taquitos with a cabbage & carrot slaw. None of the ingredients were rotten this time which was nice. I was worried about the avocado because those have such a short “not ripe not ripe BAM RIPE rotten” stage, but it turned out excellent.

The food itself was fantastic and very filling – but I had a few issues. I had to grate the giant carrot and the chunk of cabbage by hand which was a pain. When it comes to value, I didn’t think that the supplies were worth $10.95 (the cost of a single plate) even if the overall meal was delicious. They sent me 2 fish fillets (very good), a small pouch of spices, a small container of sour cream, an avocado, a lime, 2 cloves of garlic, 6 flour tortilla wraps (very small), a carrot, and a chunk of purple cabbage. Now sure if you buy this stuff in the store it comes to more than $10.95 because the portions are a lot larger – but I felt like they sent me very little and I had to do all the work on top of it. I’m a busy mother of a 10 month old baby doing the solo parent thing for 6 months, cost is only a portion of what I was trying this for, time it takes to prepare the meal is another one. If the cabbage and carrots had come pre-shredded that would have made a world of difference.

For this meal I put the little guy in his bouncy chair and tried to keep him entertained long enough to make everything. I got right up to the stage where they go into the oven for 10 minutes which was pretty good. The meals all advertise to take between 25-30 minutes to make from start to finish and I find this to be pretty accurate – but I am rushing around doing things the entire time, so if you happen to work slower the meals would probably take around 45 minutes.

I’ve got one more meal to go, a fettuccini meal that I’m pretty excited about. That’ll be tomorrow (or when I can find the time to make it). I’ll do a final blog post with overall thoughts and if anyone has a question don’t hesitate to let me know.