quick and easy cooking meme

via stitchinthyme: Your meme mission, should you choose to accept it, is this - post 1-5 of your absolute favorite recipes. Easy stuff that you routinely do off the top of your head. Y'know - the kind of thing us average citizens could do w/ minimal prep time. You may also share one "hard" recipe from a book or other source, if you desire. Bonus points if you provide color commentary, or explain why this receipe is your favorite.

( pasta w/sundried tomatoes and walnuts; stuffed squash; hamburger donburi; soyrizo; stirfry with ramen noodles )

return to scrabble

So, I'd been absent from Scrabble club for long enough to get a /A next to my name in the ratings, which was distressing. I aim to make it at least twice in January -- I wrote it in my paper journal, and so it must be. I also wrote that I must walk on the ellipse machine at least twice a week, which means at least once more, for at least 15 minutes, before Sunday. Hm.

Anyway, went to Scrabble. It honestly made me a lot happier than I thought the silly game could make me, to be able to play there again. I still don't really feel like I belong (I've only gone 6 or so times now), but I recognize people, and I get to play, and everyone is fairly friendly in that weird, I'm-a-Scrabble-geek-with-questionable-social-skills, sort of way (hey, I'm one of them, so I can poke fun).

I ended up playing, by means of random draw, three of the top 5 players in the club ratings. Thankfully, I didn't know that two of them were rated that high, or it might've intimidated me. First game, draw was reasonably even, but my tiles played on the board better, and I won (hoorah!) with two bingos (I'll leave them all as anagrams, so y'all can play the unscrambly game): DEIINSR and AAINRST (which is the STRAIN stem + A, for those of you who play with stems). I was somewhere in the 420s that game. Second game, I drew less well, but I found three natural bingos -- EIOPRST (which is probably a stem but I haven't studied it -- oh wait, I have -- TORIES+P -- I just didn't remember it), AEIGNNR (EARING+N) , AEGINRS (EARING+S) through a T on the board. Sadly, he bingoed three times, too, had good tiles, is better than me, and didn't have to exchange twice. My score was in the 390s, and I think he won by around 50. Third game, I drew well, I found stuff, and my opponent's letters were poo, so he had to trade three times. My bingos were ?ABDISY (for which I actually played a phony. oops. but unchallenged), and ?AEIRTW through an S. I was above 400 and won by 50ish, largely because I was stuck with a Q and V in the end and started playing stupid about four turns from the end. I get tired by the end of game three.

So, no more /A next to my name, and my fake club rating will probably go up! Woo! I like being top ten, even though I don't feel like I belong there. No one in the top ten of any competitive Scrabble should be as shaky on three letter words and 3-5 JQXZ words as I am, but I won't tell them that.

( The answers to the bingo scrambles above )