Current mood:

geeky

Taking WoW offline
(Crossposted to my journal)

Offline WoW Geekery #1: I made Westfall Stew for dinner the other night.


Process pictures:

Gathering the Ingredients:
(Alas, I forgot to take screenshots.)

Preparing the Ingredients:

Make sure you wash the murloc eyes thoroughly. Discard any murloc eyes that seem to have soft spots.
Because you will be tossing these directly into the stew, the murloc eyes may pop while cooking. This is perfectly normal.


Be sure to cut up the goretusk snouts and stringy vulture meat into appropriately bite-sized pieces.


Almost done!

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Adapting a World of Warcraft recipe has its challenges. Sometimes, the ingredients that you gather are in odd proportions, or certain ingredients appear to be missing. In the Westfall Stew quest, you're required to gather 3 each of murloc eyes, goretusk snouts, stringy vulture meat, and okra (???).

And yet, the recipe that you get calls for only one of each, and no okra at all. Hardly acceptable eats for a growing young warrior who needs his vitamins... and besides, what kind of stew calls for no liquid at all?!

Here, then, is my modified recipe for Westfall Stew.



Westfall Stew -style Chili
Requires Cooking Level 75

Adapted from the Make it Meatless chapter of MealLeaniYumm!'s Easy Vegetarian Chili:

1 tbsp olive or canola oil
2 onions, chopped
2 green or red peppers, chopped
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 c cooked or canned red kidney beans
2 c cooked or canned chickpeas
6 to 12 intact murloc eyes*
1/2 lb stringy vulture meat, grilled and cut into strips*
1/4 lb goretusk snouts, cut into bite-sized pieces*
28 oz. can tomatoes (or 6 fresh tomatoes, chopped)
1 c bottled salsa (mild or medium)
1/2 c water
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp each pepper, oregano, cumin
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 tbsp unswwetened cocoa powder
1 tsp sugar
1 c corn niblets, optional

Conventional method:
Heat oil in a large pot. Saute onions, peppers and garlic for 5 minutes on medium heat. Add mushrooms and saute 4 or 5 minutes more. Add remaining ingredients except corn. Bring to a boil and simmer, covered, for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in corn.

Microwave method:
Combine oil, onions, peppers and garlic in a 3 qt microwave safe pot. Microwave covered on HIGH for 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and microwave 2 minutes mlonger. ADd remaining ingredients except corn. Cover and microwave on HIGH for 18 to 20 minutes, stirring once or twice. Add corn. Let stand covered for 10 minutes.

Yield: 10 servings of approximately 1 cup each. Frezes and or reheats well.

179 calories per serving (without meat), 3 g fat (0.4 g saturated), 0 mg cholesterol, 9g protein, 32 g carbohydrate, 431 mg sodium, 619 mg potassium, 4 mg iron, 9 g fibre, 81 mg calcium.

* A 19 oz can of beans or chickpeas contains 2 cups. Rinse well to remove excess sodium

* If murloc eyes are unavailable, cherry or grape tomatoes in an equal amount may be substituted

* Boneless skinless chicken breast may be used to partially or completely replace the stringy vulture meat. I recommend grilling it beforehand to bring out the stringiness.

* Goretusk snouts can be purchased in the butcher's department of most major grocery stores. They are often pre-packaged in long tubes, and you can cut off as many snouts as you wish to use.

* Vegetarian option: All meat-products can be omitted from the recipe entirely. You may wish to serve the vegetarian chili over rice or a similar grain, to get the full protein benefit.

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Geekery #2:

My husband and I attended a wedding this weekend...the second wedding we've ever attended, and the first really traditional one with a DJ and everything. Including traditional goofy wedding dances...

Me: "Oh my god!"
Husband: "??"
Me: "THEY'RE DOING THE TAUREN FEMALE DANCE!"
Husband: "..."
Me: "They are! Look! They're totally doing the Tauren Female Dance, aren't they?!"
Husband: (whispering) "GEEEK."

As it turns out, my WoW avatar is a much better dancer than I am. :p I may have to google and see if there are any websites that will teach me how to do the Electric Slide.