And so it begins, the year 2011. Let's start with wishing everybody, I haven't seen yet in person, a happy new year.

I am not gonna put really goals for my self for 2011, but I have a few things I want to work on. First thing is that I want my adminstration a bit more organized. I started this in 2010 already by archiving everything and so and want to continue this in 2011.

Second is my social contacts. In 2010 I met a lot of new people which I had great times with and some people I knew that I grew a closer friendship with. I want to continue this social diversity because I have found out I really appreciate all these people and spending time with them. It has great value for me whether it's the cooking days with selmaika , playing Warhammer at Miriam, spending time with maglok , sna and spacegeest but ofcourse also with friends I already have for a long time like omdathetkan , nathreee and Jaap and ofcourse all the people I forgot to mention here.

One last point I am for sure going to continue in 2011 is my cooking. In 2010 I intensified my cooking by doing it more and sometimes more intense (like my nine course dinner at a warhammer day and the five course dinner I made with selmaika ). I want more cooking challenges for myself, learn more flavours, surprise people, etc. One thing I am considering for this is a vegetable package you can buy at Odin. Once a week you will get a vegetable package with random, biological, vegetables in them for a very reasonable price. It might give me a nice challenge to use all kinds of vegetables I normally wouldn't choose. Also on the field of cooking I might accept "black box" challenges, meaning that I ask someone that comes to me to eat to give me a list of 10 ingredients two days in advance and that I have to make a meal with just those ingredients (and basics like water, oil, pepper and salt).

That's it for me now, talk to you all soon.

Just a little over two more days of work and I got a well deserved holiday. Thursday afternoon I start with the year ending at work which is still a bit secret as to what it is exactly but I'm guessing it will end with a nice dinner.

Though I want to keep my holiday full of rest I already got some very nice activities planned. First off the weekend is filled with fun starting on Friday with Dorestad 1493, a concert on Satursday, boardgames at omdathetkan  on Sunday and a Warhammer battle against the walking bones of maglok  on Monday night. Furthermore I am going to finally write about the cooking day I had with selmaika  a few weeks ago.

Really looking forward to it, now just to finish my last story here at work so that I can start my holiday with a rested heart.

Most people that know me probably wont be surprised if I call myself chaotic at best. The biggest disadvantage for me to this chaos is the feeling that I loose way too much time thinking about what should I do now, how should I do it, organizing stuff to be structured, etc.

About a year (maybe two) ago a friend of mine, Jaap, showed me a methodology called "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. Jaap has had lots of good experiences with this method and I've doubted since that time if I should give it a try or not. Last week at the conference Devoxx in Antwerpen there was also a talk about "Getting Things Done" and finally it convinced me to give it a try. I immediatly ordered the book (yeah for 170 MBit Internet @Devoxx) and started reading it last night.

Personally I hope to get a bit better structure out of using this and a bit more effectiveness in doing things so I have more time to do nice stuff. More about this soon I hope.

So, last week maglok  asked me if I wanted to join his newly created campaign. Since my tabletop roleplay activity is a bit low and he is planning his sessions in weekends I found it a great opportunity so I very eagerly agreed. As it turns out the group is composed entirely of people I know, but never played with (at least not table top roleplay) so it got even better.

Then yesterday I found out what we are gonna play and my skin got a bit icky since we are gonna play a module by Monte Cook. Some reading this (for example omdathetkan ) might know our last experience with Monte Cook as our gamemaster Remmelt let us play the module Labyrint of Madness ( www.amazon.com/Labyrinth-Madness-Fantasy-Roleplaying-Adventure/dp/0786903309) by Monte Cook which literally can make you mad. But thinking about it a bit more made me very positive. Monte Cook is a great writer of dungeons that add a lot more then just a bit of play so I'm looking very much forward to it.

After a bit of hussle I decided to go play the Fighter of the group. I will post a more extensive post about him later, but the summary is that he is a dwarven social outcast. A dwarven fighter, craftsman weaponsmith that refused to drink alcohol and is mostly polite.

Ok, next weekend probably is gonna be the most intense weekend for me for the rest of the year.

It's starts with intense adrenaline playing in the finishing of Riven. Yesterday night the tensity was upped with the show of Daglicht. I had a real good night there, lot's of fun only a bit trouble sleeping afterwards due to the adrenaline. Tomorrow night the final night of Riven. I hope we can have as good a time as we had the last few weeks.

After friday night selmaika is driving to Nijmegen with me for our cooking day on Satursday. We got a real nice menu and on top of that selmaika promised to make some nice english sandwiches for lunch. A quick summary of what we are gonna cook. We are gonna start with a fresh tomato-chicken soup followed by a small course of duck. The main dish is gonna be selfmade pork schnitzel, with a nice creamsauce, potatoes from the oven and some nicely flavoured vegetables. After this we continue with a nice pastry filled with goatcheese, smoked beef, pine nut and honey and we finish with a dessert that at least contains french toast and chocolate sauce/cream/fondue. Really looking forward to this cooking day and hopefully learning a lot from selmaika and having a lot of fun.

A busy but very nice weekend ahead. Luckily I can rest on sunday and monday.

And again a nice weekend ahead of me.

Satursday I'm gonna help my parents buy a new computer and after that I'm gonna reorganise the wine attic (so all the wine they're gonna buy on the wine trip they are taking in a few weeks will fit :D). I'm trying to convince my father to start using OpenOffice instead of buying MS Office with his new computer, but not sure if he's gonna do it.

Sunday is also gonna be nice. I'm going to jpdw to play a nice Warhammer battle. We decided on 1500 points to not stress us too much. The elves are really looking forward to getting revenge and hopefully they are not so scared by loosing a single model as they were last time. Also I'm gonna take my banana-chocolate pannacotta with me if it succeeds.

Monday I got a nice resting day. Riven in the evening and cooking for some people before that (again with banana-chocolate pannacotta if it succeeds).

Really looking forward to it all.

So the moment supreme was there, making duckbreast for the first time. Next is gonna sound like a contradiction, but it's not. The diner was great but the cooking failed.

( Here the details ... )

So to sum things up, the tastes were great and I really learned a lot and ate great but not it were not the flavours I planned.

For those that think ducks are sweet and only to hug and caress you might wanna stop reading here.

This weekend I'm gonna take a small side step from my Italian cooking and prepare duck breast. I got this great meal in my head that should really spoil me: Duck breast marinaded in honey-mustard-thyme, a citrus-carrot mush and crispy curly fried potatoes.

Now to hope that it will taste, a post and pictures will come sunday or monday. Grr, why isn't it weekend yet :(.

Zo, een beetje aan de late kant maar dan toch nog even een postje van het culinaire gedeelte van de warhammer dag 2 weken geleden.

Ik had 9 gangen op de planning staan, aardig wat maar wel een mooie combinatie. Het begin was al meteen goed, Lies had namelijk de dag ervoor haar verjaardag gevierd en er was nog taart over. Wij als meelevende vrienden hebben haar natuurlijk geholpen om die mee op te maken :D. Lies nogmaals bedankt want ze waren heerlijk :D.

( Warning: Hunger generating content following )

Ok, voor mensen die van een korte samenvatting houden. De warhammer dag gisteren was een daverend succes. We hebben echt met z'n vijven gigantisch veel succes gehad. Het eten was, in mijn ogen, een matig succes. Verschillende hoogte punten zoals bv. de crostini met kip puree, de misvormde ravioli en de appeltaart van lies.

Afgelopen zondag was het dus zover. Voor het eerst warhammer voor me en niet zomaar warhammer maar met een groep van vier mensen die ik allen als vrienden beschouw: maglok , sna , spacegeest  en jpdw . We verzamelde zo rond 12.00 en gingen vervolgens beginnen met alles op te zetten. Een schilder tafel werd ingericht, de battlefield werd geconstrueerd en ik begon aan het voorgerecht (meer over het eten komt in een volgende post, maar ik wacht even op wat foto's). Tegen die tijd kwam lies ook binnen met nog een leuke verrassing, ze had wat taart en muffins over en vroeg zich af of die er nog bij konden. In koor werd geantwoord: Natuurlijk.

De eerste battle was tussen Glok en Sna. Tomb Kings vs. Empire 1500 punten. Kort door de bocht de Tomb Kings werden ingemaakt, maar hebben het wel vijf (of was het zes) ronde uitgehouden. Voornamelijk de Hellblaster en de Pistoliers aten door de lopende botten heen. De Hellblaster especially was nasty. De eerste ronde schoot hij 24 schoten en de tweede ronde 22 schoten (toen was hij alleen helaas wel kapot).

Daarna kwamen de twee nooobs: Jo en mijzelf. Lizardmen vs. High Elves. De korte samenvatting is dat het in het meteen helemaal de mist in ging voor de elves. De fast cavalry werd gecharged door een unit die terror veroorzaakte waarbij ik natuurlijk meteen mijn leadership 8 roll miste. Verder was de magic van de high elves bijna niet tot niet effectief en werd als extraatje nog even 3 units gefeared een ronde of twee later. Het helpt natuurlijk ook niet als je gemiddeld een power pool van 4 hebt in je magic fase en tot 3 keer toe 12 rolled op panic tests/leadership rolls. De repeater bolt thrower at nog wel een beetje door, maar toen er eenmaal geclashed werd met de heavy infantry was het gedaan voor de elves. Een tikkeltje pech, maar het was niet de pech die mij heeft laten verliezen.

Het was wel een super leuke battle, heel veel geleerd en super veel fun gehad. Wijze lessen voor de volgende keer: Don't rely on magic, get more punch and high initiative with always strike first is nice :D.

Daarna hebben we met ongeveer dezelfde units nog een keer de battle gedaan maar dit keer met Sna als advisor voor mij en Glok als advisor voor Jo. Die battle ging al stuk beter voor de High Elves maar alsnog verloren, again was de magic nearly neglictable voor de High Elves.

Glok, Sna, Jo en Lies bedankt voor een super zondag. Voor iedereen die meer over het eten wil weten daar komt nog een uitgebreide post over, maar die maak ik zodra ik de pics van Jo heb.