#alevolpe

Commission prize for @alevolpe for participating in Same Prompt Party last month :)

We were talking about how Venus and Mars together have such an interesting balance of personal intimacy and professionalism. I am a SUCKER for that, so my brain immediately went to a battle girlfriends space. Being so in sync that they don't even need to communicate, they know the other has their back.

Happy birthday Doc!! ✌️

Thank you!

Um hey so I'm like not the best person to ask about this 😭

IN MY DEFENSE I've had this blog since 2011, I haven't let 2k messages pile up in the span of just a couple of years 😭😭😭

I feel really guilty because so many people take time out of their day to send me messages but I've been so burnt out and dealing with executive dysfunction that I only answer some of them. In a lot of cases, I'll think "ooooh let me cook on this one when I have more time/energy/whatever" only for the poor message to get buried.

I will say that my policy is "better late than never;" even if an ask has been sitting in my inbox for months, I always give myself the grace to go back to it and give it the response it deserves. Sometimes I'll also do an inbox deep dive and pick out like 3-5 of my favorite asks to answer all at once.

waaaah thank you!!! T~T

I'm generally turned off by most store bought sauces due to the high content in both sugar and sodium. Although, given dietary limitations for the person I cook for, I also have to limit the amounts of fats I introduce to dishes. So a butter based sauce is usually off the table when cooking red meats.

I am about to ask a question that may annoy you.

Is there a reason you have to eat steak with a sauce? Because a good steak, cooked decently, should not need a sauce. It should be able to be eaten just as seasoned and cooked. If you don't like steak sauces, don't have them!

Bring your steak to room temp-ish, I usually have it sit out for about 40 minutes? Season with salt and pepper, i let it sit on there for the 40 minutes I have it out of the fridge. Sometimes I add dried garlic. Oil the pan, put it on high. Cooking it will depend on how rare you like it, but the idea is that the outside will get seared while the inside cooks to your liking. For me, I have to use very very high ehat because I like a very rare steak. Sometimes I will actually keep the steak in the fridge to make this happen.

But I'm abnormal. You want to pull it about...oh, 3-5 degrees before what you want your finished temperature to be. After awhile, you'll get to know this well enough to do it based on time and thickness, but for now, i say buy a thermometer. About 5-6 minutes on one side, and then flip, and then other side to finish. You shouldn't need anything else! Don't force yourself into steak sauce!

That being said, if for whatever reason you DO want steak sauce, it doesn't have to be high sugar or high fat. A lot of them ARE, but it's not necessary. You can use a little bit of red wine and beef broth in the bottom of the pan, after the steaks have been pulled. This will deglaze the pan and add that flavors to the sauce, and then you salt and pepper to taste, letting it boil down into a sauce. Very very easy. Delicious with mushrooms cooked in it, too.

You can also make chimichurri, which i really like. it's just a little bit of red wine vinegar, parsley, garlic, salt and cilantro that you throw into a blender until fine, mix with a few tbsp olive oil, and then usually refine with a little bit of pepper. I like it with red pepper flake befcause I like it spicy, but it's not necessary.

When it first came out, I played a TON of Overwatch. My entire OW fic universe is based on what came out of the game in the first two years ish? And 95% of the character’s base personalities in my universe actually come off like...the first year-6 months. I jumped in hard and fast and so the crazy-ass inconsistencies they’ve come up with since I just kinda have to ignore. 

BUT YOU DIDN’T ASK ABOUT THE IP, YOU ASKED ABOUT THE GAME ITSELF. 

When it first came out, I played a TON. I have never played a game like it, but I loved the characters, I loved how many female characters there were who all Honest To God had different personalities, and life experiences, and looks. So I bought the game initially just to support it! I held a giveaway and gave away a copy! I played it one time at the urging of @keyofjetwolf and from then on I mostly played with her because I could trust her not to get annoyed that I really didn’t understand the mechanics of how those kind of games worked. 

I played Junkrat and Dva, initally, because they’re very very easy and For Beginners in a lot of ways. But Tracer is, and was, my absolute favorite character on a PERSONAL level, and so I decided I wanted to play her! Despite her being one of the more challenging characters on offer! So I trained in AI games and worked my ass off, in a weird way that I can’t imagine I ever made the time for but I know I did, and actually got to be quite good at her! My lineup basically became, depending on what role the team needed : Tracer, Dva, Mercy. If I could be whatever I wanted, it was ALWAYS Tracer, because, basically, I love her. I love her and everything she stands for. 

Overwatch moving to an esports thing basically ruined the game aspect for me. Not like, on a moral level, but in that the balancing for PROS became such a  core focus of the game that it made it impossible for Filthy Casuals like me to ever keep up with all the changes and tweaks. EVery time I’ve tried to get back into it, I just can’t keep up, and so it does make me sad because it used to be a fun way for me to blow off steam and what I LOVED about it especially was that it was a video game I could play for like 15 minutes. I could pick up a match or two and then get on with my life, and in that way, it was a game PERFECTLY made for me.  But in the, “Now we require you to have a large amount of experience with games of this type and time on your hands to keep up with the constant tweaking, also we’re focused almost entirely on esports and people who want to do competitive style play” sort of way, it’s what I said when the game first came out--this game isn’t made for casual players like me. And it wasn’t true then! But it def is now, and sometimes I’m still sad about it, a bit. It was the only video game I enjoyed the PLAY of, not the story, not anything like that, but the PLAY.