Dwarven Vow #4: Don't depend on others. Walk on your own two legs.

You know, it occurs to me that not everyone in the world is playing Tales of Symphonia at the moment, so here's a quick summary. In the GameCube game Tales of Symphonia, Lloyd Irving and his friends set out to save the world. Along the way, they make new friends and discover that the world is considerably bigger and more complex than they first imagined. For some reason, I'm reminded of those great lines from The Princess Bride:

    The Grandson: Has it got any sports in it?
    Grandpa: Are you kidding? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles...
    The Grandson: Doesn't sound too bad. I'll try to stay awake.
    Grandpa: Oh, well, thank you very much, very nice of you. Your vote of confidence is overwhelming.

The game sounds pretty generic, I know, but the it really is a lot of fun with many hours of gameplay value. There are a couple of things that will affect this blog:
    -- The main character Lloyd was raised by a dwarf, hence the titles of the posts. I'm trying to go in the order that the vows appear in the story, so yes, they are out of numerical order for a reason.
    -- The mysterious gourmet, the Wonder Chef, hides throughout the world to give you recipes to help heal after battle. These are the recipes I am preparing His picture is my profile picture. No, I did not make him up. He is the product of Namco-Bandai. Perhaps someday I will branch out to other video games, like Cooking Mama (that'd be a huge undertaking), Eternal Sonata, or Tales of the Abyss.... But for now, Tales of Symphonia will be my starting point.

The first two recipes on our agenda are: a sandwich and cabbage rolls. The character Genis (the main character's brilliant best buddy) is, generally speaking, the best cook in the game -- probably because when he adds extra ingredients, they are ingredients that make sense. For example, a sandwich Genis-style may consist of bread, meat, greens, cheese, and tomato. Lloyd is prone to adding lemons to his sandwiches, and Collette skips the meat altogether in favor of a couple of pieces of fruit. Lemon sandwich -- yum. :-/

So, here's my Genis-style sandwich before adding some mustard and mayo. And some more tomato slices and a brownie on the side... no wonder sandwiches don't restore that much health..... But at least I toasted it, so the chance for failing to make the sandwich was there. It could have burned or something. (Yes, you can  fail at making a sandwich in this game. Seriously.)

I'll most likely be attempting cabbage rolls on Friday. I have to hit up the grocery store for cabbage, among other things, and the local ads come out on Wednesday. I feel a bit like I'm cheating here at the beginning -- the first recipe is a sandwich, for cryin' out loud, and cabbage rolls aren't new to me since my husband's family makes them pretty often and calls them stuffed cabbage. (Yum, Polish food.) Oh well, there are plenty of recipes on the list that I've never made, such as paella, and I'll have to save my risk-taking and expensive groceries for another day. But at least I'll be doing it myself -- walking on my own two legs as much as possible. Of course, if my hubby decides to help and/or take over making stuffed cabbage, I certainly won't complain! :-) Anyway, enough rambling. Have a fabulous day!



Oh, and here's the address for the walkthrough that I'm using: http://www.gamefaqs.com/gamecube/561316-tales-of-symphonia/faqs/42708

The Beginning of a Journey

It's the same old story, different verse: underemployed woman who has just moved to a new area and needs a project. Her hobbies include cooking, playing JRPG's, and spending too much time on the Internet. She thinks for a long while about how to mark her days and have her days make their mark. Voila! Why not combine her three hobbies into one challenge?! (She might have seen Julie and Julia a few too many times, as well.) Thus, the idea for the Tales of Cooking blog was born: I will undertake every recipe in the game Tales of Symphonia in (gasp!) real life. Of course, I'm probably not going to make them enough times to "master" the recipe, so no special costumes for me, and if I start seeing the Wonder Chef, I will also start seeing a psychiatrist, but still, the challenge is there: make every recipe in Tales of Symphonia in real life, one or two per week since (alas!) I have a real life grocery budget, and I'm pretty sure that if I try to kill monsters around here, I won't be getting any money out of the deal. :-) I'm starting my umpteenth playthrough of Tales of Symphonia tonight, and I'll start cooking when I start getting recipes. Will I be using a walkthrough to make sure that I get all the recipes? You betcha!