Author: shay2kewl
Happy Birthday D!!
Happy Bday to my big booty white girl ❤
Work really do be having you friends with people older than you. Deena, you’re so stellar. You have such a vibrant personality that makes my day. You’re stern and sweet, you show no fear in showing your emotions and you’re incredibly funny.
I am glad that we get to spend another year together. May we have many more celebrations together. May you go nowhere with all that but by my side in loving friendship ❤
Hail Mary
The weather has been crazy lately.
It’s been in the 70s for quite some time and we’ve been getting some rain here and there. The weather was super sunny in the morning but was turning overcast very quickly.
I was hoping it would rain while I was work so I wouldn’t have to worry since I didn’t have my umbrella on me. It didn’t rain while I was at work and on the bus but just as I was crossing the street to get to my apartment, it started raining.
It started hailing really hard. I’ve seen hail before but I’ve never seen hail like this. Luckily I got to capture some footage of it before it stopped. It was very brief and thankfully nothing was damaged.
Korean BBQ fit check wid Da Gurls <3
Grill Off
Korean BBQ and I go way back.
And by way back I just mean 2 years lol. But I do like 4 years of yearning to try it. So yes, I think you could say we are old friends.
Normally we have a usual haunt that we’ve been going to. They have some really nice kimchi, amazing wings, and many memories of me being drunk off 2 bottles of assorted soju.
But it was a Friday and it was sunny, and the soju of another called to me that night.
After some intense love making, I wanted to eat. The original plan was to our seafood boil place since it had been a while, but it was graduation weekend and it was packed. I suggested that we try a new Korean bbq joint that just opened up. While I love our usual place, it’s not really good for the grilling method unfortunately.
Also the new restaurant was closer and I’ve been reallllly wanting to check this place out.
It’s an all you can eat buffet style that gives you an hour and a half to eat for $31. There is a 20% fee if you don’t finish your food but I feel like the amount of time that they give you is more than enough.
It was a good atmosphere and the staff was very nice. They asked if we had ever done any type of grilling before and if we had any allergies. You do have to scan a QR code in order to access the menu but there is internet that you can connect to. Ordering was pretty easy and food came out relatively quickly. The portions were a decent size. It gave me room to try different items while getting a nice taste of what I was trying. The only problem is splitting 5 shrimps between 2 people. However, we are real lovers and baby birded the each other. Surprised we didn’t get kicked out.
Anyway, great time. I would totally go again. I would highly recommend their lemon pepper and cajun shrimp and lots and lots of kimchi!!!
And yes, I did get relatively tipsy on 2 bottles of soju.
What’s your favorite soju flavor?
Join me as I engage in Stereotypical American Behavior: Liking/Loving Butter Chicken
I’ve never had Indian food before this year. No naan, curries, masalas, or chutneys of any kind lmao. However this year is different.
I’ve kind of been making it my mission to try new food whether I cook it or go to a restaurant. It’s been working out well, but I feel like I am picky eater in disguise. I can’t say I don’t like something if I’ve never tried it. Sometimes I just get in my own way of enjoying something new because I can’t imagine how it tastes. It would help out greatly if I started tasting more things so I can get a better judge of flavor.
I’m only giving this long winded section that people normally hate about recipes because it applies to the situation. I’m incredibly clueless when it comes to this specific asian cuisine. The flavors are unknown to me and I have no idea what goes into the dishes; so I unfortunately and Americanly avoided trying something new. All I knew was that it always smelled and looked amazing.
Butter Chicken is kind of like the new Orange Chicken to my understanding. Not flavor wise but foreign food being popular in America wise.
The first time I had butter chicken it was a frozen meal from Trader Joe’s. I thought it was good, but I knew I was missing out flavor wise since frozen meals never capture the real thing well enough. This year I tried a new butter chicken that wasn’t from Joe’s but it was from Deep. That was much better and I gathered a better flavor profile. So good that I decided that I wanted to try to and make it myself because buying it was getting too expensive.
I did ask my Indian coworkers for any tips or must have ingredients and they were all very helpful in giving suggestions( Luv ya’ll ). The main thing I gathered from their tips is that it’s tomato based and lots of stirring lol.
So let’s get into my process.
I always say that I don’t need to buy too much every time I go to the store but I’m going to be honest this time and admit that I only had the rice at home. Sadly it was not Basmati rice but in my defense groceries are too expensive and I was on a budget.
You can certainly use real tomatoes instead of sauce from a can but I don’t have the tools at my disposal to do that. If you would like to donate to the blender fund please let me know.
The only thing I did differently than the recipe was, as per the suggestion of my boyfriend, that I salt and tenderize my chicken and let it sit up to 30 minutes. It’s supposed to make the chicken moist or something like that. I think it worked. The chicken wasn’t dry and was juicy.
The cooking process wasn’t too bad. My coworkers were right about one tip, it is tomato based. The stirring part wasn’t that bad so maybe I misheard.
Despite the name, not a lot of butter is needed, but then again, I feel like I’m making an americanized recipe so I could be wrong. I only used bit of butter when I was cooking the chicken. I did put in some oil to see if I could try and crisp it up like the recipe was saying but I feel like I put too much butter in mine. It still turned out fine.
I only used what I could describe as a handful of ginger lmao. You can see in the ingredients pic how much ginger I used. It was probably half of the relatively small ginger I bought.
I think the recipe used 5 cloves of garlic but I only used 4. I wasn’t trying to pussy out or anything, 4 just felt better for the portions that I had. The recipe calls for you to only smash the garlic, not mince, and to leave it in the for the entire process so that the flavor can gather. I would say don’t forget to take them out unless you like eating garlic cloves. I’m sure it’ll probably taste good.
The rest of the process wasn’t too bad. It does help to put your chicken to one side of the pan while the garlic and the ginger cook together.
The most exciting part about all of this was adding the heavy whipping cream. I’m a big slut for putting cream in things. I love putting it in my soups or ramen broths. It just elevates the flavor.
I was concerned that I used too much tomato sauce because it was so rich, but I think I was just unfamiliar with Butter Chicken’s game. It’s incredibly rich and flavorful. In fact, I was upset that I didn’t have more sauce.
Another small win was that my potion sizes were incredible. I made enough for just me and my boyfriend, no seconds unfortunately.
That’s lowkey kinda good cause this was the most heartburn inducing meal I’ve ever had.
Still I loved it. It was easy to make and I’m happy to add another recipe to my arsenal. It was so good we had it twice in one week.
I probably would’ve loved it more if I had a mango lassi tbh but cream soda is a nice substitute.
Thxs Shay ❤
Any Resemblance?
Been trying to get back into art again. I’ve been trying to draw my apartment, hopefully you can see the vision lol. I haven’t put pencil to paper in this way in like 3 years.
First Rip in the Apartment
Message from the Stars
Was putting my cards away but felt like there was a message that needed to be seen.
Not sure if anyone needs to see this. It seems as though it’s for someone who is going through a lot of troubles, some seem financial but some seem to be with someone who is slow moving or not fast to act. It may feel like things are moving slow even though you are putting in a lot of work. It feels as though you may not be able to talk about these problems or that you have no one to talk to about these problems. It may feel like you are breaking your back to make things work or that you may feel the load that you have is too heavy.
I’m unsure if there is a full moon happening in August. Perhaps you may gain some clarity or just have better times ahead in that month due to your hard work paying off
Maybe the color green is significant. Makes me think of money so it feels financial. Maybe you or someone else is green with envy about the finances of others or the progress of others.
Our Infinite Fates
I’ve been taking a small break from Outlander to focus on some other tasks but I will return. This just happened to be one of the other tasks.
This book has been on my radar for a while. Whenever I’m scrolling through my Facebook reels I always got ads for this book. It seemed interesting enough and I thought the premise was cool. Fated mates who kill each other in every lifetime sounded like it was something that was right up my alley.
Although I was excited about it, I was a little sad cause I wanted to do a story kind of similar to this but not exactly. I know stories like this have been told over and over again and it’s not exactly a new concept but it’s still kinda disheartening when you see a concept you want to do get popular before you have a chance to try it for yourself.
Regardless, I still considered buying the book. Before I clicked pay, I had serious reservations for a moment. Normally I don’t buy books unless I’ve read them and loved them. I didn’t look at any reviews for the book and just went in blind. Normally I would know a little bit about the story due to hearing about it on booktube or Facebook or Twitter but I didn’t even know it had gotten released until one of my booktubers was talking about it.
I was nervous I wouldn’t like it. I feel like sometimes you just have that gut feeling that you’re not going to like a book and that you should listen to yourself so you can save time, money, and heartache.
I enjoyed the first 50 pages out of 737. I bought it on my phone so I’m not sure if the page count is the same all around but it was much longer than I was expecting.
The writing is okay. A bit too flowery. I feel like it tried too hard in certain aspects. Like the poetry sucked, very surface level type things. I went into it thinking it would be a mature read for some reason but it is definitely a YA novel to it’s core. I can’t say I’m in the business to read YA right now but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it. When it’s done good, it’s great, when it’s done like this, it sucks.
Everything felt kind of bland to me. The writing was okay but that’s all it is. It didn’t knock me off my socks or anything. It was just writing that I’ve already seen in a voice I had read a million times before. The events were bland. Everything was just very lackluster. Maybe my expectations were too high.
I thought I would be reading something different than what was advertised. I think maybe I just wasn’t the intended reader.
I only got about 25% through before I decided to call it quits. I feel like the author was trying way too hard to sell me on how fated the two main characters were supposed to be. I feel like I was supposed to think that their love was/is all consuming and there’s this magnetism that draws them together. And like it would’ve felt like that if every other paragraph literally wasn’t just that. I thought that the flashbacks were nice and fit the story very well but I feel like we didn’t spend enough time in the present. Mind you, I only read to 25% so maybe that could change if I read more of the book.
It got to a point where I was like barely looking and just skimming. I was so bored with the dialogue. I think my biggest gripe with this book is that the writing felt too flat. It didn’t excite me at all.
For all that I didn’t like, I did like some aspects. I thought the concept was cool. I like a nice fated mates story when it’s done right. There was some yearning but I didn’t really feel it tbh. I thought that the idea of love leaving the body when you die or the conversation they had about death and grief when they were in Algeria.
I think maybe at some point I’ll try to finish this book, I am curious to know if the twist is what I think it is. I will make an updated post if I ever decide to finish it.
What did you guys think of this book?
The Abode 
