Wednesday, February 23, 2011

P.M.S Cooks! Ribs and Potatoes

Hey all, instead of bringing you a Demo Review of Dragon Age II since I can't play it until next week (damn Gold-only for a week :P), let's have another cooking post!

So tonight I wanted to make a really nice supper for us. So slow-cooked ribs and pan-fried potatoes seemed to be just the thing!

Ribs:
-cook time: approx 8 hours (in slow cooker/crock pot)
-rib sauce included: hickory bbq sauce (just enough to cover the other spices, as the flavor is really bold); Montreal steak spice- again just a little; dried chives, rosemary, sage and parsley; garlic- 4-5 cloves put through a press; pinch of sea salt and quite a bit of pepper. I wish I could be more specific but I don't measure these things. I just put in as much as seemed necessary for the amount of meat that was there. Oh, and the ribs were beef.
-mix all the spices with the bbq sauce. I just did this all in the slow cooker pot. Then add ribs and stir until coated. Cover and cook.


Steamy, meaty goodness. :D

Potatoes:
-Cook time: 15-ish minutes on medium (until potatoes soft and getting brown and crispy edges)
-Ingredients: potatoes (I had several very small white ones left over from stew); leek- I only used 1; butter/margarine; garlic- 2-3 cloves, depending on size; dried parsley, chives, and dill.
-Cut potatoes into thin slices, so the same with the leek. Melt butter in pan with garlic and fry garlic a little with the chives. Add potatoes, parsley and dill (I eyeballed how much parsley and dill). Let cook a little- maybe 5 mins, then add leek. Cook until potatoes are soft, or if you're like me, until they get brown, crispy edges.


Still in the pan.

And voila! Add a veggie side, some tea and hot chocolate, and you have a spectaculous dinner for your sweetie!


Don't mind the messy table :P

On to other business, the Demo Review will be out next week, probably Wednesday (or Tuesday maybe, we'll see). I will likely also have a review up for the game itself sometime in March, although I'm not sure when. I also got my brother to try Origins, and so the Dalish Elf ChrisPBacon was born! More info as his adventures continue! lol.

Not much new on the makeup front. Attempted a smoky eye that made me look like a bad mall goth and so was brightened up severely with much white sparkly goodness and the outer wings removed entirely. It was bad. Unfortunately I don't have any pics of when it looked all "mall goff", but here was the final result:



On the bright side, by the time I was done it was super sparkly.

Thanks again for tuning in and keep an eye for some new and exciting things coming up. :D

Sunday, February 20, 2011

e.l.f in Blue!

So now that I've got this new make up that I love, I tend to wear some whenever we go out for anything. Groceries? Paying bills? Helping younger brother move? You bet! Anyways, where I'm going with this is that we went to the Cynic's parent's house for supper tonight. So, I whipped this up, and I'm pretty happy with it.

I must also learn to take better pictures lol. Actually I have a better picture, but I'm also looking at Bubs so one of my eyes looks really goofy.

Anyways, from inner corner to outer: sparkly white-> blue/white-> blue/gold sparkle-> light gray sparkle-> dark gray sparkle. It blended quite a lot.


It was brighter in person :P

And, thanks to the fact that I've sort of figured out how to put makeup on properly, it lasted all day, just as bright and fun. A bit of cream shadow to prime and a matte white underneath really do the trick.


This is how it looked several hours, an almost-nap, and fighting with Bubs later. Still really bright with very little creasing. Hooray for not being such a n00b at this!

Oh, and this is what I actually did when helping my brother move :D


This was quite bold: pale gold sparkly-> copper-> med. brown-> dark brown. I even got the wing-tip look to work, which was cool.

So that's been my makeup adventures lately.

Also in the news of the P.M.S:
-Bubs took his first step towards toilet training- a poop in the toilet instead of the tub! Hooray!
-Dragon Age II Demo drops Tuesday. If it's not gold-only for the first week, expect a Demo Review within a couple of days of it's release. Either way, I recommend downloading the demo, if nothing else, but to get it to 1 million downloads
-There's a rant about music I want to do. It will be long, and so it hasn't gotten done yet.
-Hoping for a new vid. in March, provided I find some inspiration. My last video (which you can see here) was so awesome, and fun to do, that I would like to keep that level of quality.
-There will be more P.M.S Cooks! as soon as I cook something interesting enough to post lol.

Have a video suggestion? Feel free to leave it in the comments!

~the P.M.S

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Demo Reviews: Bulletstorm

First off, sorry this has taken so long. Things got really busy after putting up my last video. So, let's jump right into Bulletstorm.



Now we actually downloaded this demo a couple of weeks ago now, so it's had plenty of time to sink in and for me to play through a few times (and for the Cynic to as well, of course). So what did I think of it? Two words: RIDICULOUS FUN.

Now Bulletstorm would just be an average, run-of-the-mill, and likely forgettable sci-fi FPS, if not for the implementation of skillshots. This basically rewards you with tons of extra points for being creative with your kills (not to mention personal satisfaction and amusement!) , with tongue-in cheek-names such as voodoo doll, shocker, flyswatter, one hit wonder, and many more. These skillshots utilize not only your weapons, which all but the energy leash have various secondary fire modes, but also the environment of the planet Stygia. The demo itself takes place
in a toppled skyscraper hotel that is crawling with mutants and marauders alike. It's not an overly long demo, in fact, it's quite short (especially if you want the time bonuses), but it emphasizes replay to discover more creative kills and thus more points.

What else did I like about this? The cast, from what we saw of it at least. The moment the player character, voiced by Steve Blum, starts narrating the first part of the demo, I realized this was going to be a hell of a lot of fun. He voices your character (a pirate named Grayson Hunt) almost as a cross between Wolverine and Oghren from Dragon Age. And you can just tell he is having a lot of fun with it, which is really cool.

Sounds like a good combo to me :D


Joining Grayson is a cyborg named Ishi Sato, who gets about one line, so I can't tell you much about him. Last, but certainly not least is Trishka Novak, voiced by Jennifer Hale, who, from what we hear, sounds something like this:

FemShep + Ophelia = Win in my books (interestingly enough, my first Shep looked almost exactly like this one :D).

Of course, as with many games, certain types of people are getting their panties in a twist about the violent nature of the game, especially the names of some of the skillshots. I'm not going to get into that here or this will turn into a massive rant against certain types of people, for which this review is not the place. I'll just direct you to this video, courtesy of Blistered Thumbs and The Game Heroes, as they sum it up quite nicely. *Goes off to grumble about people bitching about my M-rated games*

So what are my final thoughts? Download this bad boy and try it! Now! It is a ridiculous amount of fun, if not a little short. You will want to replay it just to see what new combos and kills you can come up with. It is well worth your time. The game itself comes out next Tuesday (Feb. 22), and I will most likely at least give this one a rent. Maybe I can squeeze it in between the Dragon Age 2 Demo and release. Anyhow, definitely give this one a look if you are looking for a great way to have some fun and discover some really sweet and creative methods of dispatching your enemies.

Final score: 4.5 headshots out of 5

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Welcome to the new blog!

Hey everyone, and welcome to the new P.M.S blog! Now I am still going to post on Coffee With the Cynic's blog, don't worry. This is just a place for me to post things non-CWTC related. This will be the future home of P.M.S Cooks!, as well as for make-up, mom things, and general geekery. I will cross post any CWTC posts I write here and vice-versa when it applies.
So to break in the new blog, how about I tell you about the new make-up I just received in the mail?



Three Beauty Encyclopedias and an Eye-Brightening set from e.l.f Cosmetics! They are gorgeous! Here is a look inside one of those bad boys:



I tried it out yesterday for shiggles, and they are pretty awesome! I'm kind of a noob, so I think next time I will try using one of the cream shadows as a base to give it more kick and such. But I gave it a go with the Sparkle Eye Encyclopedia:


I used the white in the top left corner for highlight, and the blue with gold (second row, third from the left) with the brown with gold in the top right corner. The shadows were looser than I anticipated, but sparkly and looked great. This was the final look:





I will try and cook up an improved look for Valentine's Day (but I will try these colors again, as they looked great together). Also, you know what takes off makeup really easily? Baby wipes. Actually, they take off all makeup. It's quite the thing.

Anyways, welcome to the new blog, and you will hopefully see something new from me on this and CWTC soon, as I have had a good rant brewing now for a couple of days for you.

As always, don't forget to find us on Facebook and YouTube! Also the CWTC blog!

~the P.M.S :D