So I was looking at an infographic about eyes (what can I say, I find them interesting after growing up with eyes that are both unusually colored and not willing to let me see more than a few inches in front of my face) and I realized something.
I've never once in my life read or heard anything say that giant squid eyes are anything other than the size of dinner plates.
This is not a unit of measurement!
How do I know that the people who came up with this have the same size plates I do? Plates come in a variety of different sizes. Sometimes I eat off of a small plate because I don't want to use one of the giant plates. When I go out to restaurants, my plate is usually the size of whatever thing they're serving me. Is there a standard size for dinner plates? Because it doesn't seem like it.
And what if dinner plates change size over time, like how when you visit buildings from hundreds of years ago all the doorways are small because everybody was shorter back then? What if people keep getting bigger and we start eating off of bigger plates? Or what if we get so diet-conscious that we make all dinner plates small so that we'll eat less? People will have a very inaccurate view of how big giant squid eyes are.
So I looked it up, and the largest one measured was 27 centimeters (10.63 inches) across.
You're welcome.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Monday, January 18, 2016
Things I wish FFXIV explained when I first started playing:
1. Inventory: There's an option under Character Configuration -> Control Settings -> Character to expand your inventory interface to show all four bag panels at once with the quest items on a second panel. Way easier than having to click between the four tabs all the time. I don't understand why this isn't the default.
You can right-click any item in your inventory and select "Sort" to have your bag organize itself. You can customize how it sorts things, and there's an option to have this sort items into different bags based on item type (like it might use your first panel for equipment, the second for consumables, the third for other stuff) but I think by default it just lumps them all together and puts all the empty space at the end.
If you're having trouble with bag space, stop hoarding stuff you aren't using right now. The majority of low-level crafting materials (especially niche items dropped from mobs like bat fangs and beastkin blood) can be purchased from the market board for vendor price, so there's no reason to carry them around.
2. Interface: There's a system menu option to rearrange your UI the way you want it. The game does not tell you that you can also resize each element between 70% and 140% by pressing Ctrl-Home to cycle through the sizes.
3. Quest Items: If a quest asks you to use a quest item on a world object, the quest item will be clickable on the quest list on the right, so you can just left-click target the object and click to use the quest item.
If a quest asks you to turn in a quest item or even a regular item, you can right-click on the box in the turn-in window and it'll let you select the item right there. No need to go find it in your bags.
Non-repeatable things like class quests don't care whether you use regular or high-quality items, while levequests and daily Grand Company turnins will give you double EXP for giving a high-quality item. You can turn a high-quality item into a regular item at any time via the right-click menu, useful for those times when a quest wants you to turn in three of something and you've got two regular items and one high-quality one.
4. Retainers: You can buy items from the market board (Auction House) whenever you want, but your ability to sell items is tied to your Retainer, who also acts as your bank. You can have two retainers for free, and that's generally enough as each one can hold seven bag panels for a total of 175 item slots. These can be unlocked after completing the level 17 main story quest. When your retainer sells items for you, they hold on to the gil they earn, and you have to collect it from them.
Later on, your retainers can start leveling in a combat or gathering class, and you can upgrade their equipment and send them on missions to get items for you. Be aware that your retainers cannot surpass your level in a particular class, so make sure you set them as a class you intend to level to 60. Switching their class starts them over at level 1, so it can be pretty time-consuming. Also, since your retainer is not a member of a Grand Company, they cannot equip Grand Company items.
5. Teleporting: If you sell things on the market board regularly as you level up (especially materia from disenchanting your gear), it's not unusual to have millions of gil by the time you're max level (I'm sitting at 8.5 right now and I have no idea what to spend it on besides collecting minipets). Teleports might as well be free compared to how much you're earning, so use them whenever it'd be more convenient. Chocobo porters exist to cheaply run you to places that don't have aetherytes in them, but don't really go faster than your own mount (it's just a convenience so you can go do something else while the game runs you there).
You can also set one location (probably a city, I choose Gridania because it doesn't have any confusing vertical levels) as your Home to "hearth" back to it every 30 minutes. Three additional locations can be set as Favored to get a discount on teleporting to them, generally just pick whatever places your quests send you to often.
6. Dungeons: They have a timer, but it only exists so that people won't bash their heads against the same thing for hours when they're obviously failing at it. Dungeons are typically completed in about 30 minutes, more like 10 minutes for single-boss trials.
Also, you're only able to roll Need on something if your current class can equip it, so people typically expect others to roll Need whenever they can. Feel free to roll Need on any pets or mounts or crafting materials that drop if you want them, because anyone else who wants them will be doing the same.
As is the case in any other MMO, tank queues are nearly instant, healer queues take a bit longer, and dps players can be waiting for quite some time. If you're a dps, try to make friends with tanks and queue together, but this won't help with the daily dungeon roulettes that typically require you to queue by yourself.
7. Side Quest Unlocks: A wide variety of game features are unlocked via side quests that become available after completing certain main story quests:
You can right-click any item in your inventory and select "Sort" to have your bag organize itself. You can customize how it sorts things, and there's an option to have this sort items into different bags based on item type (like it might use your first panel for equipment, the second for consumables, the third for other stuff) but I think by default it just lumps them all together and puts all the empty space at the end.
If you're having trouble with bag space, stop hoarding stuff you aren't using right now. The majority of low-level crafting materials (especially niche items dropped from mobs like bat fangs and beastkin blood) can be purchased from the market board for vendor price, so there's no reason to carry them around.
2. Interface: There's a system menu option to rearrange your UI the way you want it. The game does not tell you that you can also resize each element between 70% and 140% by pressing Ctrl-Home to cycle through the sizes.
3. Quest Items: If a quest asks you to use a quest item on a world object, the quest item will be clickable on the quest list on the right, so you can just left-click target the object and click to use the quest item.
If a quest asks you to turn in a quest item or even a regular item, you can right-click on the box in the turn-in window and it'll let you select the item right there. No need to go find it in your bags.
Non-repeatable things like class quests don't care whether you use regular or high-quality items, while levequests and daily Grand Company turnins will give you double EXP for giving a high-quality item. You can turn a high-quality item into a regular item at any time via the right-click menu, useful for those times when a quest wants you to turn in three of something and you've got two regular items and one high-quality one.
4. Retainers: You can buy items from the market board (Auction House) whenever you want, but your ability to sell items is tied to your Retainer, who also acts as your bank. You can have two retainers for free, and that's generally enough as each one can hold seven bag panels for a total of 175 item slots. These can be unlocked after completing the level 17 main story quest. When your retainer sells items for you, they hold on to the gil they earn, and you have to collect it from them.
Later on, your retainers can start leveling in a combat or gathering class, and you can upgrade their equipment and send them on missions to get items for you. Be aware that your retainers cannot surpass your level in a particular class, so make sure you set them as a class you intend to level to 60. Switching their class starts them over at level 1, so it can be pretty time-consuming. Also, since your retainer is not a member of a Grand Company, they cannot equip Grand Company items.
5. Teleporting: If you sell things on the market board regularly as you level up (especially materia from disenchanting your gear), it's not unusual to have millions of gil by the time you're max level (I'm sitting at 8.5 right now and I have no idea what to spend it on besides collecting minipets). Teleports might as well be free compared to how much you're earning, so use them whenever it'd be more convenient. Chocobo porters exist to cheaply run you to places that don't have aetherytes in them, but don't really go faster than your own mount (it's just a convenience so you can go do something else while the game runs you there).
You can also set one location (probably a city, I choose Gridania because it doesn't have any confusing vertical levels) as your Home to "hearth" back to it every 30 minutes. Three additional locations can be set as Favored to get a discount on teleporting to them, generally just pick whatever places your quests send you to often.
6. Dungeons: They have a timer, but it only exists so that people won't bash their heads against the same thing for hours when they're obviously failing at it. Dungeons are typically completed in about 30 minutes, more like 10 minutes for single-boss trials.
Also, you're only able to roll Need on something if your current class can equip it, so people typically expect others to roll Need whenever they can. Feel free to roll Need on any pets or mounts or crafting materials that drop if you want them, because anyone else who wants them will be doing the same.
As is the case in any other MMO, tank queues are nearly instant, healer queues take a bit longer, and dps players can be waiting for quite some time. If you're a dps, try to make friends with tanks and queue together, but this won't help with the daily dungeon roulettes that typically require you to queue by yourself.
7. Side Quest Unlocks: A wide variety of game features are unlocked via side quests that become available after completing certain main story quests:
- Retainers
- Ability to dye most armor, and later to transmog your armor to change its appearance entirely
- Guildhests
- Aesthetician (barber who lets you change hair and other temporary customizations like face paint and au'ra limbal rings)
- Materia (You can turn equipment into materia, attach materia to equipment that has slots in it, and also combine materia together to get higher-level materia)
- Chocobo mount and later the ability to summon it as a combat companion
- PvP arenas/battlegrounds
- Gold Saucer
- Certain emotes, especially dances
- MANY optional dungeons
- Even more stuff: Full List
8. Crafting and Gathering: These are really fun, and can earn you some serious gil (even while leveling) but can be really time-consuming and take your focus away from the main story. If you're serious about crafting, the cross-class skill system makes it so that you really have to level all of them to be effective, and this can quickly lead to burnout.
Other players are usually happy to craft leveling gear for a newbie (I had someone whisper me out of nowhere and give me a full set of high-quality gear when I was level ~15), and you'll have way more money to put towards gathering/crafting once you're max level anyway.
9. Jobs: Even focusing on one class (for example, Thaumaturge), you will need to get one secondary class to at least 15 (in this case, Archer) to unlock your Job (in this case, Black Mage). The game doesn't do a great job of telling you what class this is, so this page has a handy table. While it was possible to still be effective as a class when level 50 was the max level (you lost some job-specific skills, but you had the freedom to take cross-class skills from anywhere, while jobs were limited to two specific classes), jobs are now mandatory since you get zero new skills from your base class past level 50.
Depending on your job, your tertiary class probably has a really useful ability around 26 that you'll want to level that class to get eventually. (For example, while all healers CAN resurrect other players during combat, it's nearly unusable without getting the "your next spell has no cast time" ability from level 26 thaumaturge.)
10. Levequests: Basically like daily quests that you can spend on whatever class you want. You get a certain number of them per day (6 I think?) and they keep stacking up to 99 if you don't use them. They're not as efficient as FATEs for getting experience on your combat classes, but they're excellent for leveling crafting and gathering since you don't have a lot of other ways to get exp other than grinding (the only one I can think of is a once-daily turnin for your faction). I always have way more leve allowances than I know what to do with.
11. Guildhests: Your tutorials for specific scenarios commonly encountered in group content, like dealing with adds that show up when you tank a boss, not standing in AoEs, and focusing down the enemy healers first. They're not mandatory, but they usually only take a few minutes, and every time you complete one for the first time on a particular class, you get a chunk of bonus exp. You want to do each one at least once as you level a new class to get that bonus. Past that though, you'll get a roulette to run one at random for a nice bonus once per day, so there are always players willing to queue for them.
12. Consumables: Aside from healing potions on classes that can't heal to use in a pinch, potions are pretty much useless. Mana-based classes have mechanics that make sure they don't run out of mana if they're playing correctly, healing amounts are pretty tiny, debuffs are usually short enough duration that it's not worth using a potion to cure them (except for maybe paralysis). The Alchemist class is really only useful for making caster weapons like wands and books.
Food is really nice though because it gives you +3% experience for 30 minutes, and usually a small stat boost besides. Vendors sell common foods, so you shouldn't need to spend a lot to buy them from the market board.
13. Sprinting: It costs all of your TP and its duration is based on how much TP it uses. Magic classes can and should use it all the time even in combat, because they don't use their TP for anything else. Physical classes need TP for all of their abilities, so sprinting should be saved for serious emergencies or long-distance travel.
14. Grand Company: The quests are almost completely identical, and no further Grand Company content has been added with the Heavensward expansion, so it ultimately doesn't matter much which one you pick. The only real differences are:
15. Chat: You can type <pos> to insert your current coordinates into chat. If someone else does this, it'll be highlighted in chat and you can click on it to open up a map with a flag marking that spot. <t> inserts the name of your current target. If you start typing and press Tab, you can insert auto-translated words and phrases into your messages (that's what the words surrounded by green and red arrows are).
Yell is a localized channel that is near your character but farther away than Say (much like Yell in WoW), while Shout is the zone-wide chat channel. It's easy to switch between channels using Alt, for example Alt-R replies to a Tell, Alt-S is Say, Alt-P is Party, Alt-F is Free Company, Alt-H is Shout, etc.
That's all I can think of at the moment, I'll probably come back and add more in the future. I also probably got distracted halfway through one of these paragraphs, so let me know if there's a sentence in here that just trails off without finishing.
Edit 1/29: Added Chat section.
Other players are usually happy to craft leveling gear for a newbie (I had someone whisper me out of nowhere and give me a full set of high-quality gear when I was level ~15), and you'll have way more money to put towards gathering/crafting once you're max level anyway.
9. Jobs: Even focusing on one class (for example, Thaumaturge), you will need to get one secondary class to at least 15 (in this case, Archer) to unlock your Job (in this case, Black Mage). The game doesn't do a great job of telling you what class this is, so this page has a handy table. While it was possible to still be effective as a class when level 50 was the max level (you lost some job-specific skills, but you had the freedom to take cross-class skills from anywhere, while jobs were limited to two specific classes), jobs are now mandatory since you get zero new skills from your base class past level 50.
Depending on your job, your tertiary class probably has a really useful ability around 26 that you'll want to level that class to get eventually. (For example, while all healers CAN resurrect other players during combat, it's nearly unusable without getting the "your next spell has no cast time" ability from level 26 thaumaturge.)
10. Levequests: Basically like daily quests that you can spend on whatever class you want. You get a certain number of them per day (6 I think?) and they keep stacking up to 99 if you don't use them. They're not as efficient as FATEs for getting experience on your combat classes, but they're excellent for leveling crafting and gathering since you don't have a lot of other ways to get exp other than grinding (the only one I can think of is a once-daily turnin for your faction). I always have way more leve allowances than I know what to do with.
11. Guildhests: Your tutorials for specific scenarios commonly encountered in group content, like dealing with adds that show up when you tank a boss, not standing in AoEs, and focusing down the enemy healers first. They're not mandatory, but they usually only take a few minutes, and every time you complete one for the first time on a particular class, you get a chunk of bonus exp. You want to do each one at least once as you level a new class to get that bonus. Past that though, you'll get a roulette to run one at random for a nice bonus once per day, so there are always players willing to queue for them.
12. Consumables: Aside from healing potions on classes that can't heal to use in a pinch, potions are pretty much useless. Mana-based classes have mechanics that make sure they don't run out of mana if they're playing correctly, healing amounts are pretty tiny, debuffs are usually short enough duration that it's not worth using a potion to cure them (except for maybe paralysis). The Alchemist class is really only useful for making caster weapons like wands and books.
Food is really nice though because it gives you +3% experience for 30 minutes, and usually a small stat boost besides. Vendors sell common foods, so you shouldn't need to spend a lot to buy them from the market board.
13. Sprinting: It costs all of your TP and its duration is based on how much TP it uses. Magic classes can and should use it all the time even in combat, because they don't use their TP for anything else. Physical classes need TP for all of their abilities, so sprinting should be saved for serious emergencies or long-distance travel.
14. Grand Company: The quests are almost completely identical, and no further Grand Company content has been added with the Heavensward expansion, so it ultimately doesn't matter much which one you pick. The only real differences are:
- Color scheme and symbol of basic chocobo barding and equipment (the gear isn't really better than crafted stuff or dungeon drops. Can be a nice perk when leveling, but ultimately not important unless you want to use it for transmog to show off your Grand Company pride)
- What faction you fight for in PvP (so if you've got friends you want to fight alongside, join their GC)
- What city you visit to turn in items for your Grand Company (so you probably want your Home teleport location to be in the same place)
15. Chat: You can type <pos> to insert your current coordinates into chat. If someone else does this, it'll be highlighted in chat and you can click on it to open up a map with a flag marking that spot. <t> inserts the name of your current target. If you start typing and press Tab, you can insert auto-translated words and phrases into your messages (that's what the words surrounded by green and red arrows are).
Yell is a localized channel that is near your character but farther away than Say (much like Yell in WoW), while Shout is the zone-wide chat channel. It's easy to switch between channels using Alt, for example Alt-R replies to a Tell, Alt-S is Say, Alt-P is Party, Alt-F is Free Company, Alt-H is Shout, etc.
That's all I can think of at the moment, I'll probably come back and add more in the future. I also probably got distracted halfway through one of these paragraphs, so let me know if there's a sentence in here that just trails off without finishing.
Edit 1/29: Added Chat section.
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Recipe: Eggnog Panna Cotta
Like the taste of crème brûlée but think all that nonsense with the eggs and the baking in a water bath is too much work? Have you tried Panna Cotta?
The husband and I were first exposed to this food at a Peruvian restaurant, despite it being an Italian dessert. It has the exquisite pure creamy sweetness of really good quality vanilla ice cream, but is the consistency of yogurt. When I looked up how to make it, I was amazed that we hadn't done so sooner. It's so easy!
In honor of the holiday season, here's a special version. (If it's not winter, substitute half & half for the eggnog and up the sugar to about 1/3 cup since the eggnog is sweetened already. And probably leave out the nutmeg.)
You'll need 8 ramekins, so if you don't have any (Why not? They're great as tiny bowls when you need to melt a small amount of butter or just want a single scoop of ice cream!) now's the time to go buy a bunch of them.
I guess if you really don't want to go buy ramekins, you could put it in small cups or just make a big bowl of it and spoon it out to serve it once it's solid. Wouldn't be the same though.
1. Measure two tablespoons of cold water into a small bowl. (Or an extra ramekin. See? Useful.)
2. Sprinkle gelatin packet into water.
3. Let the gelatin sit for about 1 minute until it soaks up the water.
4. Stir it around so it's mixed in well.
5. Microwave it for about 15-20 seconds to melt it.
1. Dump the entire pint of cream, along with the egg nog (or half & half) and sugar into a small pot.
2. Heat on the stove until it just barely comes to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar and to prevent a skin from forming on top.
3. Remove from the heat.
4. Add in the gelatin liquid, the vanilla, and the nutmeg, and stir it up.
1. Evenly split the mixture between all of your 8 little ramekins, or whatever other container you've chosen to put it in.
2. Put them directly in the fridge.
3. Wait at least 4 hours (preferably overnight)
4. Top with whatever you like. Fresh berries or jam is standard, but for eggnog version I just ate mine with granola, honey, and a dash of cinnamon!
The husband and I were first exposed to this food at a Peruvian restaurant, despite it being an Italian dessert. It has the exquisite pure creamy sweetness of really good quality vanilla ice cream, but is the consistency of yogurt. When I looked up how to make it, I was amazed that we hadn't done so sooner. It's so easy!
In honor of the holiday season, here's a special version. (If it's not winter, substitute half & half for the eggnog and up the sugar to about 1/3 cup since the eggnog is sweetened already. And probably leave out the nutmeg.)
You'll need 8 ramekins, so if you don't have any (Why not? They're great as tiny bowls when you need to melt a small amount of butter or just want a single scoop of ice cream!) now's the time to go buy a bunch of them.
I guess if you really don't want to go buy ramekins, you could put it in small cups or just make a big bowl of it and spoon it out to serve it once it's solid. Wouldn't be the same though.
Ingredients:
- 1 Packet of Unflavored Gelatin
- 2 Tablespoons of Cold Water
- 1 Pint of Heavy Whipping Cream
- 1 Cup of Egg Nog (or Half & Half, if this is some non-holiday time of year)
- 1/4 Cup of White Sugar
- 1 Teaspoon of Vanilla
- A Dash of Nutmeg
Step One: The Gelatin
1. Measure two tablespoons of cold water into a small bowl. (Or an extra ramekin. See? Useful.)
2. Sprinkle gelatin packet into water.
3. Let the gelatin sit for about 1 minute until it soaks up the water.
4. Stir it around so it's mixed in well.
5. Microwave it for about 15-20 seconds to melt it.
Step Two: The Cream
1. Dump the entire pint of cream, along with the egg nog (or half & half) and sugar into a small pot.
2. Heat on the stove until it just barely comes to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar and to prevent a skin from forming on top.
3. Remove from the heat.
4. Add in the gelatin liquid, the vanilla, and the nutmeg, and stir it up.
Step Three: The Fridge
1. Evenly split the mixture between all of your 8 little ramekins, or whatever other container you've chosen to put it in.
2. Put them directly in the fridge.
3. Wait at least 4 hours (preferably overnight)
4. Top with whatever you like. Fresh berries or jam is standard, but for eggnog version I just ate mine with granola, honey, and a dash of cinnamon!
I usually just eat mine straight out of the ramekin. If you want to get super-fancy about it, you can serve it on a plate. Just dip the ramekin in hot water for 3 seconds to loosen the gelatin, then run a knife around the edge, and you should be able to upturn the ramekin onto a small plate and put the toppings on top of it. It's gelatin, so it should hold its shape, though I'd recommend letting it sit in the fridge overnight if you're going to do this so that it has more structure.
I cannot speak for using this as a total substitute for crème brûlée, though, because since it is gelatin, it would very likely melt if you tried to torch sugar on top of it.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Recipe: Cranberry Kale Salad
This is the recipe I always make whenever anyone asks me to make something to bring. Once people have tried it once, they always request that I make it again.
I'll confess, I didn't really come up with this 100% myself. I used to buy those little salad kits from Safeway for lunch, and I particularly hate all of the ones that have chicken in them, because the chicken is cold and reconstituted and tasteless. So I started specifically buying those few salads they made that did not feature chicken.
One of those salads was a kale salad with cranberries and goat cheese and edamame beans, and I eventually started to wonder why I bothered to buy these little salads when I could just buy kale and dried cranberries and the rest and just make a big batch of it for myself for cheap, and then eat a bit of it every day. So I started experimenting with different ingredient combinations, and this is the recipe I've settled on as a good base.
This salad needs no dressing, as it is seasoned a bit already and the ingredients lend their flavor to the whole. You could probably serve it with dressing if you really love salad dressing though, the seasoning is light enough it won't be ruined by it.
Before I start, I'm going to say this now: this salad really needs to be made ahead of time. At least a few hours, but preferably the day before so it has overnight to sit and give the flavors time to mingle. If you eat it immediately after it's been made, the kale will still be quite bitter because the waxy coating on the leaves hasn't had time to break down or whatever it does when it sits in oil overnight.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
I'll confess, I didn't really come up with this 100% myself. I used to buy those little salad kits from Safeway for lunch, and I particularly hate all of the ones that have chicken in them, because the chicken is cold and reconstituted and tasteless. So I started specifically buying those few salads they made that did not feature chicken.
One of those salads was a kale salad with cranberries and goat cheese and edamame beans, and I eventually started to wonder why I bothered to buy these little salads when I could just buy kale and dried cranberries and the rest and just make a big batch of it for myself for cheap, and then eat a bit of it every day. So I started experimenting with different ingredient combinations, and this is the recipe I've settled on as a good base.
This salad needs no dressing, as it is seasoned a bit already and the ingredients lend their flavor to the whole. You could probably serve it with dressing if you really love salad dressing though, the seasoning is light enough it won't be ruined by it.
Before I start, I'm going to say this now: this salad really needs to be made ahead of time. At least a few hours, but preferably the day before so it has overnight to sit and give the flavors time to mingle. If you eat it immediately after it's been made, the kale will still be quite bitter because the waxy coating on the leaves hasn't had time to break down or whatever it does when it sits in oil overnight.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Ingredients:
- Bunch of kale leaves: Get them whole. This is important because you need to remove the tough midrib from each leaf, and the precut kale in a bag doesn't bother to do this and it's terrible. I do not advocate for using organic kale, but sadly my local store stopped selling the non-organic kind in bunches. You can use the really frilly kind if you want, but I find it's more difficult to work with than the lacinato.
- Bunch of chard leaves: Again, get them whole, those midribs are huge. I prefer the red kind because it lends more color to the overall dish and looks nice with the cranberries, but I'll use the white stuff if it's all I can get. Chard isn't strictly necessary, but I like to include it because it lends more variety to the greens.
- 2 carrots: Try to pick ones that are a consistent width all the way down between 3/4 and 1 inch, not too crooked, without any big splits along the side.
- 5 oz bag of Craisins: I usually use original flavor, but tried pomegranate flavored once and got pretty positive feedback. One of these days I'm going to try using pomegranate arils, but little diced-up pieces of green apple could work too, or those canned mandarin orange slices that have had the papery skins removed. Really any kind of very tart fruit, fresh or dried, would work great here. The goal is to have a small but strong burst of sweet/sour.
- ~5oz of slivered, blanched almonds: I usually just grab a single scoop from my local grocery store's bulk section. Thinner slivers of almonds work too, but I find they tend to stick to the sides of the bowl and to each other more than the square-cut slivers. You could also substitute pretty much any other kinds of nuts here, sunflower seeds work really well too. Or leave them out entirely if you're trying to avoid nuts for someone with allergies.
- Garlic-flavored olive oil: Sorry I don't really measure this, I just sorta drizzle some over. Any oil is fine (okay, not sesame oil, the flavor on that is too strong I think, but I've used regular olive oil, canola oil, and grapeseed oil at various times and it turned out fine), it's mainly just to coat the leaves and help the seasonings stick to them, but I find that the garlic flavor adds a little something. I think I also tried using the oil that sun dried tomatoes are packed in once and it was pretty great.
- Salt and pepper: I use kosher salt and very finely ground white pepper, but as long as you're avoiding large chunks of peppercorns this should be okay.
Optional stuff: If you like edamame, get a bag of it from the frozen section and toss some of that in too. They'll thaw while the salad is sitting overnight and they taste pretty great, but I tend to leave them out of my base recipe. Fried pieces of bacon would also be good, and if you like cheese on your salad, toss in some goat cheese crumbles closer to serving time. My base recipe leaves them out so that I can be more inclusive of vegetarians or vegans or people who can't eat soy or cheese for other reasons, but if you can, totally include them.
Try adding in other veggies like bell peppers in step one. Try adding spinach in step two (I'm not sure if they're too fragile and would wilt, but it's worth trying). Try other seasonings like garlic powder or paprika in step three.
1. Dump cranberries or other fruit item into the bowl (I find that the standard 4-quart pyrex bowl with a snap-on lid is best for this).
2. Dump almonds or other nut item into the bowl.
3. Dump whatever other random stuff you want to add into the bowl (like edamame beans or little cubes of red bell pepper)
4. Peel the two carrots and cut off the ends.
5. Slice the carrots really thin. (I use a mandolin for this. Be super careful not to cut off your fingers by stopping before you get too close to the end, and then just eating the rest of the carrot stub.)
6. Dump carrot slices into the bowl.
1. Rinse dirt and gross stuff off of kale leaves. Be sure to inspect the undersides of each leaf, because it's not uncommon to find bugs hiding in those little alcoves (especially on the organic stuff), and while I'm fine with the extra protein, finding a bug in the salad tends to have a negative effect on people's appetites.
2. Chop off the bottom part of the leaf, because this is mostly stem and not worth trying to save the little leaf bits clinging to the sides of it.
3. Lay one leaf with the underside facing up, spread it out a bit so you can get to the midrib, and slice the whole midrib out of there, leaving two long thin leaf-halves.
4. Repeat 3 with the rest of the leaves.
5. Line up a pile of these leaf-halves and chop them into thin strips about 1cm wide. If the pieces are too big, the heavier almonds and cranberries will just fall through, leaving half of the people with a plateful of leaves and very little of the more flavorful bits, and the other half of the people with a plateful of almonds and cranberries. If the pieces are too small, I'm worried they'll fall apart during the overnight soaking process, but I have not actually tried this. Might be even better with little tiny kale pieces!
6. Repeat with remaining leaf-halves, then dump them into the bowl.
7. Rinse dirt and gross stuff off of chard leaves. (Be careful with them, they're more fragile.)
8. Do the same removal of the midrib for the chard.
9. Chop the chard into smaller bits. (I find it helpful to slice each half of the chard leaf in half the long way so that I have four equal-width strips, then stack them on top of each other and chop them all at once so the final pieces aren't really long.)
10. Dump the chard bits into the bowl.
1. With your hands (clean, of course, and carefully, so as not to dump bits all over the counter because at this point the salad barely fits in the bowl but you don't own any that are bigger so there's no helping it) mix the contents of the bowl together.
2. Drizzle olive oil over the bowl to coat, then sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper (finely ground) to season. In this picture I've also thrown in some dried parsley, but I'm pretty sure it disintegrated because I couldn't find any in there later and I certainly couldn't taste it.
3. Mix the contents together again. Try to rub them against each other as you go so that the salt and pepper get mixed in with everything rather than being stuck to whatever pieces were on top at the time. (Note to self: try mixing the salt and pepper with the oil before drizzling it on top to help with this. It works great when I make popcorn!)
4. Stick the bowl (covered) in the fridge and leave it there until the salad is ready to be served. Preferably the next day. A few hours might be enough time if you're suddenly asked to bring your special salad to a potluck and people didn't give you enough advance warning to make it properly. Don't eat it right away, because the raw kale still has that grayish bitter coating on it and doesn't really taste good yet. I guess if you were really in a time crunch, you could try blanching the kale really really quickly in hot water to try to get the coating off the leaves, but if I were in that much of a time crunch, I'd probably just bring something else. Honeyed carrots, perhaps.
5. If you want to add goat cheese crumbles, now's a good time for it. Whether or not you add any final items, you should toss it with some serving tongs or something because the heavier items probably settled to the bottom again as you were driving to wherever you're serving this thing.
6. Eat!
7. If not all of it gets eaten, this salad lasts quite a while longer as leftovers in the fridge, unlike salads made of terrible iceberg lettuce.
Try adding in other veggies like bell peppers in step one. Try adding spinach in step two (I'm not sure if they're too fragile and would wilt, but it's worth trying). Try other seasonings like garlic powder or paprika in step three.
Step One: The Mixins
1. Dump cranberries or other fruit item into the bowl (I find that the standard 4-quart pyrex bowl with a snap-on lid is best for this).
2. Dump almonds or other nut item into the bowl.
3. Dump whatever other random stuff you want to add into the bowl (like edamame beans or little cubes of red bell pepper)
4. Peel the two carrots and cut off the ends.
5. Slice the carrots really thin. (I use a mandolin for this. Be super careful not to cut off your fingers by stopping before you get too close to the end, and then just eating the rest of the carrot stub.)
6. Dump carrot slices into the bowl.
Step Two: The Greens
1. Rinse dirt and gross stuff off of kale leaves. Be sure to inspect the undersides of each leaf, because it's not uncommon to find bugs hiding in those little alcoves (especially on the organic stuff), and while I'm fine with the extra protein, finding a bug in the salad tends to have a negative effect on people's appetites.
2. Chop off the bottom part of the leaf, because this is mostly stem and not worth trying to save the little leaf bits clinging to the sides of it.
3. Lay one leaf with the underside facing up, spread it out a bit so you can get to the midrib, and slice the whole midrib out of there, leaving two long thin leaf-halves.
4. Repeat 3 with the rest of the leaves.
5. Line up a pile of these leaf-halves and chop them into thin strips about 1cm wide. If the pieces are too big, the heavier almonds and cranberries will just fall through, leaving half of the people with a plateful of leaves and very little of the more flavorful bits, and the other half of the people with a plateful of almonds and cranberries. If the pieces are too small, I'm worried they'll fall apart during the overnight soaking process, but I have not actually tried this. Might be even better with little tiny kale pieces!
6. Repeat with remaining leaf-halves, then dump them into the bowl.
7. Rinse dirt and gross stuff off of chard leaves. (Be careful with them, they're more fragile.)
8. Do the same removal of the midrib for the chard.
9. Chop the chard into smaller bits. (I find it helpful to slice each half of the chard leaf in half the long way so that I have four equal-width strips, then stack them on top of each other and chop them all at once so the final pieces aren't really long.)
10. Dump the chard bits into the bowl.
Step Three: The Seasoning
1. With your hands (clean, of course, and carefully, so as not to dump bits all over the counter because at this point the salad barely fits in the bowl but you don't own any that are bigger so there's no helping it) mix the contents of the bowl together.
2. Drizzle olive oil over the bowl to coat, then sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper (finely ground) to season. In this picture I've also thrown in some dried parsley, but I'm pretty sure it disintegrated because I couldn't find any in there later and I certainly couldn't taste it.
3. Mix the contents together again. Try to rub them against each other as you go so that the salt and pepper get mixed in with everything rather than being stuck to whatever pieces were on top at the time. (Note to self: try mixing the salt and pepper with the oil before drizzling it on top to help with this. It works great when I make popcorn!)
4. Stick the bowl (covered) in the fridge and leave it there until the salad is ready to be served. Preferably the next day. A few hours might be enough time if you're suddenly asked to bring your special salad to a potluck and people didn't give you enough advance warning to make it properly. Don't eat it right away, because the raw kale still has that grayish bitter coating on it and doesn't really taste good yet. I guess if you were really in a time crunch, you could try blanching the kale really really quickly in hot water to try to get the coating off the leaves, but if I were in that much of a time crunch, I'd probably just bring something else. Honeyed carrots, perhaps.
6. Eat!
7. If not all of it gets eaten, this salad lasts quite a while longer as leftovers in the fridge, unlike salads made of terrible iceberg lettuce.
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