Cooking and Other Hobbies.

Post Reply New Topic

When I moved, I found myself unable to rebuild a social network in Arkansas like I'd had in Missouri. In short, lots of complaining about me behind my back and general backstabbing happened and I finally gave up on the social contacts I'd spent several months nurturing. My old hobbies were as follows.

Smoking pipes and cigars:

Not cutting it anymore for social interaction. Still fun alone, but not nearly as much fun as sitting around chatting with other pipe and cigar smokers in a proper lounge, which Springfield had and Fayetteville doesn't.

Gaming:

Great for socialization...until the backstabbing started and I found myself adrift without a group. I have a gaming room I set up in my current place, now a mausoleum to a once great hobby. Even had customized jars for my dice. Never been used.

Politics:

By this I mainly mean debates. Angry heartfelt debates with friends incapable of having their feelings hurt. These were knockout drag-out brawls of verbal combat. My disillusionment with politics making me care less plus having nobody to argue with has made this hobby useless too.

New hobbies have replaced older ones.

Cooking:

Primarily baking, but I'm exploring other things under the careful guidance of Alton Brown. I have to watch it so it doesn't cause me to gain weight, but breakrooms at the workplace and school...okay that's the same place for me, are great for getting rid of the stuff. Other than that, you don't need anyone else. Just you and your kitchen.

Brewing:

Still researching it, but will get around to it at some point. A gloriously old-fashioned hobby that also allows me to make homemade gifts for friends.

That's all I got so far. Not sure what kind of responses I'm looking for here, but this is an interesting transition I've made.

-Frank

D&D?



I love that show. Prettymuch the only thing I watch on television anymore.

D&D, Mutants and Masterminds, White Wolf, occasionally the Serenity game, a few variations of the D20 model besides the ones listed, and Palladium...when I would be overruled by the rest of the group. Mutants and Masterminds is my preference.

As to Good Eats, yeah definitely improved my cooking ability enough to quality it as a hobby.

-Frank

I miss P&Ps, most of my friends are too busy these days to get any good campaigns going...and then when we do play, an arguement breaks out near the end and we never play that one again. Gets to be a bit of a chore to make new characters every time we want to play.

True, though if I can handle any kind of drama it's gaming drama. Everyone can get past all the rule lawyering, metagaming, power gaming, and rivalries with a sufficient sense of humor. Then again, my first character in D&D was a gay dwarf priest of fire. Sense of humor was not optional.

-Frank

I've always liked cooking and gaming, but recently acquired interior design as we moved into our first house.

You're lucky...all my friends get way too serious about that stuff...they'll spend like an hour going over the rulebooks and spitting house rules back and forth and by the time they finally get to an agreement, nobody feels like playing anymore

I think it's only one or two people who are really bad about it, though...I'd like to run my own campaign sometime, and only invite a select few, but I've kind of run out of ideas for a new campaign, and my friends refuse to play pre-made adventures. They tell me to just make it up as I go, but I don't know half of the rules, even when I plan one out they always end up taking advantage of that and spoiling the whole game. Maybe if I'm sneaky enough I can whip out a pre-made so they don't notice Just take the general idea, and the maps and stuff, and then improvise the small details.

Yeah, it comes to the point at times when bad gaming is worse than no gaming. Though my old groups were epically dysfunctional at times, what I found here in Fayetteville pretty much meant giving up the hobby. Playing by post...not the same.

-Frank

It's funny because when I was younger I never used to care anything about cooking. Now it has become one of my passions (obsessions). I am really big into international cuisines and have cookbooks from all over the world. It's fun just to read them sometimes. Since I can't afford to travel it's the next best thing, read about a country and cook the food from it. My neighbors tell me that if I ever get married I would have to stop that nonsense because no man would ever put up with that, he would want good old American meat and potatoes. So I guess I won't get married then

What you'll put up with in a marriage is an interesting concept. Here's the basic rule. If it occurs to you that you'll have to put up with something, you shouldn't, but if other people are pointing out you'd have to put up with it and it didn't actually occur to you first, it's superficial.

-Frank

Wow, that remark from your neighbors is pretty stupid. Personally I love trying different foods from all over the world. I get a kick out of strange and exotic foods and drinks. A favorite past time of mine is visiting new grocery stores and looking for strange and unique drinks especially juices. I would think it was awesome to be able to cook and experience the world's food with someone. It just isn't the same cooking for yourself. Don't give up, there are sure to be lots of other food lovers that would appreciate that.

There are things that sound like they'd be great fun, doughnuts for example, but to whom to give them? I can't eat them all myself!

-Frank

I was just curious as to what you meant by the complaining and backstabbing. Unless it's personal? In my experience, my desperation for socialization came hand in hand with drinking. Yeah, but since I've sobered up, I realized a lot of the people I was hanging out with were jerks. I've come to find without trying that there are good people or people that mean well amongst the jerks.



Did you say Missouri?



Tell me about it, I still clench when someone tries to debate or disagree with me. It used to be worse, I think I too was lost in that game until I came to realize.....well I won't say, but I'm not as passionate as I was in politics.



Looks like a positive hobby. I wish I could get into cooking. That's a drastic change from your earlier hobbies which I guess dealt with a lot of social competition? Still I guess you can do the same with cooking, it's just not as war-like as the earlier ones.



Indeed it is an interesting transition that's why I had to put my 2 cents into this post.

I'll answer a few of the questions you had.

By complaining and backstabbing, I'm referring to things that happened within a gaming group I'd joined and a church I'd joined. The gaming group never included me in an actual game, except for demos which you just had to show up for and game day, which was also open to all and publicly announced. Other than that, they were unsympathetic to anything I wanted to play and generally kept me on the outside of the group. Some of the more ethical ones finally started PMing me about how and why people were slighting me.

With the Sunday school class, it was kind of religion's last chance with me. I was as open as I could be to the stuff, though I still was known as the skeptic and cynic of the class. The first signs of trouble came with people trying to suck me into taking sides with preexisting rivalries within the group, with the heroes and villians varying depending on who you talked to. One of the people in the group asked me out on MySpace and we dated for a week and a half before she broke up with me because her friends didn't like me. Not all of said friends were in the Sunday school class, but some were and I could never be sure just who those were, although certain confirmed individuals remained.

So you can't trust gamers, the supposed bastion of outsider socialization, and you can't trust the traditionally trustworthy, the pious churchgoers. This is when I gave up on socializing and my trust in human beings became what you see it nakedly displayed as being all over this board.

As for Missouri, yeah, I lived there from 1999-2007 during which time I went to Drury University for my degrees I've mentioned having. These were the golden years of hopes and dreams you might say, until the last few when my longest relationship raked me over the coals something fierce and largely catapulted me towards my current mindset. I know I had and have real friends whom I really trust there. Don't know how that happened though. I've recreated all the things I did to make those friends here in Northwest Arkansas...and the results are the above.

Politics used to be more interesting to discuss because I had passionate ideas for things I really thought would work. Now my policy is that I don't have to come up wtih solutions, I just have to prove yours won't work. I never claimed to have any, but that doesn't automatically make yours right. Interestingly, it's much easier to argue this way. Being an idealist is more of a liability than you'd think.

Cooking is only not warlike when done in the home and for small numbers of people. As a profession, it's cutthroat and taxing. Hell's Kitchen isn't shocking to actual cooks. That's how kitchens are. My kitchen is my own though. The only thing that makes the hobby social is the fact you have to give the food to people, but if you've got a workplace breakroom, just leave whatever you baked out. It'll be gone in a few hours.

-Frank

I'd say cooking and baking hobbies of mine....since I'm a formulation chemist I'm actually quite good at both. My job requires me to understand the functionality of raw materials and put them together to make a new product....cooking and baking are just like that....understanding the ingredients and how they interact with each other to make something you can eat.

I often don't use recipes when I cook. I see something on the food network or in a cookbook, and I remember it and change it a little bit so I like it better......I've got a bunch of nice kitchen equipment (stand mixer, food processor, waffle iron, outdoor grill, loads of utensils and pots and pans...a wok, an omelet pan, etc....I even made my own smoker for indoor smoking).

Baking does require a formula or at least an understanding of how the ingredients work together, and their functionalities, so you can use them in the right ratios in relation to one another....it's more tricky than cooking and requires exact measurements, not like cooking where you can eyeball amounts. I actually prefer to use weight and when I write my own formulas I write them by mass not volume.....I have an electronic balance that I use when I bake.


One thing I can't stand when I'm cooking or baking is someone else in the kitchen with me. I can only do it alone, and if you talk to me when I'm cooking I won't acknowledge your existence.....if you annoy me enough that I do.....you better run...I have access to sharp objects....

I used to enjoy when I was at school and I still do now.

I particulary like chinese and thai cookery, especially thai curries.

It is amazing the amount of nice recipes you can find in magazines.