Prompt Service #1: Staycation

The first question I picked from my book of 400 prompts.  It seemed pretty appropriate for the lockdown that started late in March.  If not for the killer plague outside, it would be a pretty great staycation.

So let me tell you what I've usually done for most of the lockdown:

9-10am I'd wake up and catch up on my Empires & Puzzles game.  Twice a day there are objectives for killing stuff that you get rewards for so if you do it at 9-10ish the first time then you can do it again about 12 hours later.  And there are other things like tournaments, alliance wars, and killing "Titans" or giant creatures with a bunch of hit points that your alliance has to kill in 22 hours for rewards.

After I get out of bed then I go make breakfast.  The staple of my breakfast menu is Carbquick, which is a low-carb version of Bisquick.  It's really handy because you can make biscuits, muffins, pancakes, or waffles.  The easiest to make are biscuits.  All you need to make 2 good-sized biscuits are 1 cup Carbquick and 1/3 cup water.  I jazz it up with a little bit of butter or ghee--an Indian version of butter that you don't have to refrigerate and you can easily buy online instead of going to a store like butter.  (On a side note, ghee turns out greasier than butter if you melt it so it makes really great grilled cheese sandwiches.)

A variation I came up with is to put a little Splenda brown sugar in with some raisins.  Then it's sort of like a Hardee's cinnamon raisin biscuit--only without cinnamon or white frosting.  Or if you threw some oatmeal in it might be more like an oatmeal raisin cookie.

The biscuits take about 20 minutes at 350 to bake and then I usually break a piece of cheese in half and warm up a couple of sausage links in the microwave to make biscuit sandwiches.  I could cook an egg but those are harder to get so I usually do without.

After I eat breakfast I tell myself that I'll do some writing but I usually catch up on other Internet shit like Amazon KDP, Amazon Vine, Twitter, Facebook, and GMail.  And I play this other game, Legendary Game of Heroes that's not as good as the other.  It'd probably be more fun and make more sense if you played Magic The Gathering, which I never did.

By then it's almost time for lunch.  At first I'd make a TV dinner or Tortinos pizza, but then later I ordered some tuna from Target, so I'd make that on bread or low carb wraps with some Pringles or green beans or something.

After lunch and maybe some more Internet browsing and shit then I might finally get around to writing.  At this point (May 10th) I've written about 92,000 words altogether, though 25,000 were on a story that I stopped working on because the ending just kept seeming farther and farther away so I decided to work on some more potentially profitable endeavors.  Here's what "Eric Filler" has published during the lockdown to this point:

Then after writing and dicking around on the Internet and playing games and stuff it's time for dinner.  I usually make fish of some sort.  I still had most of a bag of tilapia from Walmart before the lockdown and I got some crappy whiting from Meijer before the lockdown.  I got some beer battered Gorton's fish too.  Along with that I might make a TV dinner or I had some microwave White Castle burgers or something.

When the fish started to get low I ordered some Spam from Target and from Amazon I got this nasty shit called "potted meat."  Potted meat is like if you took Spam, ground it into a powder, and then added some water and a tablespoon of salt.  It's pretty gross but I guess if it gets to the point of having to eat it then things will really be bad.  I usually made French fries or green beans as a side dish.

After dinner I'd have some almond milk and sugar free pudding and/or fruit cups for dessert.  The fruit I initially got from Big Lots.  They had some Mandarin oranges that were yummy and some mixed fruit or something like that that I could get shipped to me with some other shit.  Later I got mixed fruit and peaches from Target shipped to my door.

Almond milk I had some I bought from stores for a while but then on Amazon Vine there was a thing to make your own almond milk, which seemed cool so I wouldn't have to worry about going to the store for it.  What about the almonds?  You might snarkily say.  You can order them from Amazon or Nuts.com delivered some the next day and that way you can buy in bulk and avoid the stores.

The thing I found out is you don't really need a special thing to make almond milk.  All you need is a blender, a big cup to pour stuff in, and a fine mesh colander thing.  I had the latter in my pantry with some other shit so when I was clearing out room for the food I bought online I found that and it worked just as well as the Vine thing.  Or from Amazon you can buy special "nut milk bags" to strain the milk.  The cheapest of those are about $6 for 2, which is cheaper than the Vine thing.

If you want to make your own almond milk, all you do is pour a cup of almonds and cup of hot water in a pan or whatever for an hour.  Drain the almonds, rinse them, and then put them in a blender with three cups of water.  The recipe from Vine said to use 1/2 tsp of salt but I only use 1/4 tsp.  Grind up the almonds for a minute or so, maybe let it sit for a few minutes, and then pour through the colander thing into a cup or strain them through a bag or whatever.

The problem is that you end up with a lot of pulp from the almonds that jams up the colander.  So you have to pour a little at a time, clean the colander, and then repeat ad nauseum.  It's a lot messier and time-consuming than just going to a store and buying almond milk.  If I survive for things to get back to normal I'd probably just buy it from the store because it's too much effort.  I'm not sure how long the almond milk will stay good so I just drink up all 16oz or so that day.

After dinner and dessert then I'll dick around and maybe do some writing until about 10ish.  Then I try to use my crappy little exercise bike for about 20-25 minutes--usually the length of an episode of The Simpsons on Disney+.  And then maybe do some writing but probably just dick around on games or the Internet until midnight-2am.

Then repeat and repeat and repeat.

Usually about twice a week I order out from a pizza place.  Papa John's is the easiest and cheapest near me to order from.  I ordered from Cottage Inn twice but the second time was so fucking terrible that I refused to order from them again.  Not only was it late, but they didn't use the right sauce on the pizza or the right flavor crust, and the chicken wings were so nasty looking, like they took roasted wings, realized they were supposed to be fried, and tried to coat them in batter.  Just gross.  Other places like Hungry Howie's and Benito's are OK but they're more expensive.

I try to go out at least once a week.  some weeks it's to go to the pharmacy or bank but if I don't have to do either of those I'll just go to Wendy's or somewhere like that to get some drive-thru and to help keep the car's battery from going dead or anything like that.

So there you go, that's my "staycation" with some handy recipes.