2019 has been an amazing year and it is time to take a look back.
This year has been an extremely positive year for Pixelated Provisions and has helped me continue to bring more content to you all. Last month, I was finally able to tell the world that my next cookbook is The Official Destiny Cookbook, coming out next August. I can’t say too much about the book, but the public info so far is the cover photo and that the book is written in the voice of Eva Levante. I really, really like the recipes that are in the book and have found myself cooking many of them on the regular. Not much information is out about the book yet so I can’t say more than that. If you like Destiny or just love delicious food, this cookbook is for you. The team behind Battle Chef Brigade reached out to me this past year and included my recipes in their official artbook for the game. I was really happy to hear that the team enjoyed my recipes so much to include them.
I also had the opportunity to help an indie game come up with a meal in their game. My friends Nina Freeman and Jake Jefferies developed a game called We Met in May. It’s a wonderful collection of vignette games about their relationship. When they were developing the game, they mentioned there would be a cooking section and a meal would be needed. I spoke with them about a dish that could work that I could compliment with a real world recipe on my site. We ended up with an incredibly good red curry salmon dish that can be found on one of their dates! I’m extremely grateful that they included me on the project and hope more friends will reach out to me for my food thoughts. I also participated in several major interviews this year. One with the BBC Radio 4 talking about food in games and another with USGamer about video game cookbooks. In both interviews, I discussed a bit of my process, why I became interested in food from video games, and how video games are putting a lot more effort into have food in their games. Since starting my blog, my goal has always been to motivate other people to get into their kitchen and start cooking. I am really happy to say that I’ve seen people cooking my recipes and enjoying their time in the kitchen.
This past year I finally started my Twitch cooking streams. I started doing some gaming streams prior to 2019 but was able to get a basic setup in the kitchen. I’ve really enjoyed spending one or two days a week cooking while chatting to many of you. Kanji even gets to participate in the streams by sitting and watching me cook. It is a whole family activity. Cooking on streams has been a great way for me to revisit old recipes on the site and to test new recipes. It has also helped me understand how to better gauge the time it would take to cook something as a less practiced cook. One of the flaws I saw in the Fallout Cookbook was that a lot of my timing was based on how quickly I did things. Most novice cooks will typically take a lot longer and me being talkative with chat on stream helps me understand more realistically how long it takes someone to cook in the kitchen. I’ve really enjoyed the social aspect of cooking live on stream and I do not see myself stopping anytime soon. I know for the coming year I have plans to do some more ridiculous recipes. On top of that, I will be setting up a better schedule to do some cook-alongs. I really hope to one day have streams with many people cooking the same thing I’m cooking and we will all have a delicious meal to enjoy together. If there are things you would like to see me stream please let me know!
Some goals for next year are really going to be dependent on how my schedule lines up. I want to continue creating new recipes for the site. I hope to keep up with my schedule of one new recipe a week. I am hoping to go back and start working on videos for previous recipes. Setting things up for streams is pretty easy now but setting up for edited videos does take additional time. Jeff has said he is going to give a hand with this so I am hopeful 2020 will be the year I’ll finally be able to start that up. This is a big goal and I think this is the one I am going to focus on this year.
Let’s take some time to look at a few of my standouts from the past year.
Best Video Game with Food: The Outer Worlds
The moment I picked up The Outer Worlds and found my first food item, I knew I would be making tons of them. I spent a lot of extra time in the game just looking at all the different brands and food options. The items range from simple Spacer’s Choice Pre-Sliced Bread to the ridiculous Rizzo’s Purpleberry Munch. I found myself near the end of the game still finding new items. I was shocked at how much food there was in this game. Many of the items are junk food but I find the challenge of making those sorts of things at home to be really fun. There are so many options. I will continue making several of these items. If Obsidian is at all interested in a cookbook, this is something I would be 100% interested in.
Runner ups: Dragon Quest Builders 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Pokemon Sword and Shield
Best New Cooking Experience of the Year: Black Garlic
Near the end of last year, I finally started using black garlic at home. I cannot get enough of this wonderfully fermented garlic. I have been including this ingredient in as many dishes as I can. I love how complex the flavor is. Something I’m hoping to do next year is to figure out how to make black garlic at home because it is a pricey ingredient. With how often I’m using it now, I probably need to take that dive and just let a batch of garlic ferment.
Runner ups: Homemade Jerky, Homemade Creme Brulee
Best Food Experience: Lasagna Burrito Stream
While streaming, I’ve tried a few weird and more ridiculous recipes. The one that stood out the most was the lasagna burrito called the Fat Waypoint. This dish was inspired by a Waypoint Radio podcast bit where they discussed the concept of putting a lasagna in a burrito. I loved the idea of this so much that the day after listening to the podcast, I cooked it on stream. I went and picked up my supplies and just made it that evening. I decided it was important to make lasagna rolls instead of just layering the lasagna. Rolling the noodles made for a more controlled portion that would fit better in a burrito. After they finished baking, I took a large tortilla and placed 1 ½ rolls in the center. I felt I needed to better incorporate the burrito influence in the dish by topping the roll with queso, guacamole, and pico de gallo. After that, I rolled it up and then deep-fried it. The end result was extremely delicious. I will honestly make this again and have plans to make it when some friends visit our place next year. You can watch the whole stream highlight here.
Best new Restaurant: Mein in Houston
This was a hard category to pick from. Jeff and I don’t really go out to eat a lot but when we do, we try to go to a new location. We actually found ourselves at Mein, a Cantonese style Restaurant in West Houston, a handful of times this year. We needed to go back and show friends what a great location it was. The owner, Mike Tran, has several locations in Houston’s Asiatown. We have been to several of them and each of them are amazing. My personal favorite dish is the shaking tofu. It is the best tofu dish I’ve ever had. Everything I’ve had from this restaurant has really been great and I highly recommend checking it out.
Runner ups: Ohn Korean in Houston, Blkdog in Houston, Republique in Los Angeles, and The Publican Quality Meats in Chicago
Favorite Recipe of the Year: Banh Mi – The Sims 4
I’m so happy with a lot of my recipes from last year that it was hard to pick the best one. I had to think about which recipe brought the biggest smile to my face and it would have to be this banh mi recipe. Banh mi is a dish that came into my life when I moved down here to Houston. There are a lot of Vietnamese restaurants in Houston, thanks in part to the large population here, and many of them have great banh mis to eat. This sandwich dish combines a meat, pickled vegetables, and pate. For some time, I’ve wanted to make my own and The Sims 4 allowed me to do just that. I’ve made this recipe a handful of times now and will be making it on the regular.
Runner ups: Saltuna – The Outer Worlds, Wasabi Karaage – Judgement, Turf ‘N’ Truff – Dragon Quest Builders 2, Spaghetti Carbonara – FFXIV, Honey Nuggets – Don’t Starve
Game of the Year: FFXIV: Heavensward/ Shadowbringers
I went back and forth on this one. Honestly, any of these games could sit in this spot. In the end I decided to give it to Final Fantasy XIV because I played this game a lot and really enjoyed myself. Jeff and I played FFXIV for the first time in 2014. We had a group of friends that were playing and were looking to fill out their static raid progression group. At the time, Jeff and I were very interested in hard end game content and started playing. Base FFXIV’s story made me want to pull my hair out. I was just not interested in the story or the characters. We played for about 9 months (we made it all the way to Coil Turn 7) and then decided it was time to move on to another game. Fast forward to this year, Jeff and I once again had a hankering to jump into an MMO.
A few friends were just picking up FFXIV and we had heard a lot of the expansions improved from a writing perspective and general gameplay. Also Shadowbringers was about a month away. We still had to get through some of the bridge content before we could jump into the first expansion. I LOVED, LOVED Heavensward. Once Shadowbringers came out, everyone talking about how good the story was, got me excited to keep pushing forward.. Next was Stormblood. I’m going to pretend Stormblood doesn’t exist. The story and characters (especially the main villain) just didn’t click with me. Then we finally made it to Shadowbringers. This expansion was really, really well done. It has the best villain in the series by a long shot. On top of the amazing story (again ignoring Stormblood), I had a great time doing all the extra content in the game. A small group of us started doing unsynced extreme primal farms for mounts. I am at a point in my life where grinding high end content is not for me. If I can make things a little easier for us, I will take that chance. This game is great and if you are looking for a hefty MMO to jump into, I’d highly recommend it. You may want to skip the base game story because it drags on longer than it should.
Runner ups: The Outer Worlds, Dragon Quest Builders 2, Super Mario Maker 2
Game I Should Have Played More Of: Judgement
With the book project and playing too much Final Fantasy XIV, I was not able to spend as much time playing this game as I would have liked. Of course, Jeff and I have already put over 30 hours (many of those hours are from this past month) into the game and I think we just passed the halfway point of the game. The Ryu ga Gotoku Studio always jams these games with a lot of side activities and very large story arcs. It is easy to lose yourself in the world of Kamurocho. Rather than playing as someone in one of the yakuza clans, you play the ex-lawyer gone private investigator, Takayuki Yagami. Of course, yakuza are involved but seeing the story unfold from the eyes of a civilian has been amazing.
Most Anticipated Games of 2020: Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon
Without question the game I’m most excited for is Yakuza 7. Since the official announcement of the game revealed that it would be a completely different gameplay style and focused on a new set of characters, I was all in. As more information keeps coming out, I am only more and more excited about this game. It looks like it has all the heart of previous Yakuza games with a completely new main character and different style of combat. I’m excited to try out this new turn-based style of game. I’m especially excited that some of the characters you can have in your party are women. This series has always been dominated by men and finally some women kicking butt is extremely exciting for me. The game comes out a few weeks from now in Japan and no official date has been set for the West. All we know is sometime in 2020 we will be able to play this game as Ichiban Kasuga.
Runner ups: Dragonball: Kakarot, Sports Story, Persona 5 R
Game of the Decade: Yakuza Series
Since we are wrapping up the decade I figured I would take a moment to look back at all the games I played throughout that time. There are a lot of wonderful games and it was a bit rough to pick the one that stood above the rest. After a bit of reflecting, I realized it was the Yakuza series. Sure, you can say I’m cheating a bit by picking a series instead of a single game, but I really do feel like these games stand together as a whole because the story is all connected. Also it’s my own list so I can define it however I want, but if I was forced to pick just one it would be between 4 and 5, both have so many memorable moments and are just wonderful!
I picked up my first Yakuza game in 2010 after trying out the demo for Yakuza 3 on the PS3. I hadn’t played the series before but right away the story and game mechanics caught my attention. From that point on, I was in love with the Yakuza series. Starting at the third one I was a bit worried I would be lost with the previous stories but the game did come with a recap section that covered all the events that happened in the first two games. The combat was always a minor point for me but was still extremely fun to play. With each version of the game it became more fluid and interesting. I love the story in the series and how a live the world felt. Jeff has said to me a few times that the Yakuza series actually helped prepare him for our trip to Japan. The way the streets were laid out and how shops were laid out, it was as if I had already been there.
I have played all of the games that have come stateside since then (with the exception of Dead Souls, zombie games don’t do it for me). Nowadays Jeff and I will sit down and play these games together. Since the games can easily be 60+ hours of play time we figured it would be best for us to enjoy them together. I keep considering stream through the whole series but I don’t think I have enough time to go through them all. If this is something people are interested in, it gives me an excuse to play this series all over again. I’m excited to see what else the Ryu ga Gotoku studio has to bring.
Runner ups: Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV, Breath of the Wild, Stardew Valley, Divinity Original Sin 2, Tales of Berseria, Golf Story, Persona 5