A Look Back At 2021

2021 is coming to a close and what a wild year it has been. First, I hope everyone has been safe and surviving year 2 of the global pandemic. Jeff, Kanji, and I have been fortunate enough to still be working from home and have not gotten sick. My family in Chicago did start the year by catching covid. My mother and grandfather ended up in the hospital but they all recovered. I’m happy to be so lucky that my family continues to be safe and hope in the near future I’ll be able to pay them a visit, it has been 2 years now since I’ve last gone up to see them.

I want to take a moment to apologize for the site not getting updated as regularly as it used to. I’m sure many of you noticed that the posting schedule has been a bit more chaotic. My schedule this year was much busier. By the time I finished the work I needed to get done, I was too exhausted to work on writing and editing photos for recipes on the site. To adjust for that, I’m trying to make sure I get a post up every other week. When my project load lightens, I’m hoping I can get back to my regular schedule of weekly posting. But for now, I hope you enjoy the recipes I have been putting up. Please continue to let me know if you see any interesting games I should check out because of the food in them. I’m always looking for new things to work on for the site.

I mentioned above that my schedule has been pretty busy and several factors played into this. This past summer, I decided it was time to step back from my full time office job. I was able to make this change due to the number of book projects I have been working on. With the swap to being self employed, I’ve been strict about keeping my weekends work-free. These last few months I’ve actually been able to do whatever I want and relax to recharge for the week. It has been extremely nice and it has been a huge boost to my mental and physical health. Prior to this, I would work my day job and then spend the weekends and weeknights working on content to make sure I kept up with both. I’ve been working hard on adjusting my schedule and I’m hoping next year to find a better balance to be able to create all the content I would like. 

Let’s talk about my books from 2021. This year, I worked on MANY projects. I can’t go into details but there are many books in the future for you all to look forward to. This summer, you all were able to get your hands on the Street Fighter Cookbook. I really enjoyed working on this book. I love the recipes in it but unfortunately the book did not get a lot of coverage. I think a lot of people have no idea it came out. I’ve been severely disappointed with how that book was handled, but I’ll be cooking from it forever. All of the marketing and publicity was out of my hands, but I’ve been happy seeing a few people cooking from it. This book was a fun learning experience with cooking a bunch of street food at home. It was also the project that required Jeff and I to do a lot of reading since we covered so many characters in it. If you get your hands on the book make sure you try out the Spaghetti Carbonara (pg 61) and Chanko Nabe (pg 143).

The big book to come out this year was the Final Fantasy XIV Cookbook and it is easily the most popular book I’ve yet to release. I shared a post about the project earlier. If you missed that please check it out here. In the post, I talked about the process of writing this book, answered a few common questions, highlighted my favorite recipes, and gave recommendations of recipes to start with. FFXIV is a game I continue to play and love the game so much that I was extremely excited to have the opportunity to work on this project. Since the book has been out, I’ve seen many other Warriors of Light take a stab at the recipes. Seeing all the pictures of what people have made has brought me such joy. Thank you all for showing so much love for the book and please keep sharing all the items you make.

This past year, I continued to do streams on Twitch pretty casually. I believe all my streams this year were cooking streams. I used the streams to cook a meal and just catch up with my community. I haven’t done much this year with improving stream quality or what not because Twitch itself has kinda not made me super excited to be on the platform. Next year, I will continue to do only 1 stream a week and use the extra time off to start working on video stuff in the near future. But, I really do enjoy chilling with you all while I make food. It has helped me have a bit of social interaction with others and has really helped me improve my public speaking skills.

I have a few major goals for next year. First, I’d like to maintain a schedule of at least 2 posts a month on the site with the goal of getting things back to weekly. This first goal really is dependent on how my schedule is looking and now at least 2 posts a month seems very achievable. Another major goal is to take old recipes and create video guides for them. Last year, I started up a Youtube channel but this was the one section that got hit the hardest with scheduling. Next year, I intend to start working on videos to put up. I’m hoping to put one up every other month to start and hope as I get quicker with editing this will increase over time. If there are specific recipes that you are hoping to see done in a video format please let me know, this will help me decide which recipes to focus on first. Finally, I hope to continue figuring out the perfect work and life balance. I think figuring out the perfect schedule for me is going to be a long running work in progress and hope to continue improving on that.

Before I jump into my game and food highlights of the year, I want to take a moment to thank all of you. Thank you for checking out my blog, sharing my stuff on social media, hanging out during streams, and cooking my recipes. Without you all, I would have probably given up on this adventure ages ago. I’m so happy that I have inspired so many of you to get in the kitchen and start cooking. Here is to another year of delicious food and fun games to play!

Best Video Game with Food:  NEO: The World Ends With You

This year there were a lot of games with amazing food art. After a lot of back and forth with this category I decided the food from NEO: The World End With You was the stand out. The drawings of all the food items in this game had me drooling and wanting to make them all. Food in this game helps boost your characters stats and bring a smile to their face if given their favorite item. I’ve already started making a few of the recipes with the Avocado Toast recipe being the first one up on the site and I’m excited to share the other recipes I’ve worked on.
Runner Ups: FFXIV: Endwalker, Spiritfarer, Animal Crossing: New Horizon, Lost Judgment

Coolest Gaming Experience: Receiving the Lost Judgment PR Kit

This is the first year, I actually got sent a PR Kit for a new game coming out. Sega was kind enough to send me an amazing box of goodies for the release of Lost Judgment. Many of you know I am a huge fan of the games made by RGG Studio. To finally catch their eye for the food I’ve been making inspired by the game was a dream come true. The kit came with a lot of amazing things including one of the skateboard decks you can find in game. I currently have it hanging with the rest of my Yakuza art now. I was really excited for the little drone they included because it is perfect to use for future food photos.

Best New Cooking Experience of the Year: Ube

I’ve worked with ube previously but this year I really took a dive and started using this ingredient a lot more. Since having ube in things like ice cream and drinks at other restaurants, I knew it was time to pick some up and try working with it. I used ube extract, frozen ube, and ube halaya for a variety of recipes. My personal favorite is an ube ice cream recipe that I’ve been working on. It ends up having such a nice smooth flavor. If you have a favorite ube recipe you’ve been using, please share it with me. I love an excuse to cook with this ingredient.

Runner Ups: Guy Fieri’s Apple Pie Hot Dog, Homemade Conchas, First Attempt at Macarons, First Attempt at Beef Wellington

Favorite Recipe of the Year: Judgment: Imuraya Gold Pizza Bun 

This is honestly a recipe I’ve been working on since 2018. Weird, right? Judgment wasn’t even a game at that point. Well, it was when I was playing through Yakuza 6, stopped into a convenience store, and saw the list of buns included. The Imuraya Gold Pizza Bun immediately caught my attention. I knew what my next challenge to work on was. Well, my first few attempts were complete failures and I decided to put it to the side. While playing through Judgment, Jeff and I would always stock up Yagami with a ton of buns to use to heal up during combat. When the remaster came out this year, it was finally time to give these pizza buns another go. It actually took 3 more attempts this year to finally figure out the perfect balance for these. They do take a lot of work but they are very much worth it.

Runner Ups: Animal Crossing: Minestrone Soup, Lost Judgment: Anpan, Yakuza Like A Dragon: Birthday Bash Cake

Game of the Year: Shin Megami Tensei V

I admit I spent most of this year replaying through the entire Yakuza series but I did play through a few new games. Going into this year, I didn’t have many games I was actually looking forward to. Many of the titles I have listed here didn’t have a release date until this year! This past weekend, I finished my playthrough of Shin Megami Tensei V and I can say pretty easily this is my favorite game of the franchise. I had such a fun time with the game and kept wanting to go back and try a few things. All of the systems that have been in previous SMT games were just drastically improved. I just loved the gameplay. I LOVED the soundtrack. I was just floored every time a new track would play. I’m happy that I’ve finished the game and now can listen to the OST on loop. Now, no game is perfect. I’m gonna say I was disappointed by the things that were put up for DLC. I found it odd and feel like they should have been included in the game. If you want to try your hand at a Shin Megami Tensei game, I highly recommend you give this one a try.

Runner Ups: FFXIV: Endwalker, Lost Judgment

Most Anticipated Game of 2022: ??? 

I’ll be honest, I’m not sure which games I’m looking forward to. Many games have been announced but release dates have not been super solid. In a weird sense, the game I’m most looking forward to finally playing is Tales of Arise. I know this game came out this past year but I didn’t get a chance to try it out besides the demo. Jeff and I are going to be jumping into that probably this next month, before he becomes engrossed in Elden Ring.

A few games I am looking forward to but they do not have a release date include Sports Story, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Breath of the Wild 2. These will be coming out at some point but without a date I have a hard time being extremely excited about these. I also imagine we will start getting information about Yakuza 8 in the near future but that is only an assumption. Oh well, good thing there are still a ton of games to play. 

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