I recently sat down for lunch with my friend Erik (@topfermented) to talk about his Kickstarter project, Mystery Brewing Company. I mentioned how all of the friends I know who are into home brewing have a relatively high degree of geekitude in common. Obviously, there’s a lot of science and chemistry involved, so there’s that appeal to geeks. But Erik had another idea.

Brewing beer is very much an RPG skill that you can add to your real life character sheet.

Editor’s note – I know totally want to know what other real life character sheet skillz people should have.  I currently have a +5 traffic patience and +2 cool knot tying abilities.  What do you guys think?

Here’s your list of mats:
1. Water
2. Barley
3. Yeast
4. Hops

That’s pretty much it. A quick google search will help you find a local homebrew shop where they can help you with the rest of the equipment and help you out with a slightly more comprehensive guide. You may also want to add a second type of starch, be it sugar, another grain (like rice, wheat or corn) or even something more exotic like juice, honey or Kool-Aid mix (for pink-headed beery goodness). Further trial and error with your recipes is possible to create new flavors and colors, and it’s there you will find the magic of home brewing. You can attempt all manner of science with potentially delicious and/or intoxicating results.

Home brewing takes a bunch of chemistry, some time, and some space. Your beer is going to need to sit some time while the science happens. Enzymes need to turn barley into sugar and then the sugar and yeast need time to ferment. This will take a few weeks and depending on the style of beer you’re going for, it could take months. I have seen friends use floor space in guest bedrooms, upstairs bathrooms, basements and garages. So if you have a studio apartment or share a place with roommates, you and your friends might need to get cozy with a giant bottle of proto-beer for a while. With some practice, I assure you it will be worth it.

Now, what are your other options? Whether or not you want to add brewing to your character sheet, you could opt to support my friend Erik. As I wrote on my own blog recently, Mystery Brewing Company will succeed. One taste of Erik’s beer and you would agree. In fact, he is now fully funded on kickstarter, but you can still be a part of Erik’s dream until July 23rd. Head over to his kickstarter page: Mystery Brewing Company and check things out. You don’t have to pledge a huge amount. Any little bit will still help him start a new company and live his dream. You also stand to get a few interesting rewards out of the deal. And if you do decide to try out home brewing, definitely follow @topfermented. He can help you out with all kinds of advice and ideas. Plus, if you donate enough to kickstarter, Erik will send you a recipe. You could brew some Mystery beer in your extra bathroom. Which would only be a little weird.

@nerdsherpa, not a beer expert, but a beer expert expert.
(I also know about a lot of other nerdy things. Check out my blog at nerdsherpa.blogspot.com. I promise you’ll like it.)

So much geeky goodness!

I decided to make the dough and frosting recipes that came with the cookie cutters.  It ended up being a generic sugar cookie with royal icing.  I’m not a big fan of sugar cookies, so it was good enough for me.  However, it wasn’t a great royal icing recipe.  Next time I’ll probably do a buttercream because it tastes better.  I think my favorite part about these cookie cutters is their design.  Do you remember making cookies when you were little?  And how the dough always seemed to stick to the cutter and you had to slap the cutter onto the palm of your hand even though you floured the cutter?  Well, that’s no longer a problem.

Equipped with a spring-loaded stamp, the cutters are as swift and precise as lightsabers – and a lot easier to work with.

Use the edges to shape your cookie, then gently press the stamp into the dough to create imprinted detailing.

Why yes, the FORCE is with me.

After the dough chilled for 2 hours, we're ready to roll. Would have been nice if I owned a rolling pin.

I tried to force punch the imprinting...

I went to a Troll 2 party last night, so I made cookies for that as well.

The cookies seem to come out best if you use firm pressure when imprinting.  I was giddy the whole baking time, just waiting for a delicious Stormtrooper.

I forgot to buy parchment paper which would have helped with the uneven browning on the edges.

This decorating pen worked the best. $2.95 at Williams-Sonoma.

Frosting fail! This Yoda looks more like Piccolo from DragonBall.

Getting a little bit better, but this one looks like the love child of Chewbacca and TK-421.

Yay! Finally, a cute Stormtrooper.

My new Star Wars friends.

I’ve discussed some better frosting options and techniques with my sister April, who is currently finishing up baking school.  Hopefully, next time they’ll be a bit prettier.  Overall, I give these cookie cutters two geeky thumbs up.

You may have noticed that there were also Star Wars Pancake Molds in my bag.  They’re up next.  I’ll let you know how it they turn out.

Just a heads up, the salesperson told me to hang onto both the cookie cutter and pancake molds because they’re selling fast.  Both retail for $19.99.

Preordering

What we ordered: My wife and I got two medium pizzas at polar opposites. Mine was hand-tossed, with extra bacon, extra jalapeños and extra feta cheese. My wife’s had a light white sauce with mushrooms, onion, green pepper, fresh tomato and chicken.

How we ordered it: Dominos’ Web interface is quite nice. It handles coupons cleanly (unlike other pizza sites), and really lets you work a custom number on your ordering. The option to toggle light, normal or extra quantities of ingredients is a nice touch (that I clearly took advantage of). And the bevy of toppings includes a few that aren’t standard in most chain pizza places. Spinach, other cheese variants, four different sauces, salami, red peppers and hot sauce are all nice touches I’m not used to.

The tracking process: Dominos’ online tracking process is pretty cool. Basically, you can follow your order in real time, from placement to prep time, baking, quality check and en route. The steps are complete with names and a sort of mad libbed running commentary. “Tawny just finished custom making your pizza, and has placed it into the oven!” The system tracks when the pizza has left their shop, so no more putting pants on too early… or too late.

Eating

Sauce: Their new standard sauce was great. Not too sweet, but with just a hint of red pepper to warm the palate.

Toppings: I asked for extra everything, and Dominos delivered. The pizza was literally drowning in bacon, jalapeño and feta. My wife’s pizza, which had normal quantities of everything (pansy) seemed appropriate and prettily balanced.

Crust: Domino’s has made a big deal out of their new crust, and I’m impressed. I was leery of their touted “garlic and herb seasoned” crust, but it was fairly subtly and didn’t overpower anything. Or maybe the crust was a welcome relief after eating the rest of the slice of thoroughly jalapeño’d pizza. I don’t want to know the nutritional content of what I was consuming — I’m sure that the delicious, buttery taste wasn’t made of angel wings and pixie dust.

Overall: Fellow geeks, I think we’ve got a winner here. To combat the single-topping and price-slashing Little Caesar’s, Domino’s has made a run at going upmarket while still keeping their prices lower than Pizza Hut. Across every metric, they’ve improved — their quality and consistency rivals even local pizza places. Don’t take my word for it, though — next time you’re taking a break from rolling critical hits, and someone suggests pizza, give them a try.

Peep experiencing low pressure.

A hammer to the head is a bad idea for a cold Peep.

If you’re not interested in the semi-ethical experiments on Peeps, but would rather just eat them, check out Peep recipes. Just click on the pictures for the recipes.

PeepMopolitain

Peeps Sushi

Easter Tarducken: Stuffing a Cadbury Creme Egg up the backside of a Peep and then placing it inside a hollow chocolate bunny.

Peep Cupcakes

Chocolate Dipped Peeps

I was once given this Peep Maker as a birthday present.  It was gross!

Not at all like the real thing!

Autumn's Bacon Apple Pi Day Pie

By baking.  Yep, Autumn and I can bake.  I really do think this is Autumn’s favorite holiday and she was the mastermind behind all the celebrating.  Last year we hiked in the Poppy Reserve in Lancaster and then ate pie.  This year, we christened Autumn’s new kitchen and made use of all her matrimonially obtained kitchen gadgets.  “Hey Autumn, do you have a rolling pin?  No?  Okay, I’ll just use a glass.”  20 minutes of baking activities pass and Autumn opens a drawer.  “Oh, I do have a rolling pin!”

I was so close to peeling the whole apple in one long strip of peel.

The bacon pie progression. Actually tasted better than I expected. Not sure I'd ever eat it again but...

Autumn grinds her spices old school!

Can you find the pi in the pie? Really, Amy and Jason are brilliant for baking this one.

Amy's strawberry goo pie. Yep, it's that good.

Taun Taun break. All that baking was tiring.

1. Darby O’Gill and the Little People: I’ve watched this movie every year of my life.  Growing up we weren’t allowed to watch it any other time, but St Patrick’s Day.  Please note that you must do the leprechaun dance for the Fox Hunt song.

2.  All Food Must Be Green or Irish: Corned beef and cabbage, green eggs and ham, Irish soda bread, Lucky Charms, green grilled cheese sandwiches, green oatmeal, green milk, green pancakes, green sugar cookies….you get the picture.  Really, there isn’t anything you can’t turn green, including butter.

3.  Green Clothes: When I was a child you had to prep the night before and make sure you were wearing green to bed, otherwise you were woken up with pinches for not wearing any green.  I haven’t informed my roommate of this yet, and I don’t think I will.

How do you geek out over St. Patrick’s Day?

Yep, the foamy goodness of Boba Fett

It is times like these that I’m proud to be from the soggy, green, caffeine loving Pacific Northwest.  Thanks to Christopher for sharing his favorite barista’s artistic talents.  Here’s to hoping he does requests because how fanfrakkingtastic would a viper and/or cylong raider be in foamy goodnees?

Cori showing off her awesome

After much debating (we decided that Caprica Six and Helo would make to bizarre of a couple, for one) we settled on having Richard and Kahlan from Legend of the Seeker to be our cake topper.  But there are no LOTS action figures to be found!  What’s a girl to do?  Why, have the same magic friend make some custom fondant figures!  And so she did!

It's a combination of me and Drew and Kahlan and Richard, hence the different hair color

Details are as follows: the sword that Drew is holding is painted with real edible silver, edible 14K Gold, and is adorned with a real Swarovski crystal.  Ever the attention to detail Cori  also made the tooth necklace seen on his neck.

Details on Kahlan are the sleeves, the chest area, with the lacing detail on the front, and the hood in the back, and  detailing had the 14K gold on the arms.

Never mind the Medal of Yavin Drew has on, that's a post for a different day

Let me know if you’d like to see more of Cori’s stuff, it’s all on facebook.  Pictures courtesy my fantabulous photographer Christina Domingues.