Rosalia Rambles

Tag: food review

  • Redundancy Review: Day 478, “Flying back around”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning pilots and WSOs, welcome to Day 478 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    I promise that the plane stuff will come to an end soon, especially as I come near to finishing my first playthrough of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. I think I am at what will be my last wall in terms of progression, and whilst it is possibly one of my favourite missions in the franchise without having even finished it, the final phase is getting right on my tits.

    It is extremely rare I time out during an Ace Combat mission, but this mission has actually managed to inflict that upon me today. After that I developed a headache so I focused on finishing off my beef stew for dinner before playing Dead Space 3 with a close friend of mine.

    Being able to be this invested in a game has come as quite a surprise to me. I knew I was hyped up to be able to play a new Ace Combat game, but I was not expecting myself to get quite so into this installment – to the point my partner had to force me off the sofa, making me go outside for food and refreshment. Whilst I did protest initially, my stomach and body caught up with how I had been feeling shortly into our walk, with some cheese on toast from a local cafe perking me right up… until the headache hit but that is both beside the point and repetition.

    The point I am trying to make is that it is very rare for me to spend beyond two hours on any given gaming session, maybe pushing it to two-and-a-half hours at a push but even then I will likely be flagging near to the end and looking for a cooldown activity to finish things up. When a game comes along that I can get invested in, or I am simply enjoying the company of those around me so much, getting up to three or four hour long sessions is entirely possible.

    Usually punctuated with me going “I’VE BEEN PLAYING FOR HOW LONG?!” at the end of the session, having my body catch up with my mind or vice versa, and limping slowly to bed to do whatever it takes to rest my mind after using that much pure focus energy.

    On one hand, I consider it a positive that with the right impetus I can put my mind and body through intense periods of determination for multiple hours at a time – possibly a side effect of my experience working in the repetitive nature of QA. On the other though, it feels a bit weird that my only consistent source of this energy is intense video game sessions.

    Do not get me wrong, when the walls are closing in at work and the deadline seems just out of reach I will pull out all the stops to get the task done, but my focus for that seems more fragile than when it comes to these long sessions. Though if I am honest, “corporate deadlines” definitely do not inspire me in the same way as “hunting a magnificent creature” or “patriotism for a nation that does not exist” does.

    Or maybe four months of unemployment are taking their toll harder than I anticipated and the main way I can spark my dopamine receptors into action is through intense video game sessions because with the way the job market is in 2026, there is very little reward from filling out job applications knowing they will likely end in rejection or ghosting.

    I… should probably reflect on the fact I am saying something like that.

    There is no way I want to end up as a perpetual NEET, though in my current situation I can definitely sympathise with those who are in that position, and I definitely want that satisfaction that comes with a full-time position again, because I enjoy working with cool people on cool projects – especially if those projects are for the benefit of other people. There is the obvious route of “well if you get so much thrill from playing games, why not go into streaming?” which has crossed my mind more than I would like to admit, but:

    1. I am not sure how well my current setup would take to streaming with the games I want to stream
    2. I am not sure how well my personality would come through on a stream in the way I want it to
    3. “Tech layoff getting into oversaturated markets” is already a current problem I face
    4. If I were to put all that energy into streaming, it would probably be better served being put into my writing work as that is how I actually want to interact with the world around me.

    This is to not write-off streaming, as I definitely do want to try VTubing for myself properly at some point, but I would rather be doing that from a position of strength rather than desperation.

    So that leaves me with conquering the monolith of the job search in 2026, which come hell, high water, or hellishly high water, I will conquer – even if I have to start referring to it as “job search in 2027”.

    Managed to get a surprisingly good groove out of that topic, but it is probably a good time to move onto the review segment, which involves me going deep into the backlog all the way back in June for when I went out with my dad and my partner for Father’s Day.

    As a bit of background, I have stopped giving my dad physical gifts on Father’s Day, primarily because in his old age I have started to run out of things to give someone whose main hobbies are “books” and “Lego” without cluttering up their home, so instead I resolved to take him out to dinners or lunches instead with the caveat that I pay… which admittedly is a little harder to do when jobless, but for this one we resolved a split instead.

    Which when considering the price and what we got, it was not a bad deal at all.

    The venue for this dinner was Ribeye Steakhouse in Shrewsbury, a place where my partner and I went near to the end of last year as part of a Christmas gift from his mother, and a place I knew my dad would love. We had a brief debate on the table about what each of us could order, but we remembered that they offer sharing cuts of beef, so we went to check out the fridge where we saw this insane 900g lump of sirloin sitting right in front of us, priced at £8/100g. Splitting that three ways with two extra sides on top of the two included sides in the sharing price with three drinks worked out cheaper than us buying individual meals.

    It took a while to come out, though that was down to both the size of the meat and having to commit a food crime in ordering it well-done… dad’s idea, not mine. The official position of Rosalia Rambles is that the ideal red meat cooking temperature is “able to be revived under the correct circumstances”, or “bloody rare” in brief.

    But once it all came out, with the sides of creamed spinach, onion rings, and beef dripping fries put onto the plate, accompanied by a flat mushroom and some bearnaise sauce, it made for one incredibly sexy presentation.

    Now, the bill. Even with extra sides, this all came out to a surprisingly reasonable total of £88.70, with a surprising lack of service charge which is a rarity around these parts. Given how delicious the meal was and how lovely the staff were in giving us a countdown to our meal with how long it took, we decided to round up to an even £100, essentially giving a 13% tip on the meal. Split evenly between myself and my dad, that was a cool £50 each – still pretty pricey, but when you can indulge in a steakhouse dinner for £33~ a head, that is good value for a once in a blue moon event.

    My partner and I have said that we intend to go back there when either of us have big job news to celebrate, and I anticipate the day I can savour a big cut of beef my own way there.

    One should hope I end up writing these earlier in the day now that my fixation is starting to wane, but I am still proud of my regularity. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are doing well. The week is almost over, and hopefully a relaxing weekend is ahead for all of us.

    We all deserve it.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 459-460, “Morale is evershifting”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning officers and infantry, welcome to Day 459 and 460 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    Yeah, missed a post yesterday after having a very good weeklong streak, but it was for a somewhat good reason as I spent the majority of the day at a friend’s house for a BBQ and general social gathering, coming home at nine in the evening and being thoroughly exhausted alongside being a bit demoralised.

    Last night was the First Come, First Served sale for the Vexpo meet and greet tickets, and it was confirmed that every talent had at least one ticket available, meaning I had a shot at grabbing one for Shiori. In hindsight, I should have focused my bandwidth on going after some other talents instead like Mint, Matara, or Wunder Riku, all people I would have loved to meet and chat with for a short while, but the chance to meet my kamioshi was too great.

    I did end up getting one ticket I had applied for but not won in the form of Dr.NOVA(e) from V4Mirai, and I still have my ticket to meet Ironmouse as well which are going to be two fantastic opportunities, but I cannot help but feel some amount of hurt or disappointment in not being able to snag Shiori.

    There is a lot I have done to try comfort and console myself in the aftermath, seeing that many prominent community members have got tickets is awesome to see, as I know they were probably as locked in as me to try see if they could get anything in the sale, and part of me knows that if I got the chance to meet Shiori there is a full possibility I would flub my words entirely resulting in me just crying for the majority of the meet.

    But it still hurts, and it still did a number on my already-depleted morale that I felt I was not clever enough in my approach to the sale, when the majority of it would have just been luck anyway. I know there will be more chances to meet her in future, and that I will still have the opportunity to cheer her on as part of the Serendipity screening on Thursday. 

    It would have been nice, all the same.

    Keeping my morale up in general during this time feels hard, as some days I will wake up ready to conquer the world and do everything I need to do to get my life back on the track I want to be on… and some days waking up is extremely difficult, as I try to muster what little strength I have to even function, resulting in me feeling negative for the rest of the day.

    The worst part about those days is feeling as if I am not entitled to have them, that I need to keep myself together and present a strong front so I can support those around me. I know this is not the case, and I am allowed to feel sad on my bad days, but this crushing weight of expectation never seems to leave me how much those in my life affirm that I am okay to not be okay.

    Writing it all down helps, cause otherwise I definitely would let everything bottle up inside, and even then there are moments where I keep it all on the inside for fear of letting my own mind overwhelm me.

    I will make it through, and I will see a better tomorrow. There is so much I still need to live for, and I want to be around the people I love when it happens.

    For now though, I will take whatever boosts of morale I can get, which includes the subject of today’s review.

    On Friday I went out with my parents for dinner at a place called “OK Diner”, a small chain of American-style diners in the UK that offer a melange of options for hearty and filling meals, with my eyes firmly set on having a big and greasy burger to warm my soul.

    Disclaimer, my parents were the people to pay for this, and admittedly I did go overboard with the knowledge that someone else was paying for my food that evening, but I will include the price as always. Thanks again, mum and dad, I really appreciate you treating me to things like this when life has really been getting me down these last months.

    Without further ado, behold: the double patty breakfast burger served with curly fries.

    My heart was set on a burger, as it is one of my all-time favourite things to order from any big restaurant to lift my spirits after a rough time period, and one of my strongest food opinions is that any burger can be improved with the simple addition of a fried egg on top, meaning that a burger topped with bacon, egg, and hash brown to form a breakfast burger was the perfect thing to indulge in after restraining myself from eating out due to not having a job.

    Although I will admit, going for a double patty rather than a single six-ounce patty was a minor mistake on my part. Whilst I was still able to clear my plate and had a whale of a time doing it, I did feel a bit ill afterwards due to eating so much food

    That said, I could have cried when biting into such a decadent feast after so long of practicing restraint to ensure my runway lasts as long as possible. It feels silly to say, as after all it is just food, but meals out with my partner were one of my favourite ways to spend time with him when I was still gainfully employed, and I hope to enjoy another during our Vexpo trip as part of the “forget about all the problems” aspect.

    But what did this indulgence cost? Including an 80p charge for upgrading my fries to curly fries, the total came to £20.30. Whilst I would fully be comfortable paying for this myself in any other circumstance, the fact I was able to get such a delectable treat essentially for free feels so amazing.

    That covers it for today, we only have about three reviews left until I head to Vexpo in the coming week, so I will aim to make them good ones. Thank you for reading today’s edition. Wherever you are, I hope you have had an enjoyable weekend, and that the Monday blues do not bring you down too hard tomorrow. It feels weird to not dread Sunday as I have done in the past, but I hope you have a good day at work tomorrow.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 458, “While it lasts”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning enjoyers and savourers, welcome to Day 458 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    If I manage to finish this today, it will be one full week of posts for the first time since…

    …five months ago in April, fucking hell.

    I say “if”, because whilst I am sitting here writing a post out on my old battered laptop, I continue to find it a struggle to put words together on everything I am feeling lately. Perhaps it is a sense of being overwhelmed, that there are so many stimuli assaulting me on the daily that finding words to describe all of it feels like an impossible task.

    In a way it is a privilege to be able to write like this. To sit in an undisturbed space away from others with only my own thoughts for company, being able to use the power of modern technology to write them all down and publish them online for all to see.

    Bit of a weird reflection coming from someone who earlier in the week declared their distaste for social media as a whole, but the world we live in is one of polar opposites right now. So many are struggling the world over, even in developed countries, but advancements in technology have made resources available to more people while those advancements also produce many of the challenges that face humanity as a whole.

    There is an insane amount of luck involved for someone like me to exist in the way I do at the current time, and as the title suggests, I am aiming to enjoy the time I currently have in the best way possible, because the tides could shift for better or worse at any moment.

    This extends to me enjoying time with my parents, which is something I felt I would never get to say when I consider the situation four years ago. We were locked in a bitter cold war over the state of my transition, and I went six months without seeing them until I finally broke down the walls. Nowadays I would consider not seeing them for six months extremely strange given I will see them at least once a month, if not more frequently.

    Given the fact they are aging and I am getting reminders of that on the regular, I am aiming to try and enjoy what time I have with them when I can. Family emotions can be complicated, and while I feel they may not fully understand the person I chose to become, I know that they know it makes me happy which is ultimately what they would want from me.

    Nothing can last forever, and whilst the pain from anything ending can last longer than anticipated, I will always aim to appreciate the fleeting nature of life where possible.

    Dragging up something from the backlogs today for the review topic, especially as I get to do something I have not done in a very long while. It is once more time for…

    Rosa Eats Her Way Around Shrewsbury!

    A couple weeks back I spent an afternoon hanging out with one of my closest friends with the goal of discussing writing together, mainly what story projects we had and bouncing ideas off each other to see where things could be improved but mainly to enjoy talking shop together.

    As part of this, and the fact I did not eat dessert when provided at a hangout a couple days prior, she agreed to pay for my lunch that day. Whilst I will discuss the price as always, this was paid for by someone else. Thanks for that!

    After going to one coffeehouse initially and having it be far too busy to actually hear each other speak, we took a short walk up the hill to go to a hole-in-the-wall venue known as the Bear Steps Cafe, where I noticed they had a lunch special on that day for a BBQ pulled pork panini served with fries that also came with a hot drink for an extremely reasonable price of £9.99.

    So obviously I had to take that deal, the opportunity to get a hot sandwich with fries and imbibe a delicious mocha whilst not breaking my friend’s budget was too good to pass up. The fact it came out with a gorgeous crisp crust on top of the panini with parmesan and herbs sprinkled over top made it even more decadent than I could imagine.

    The pulled pork was exactly how I like it: sweet, smoky, and tender all in one package. The cheese blend used to bind the panini together was perfect, in all likelihood it was some catering blend of cheeses rather than being a dedicated cheddar or mozzarella, but it had the perfect amount of stretch and flavour to it that made worrying about the details irrelevant.

    The fries were about as standard as you can get, but there is never really a need to a cafe to go above and beyond on fries if you ask me, especially if they are included as part of a meal. I do not go to a cafe expecting the finest beef tallow triple-cooked chips, I am perfectly happy with the most basic fries to add a little bit of extra carbs to my meal.

    Finally, my mocha was also pretty standard to the best of my memory. There is never really a way modern coffee machines can go wrong with making a mocha, and whatever balance is there for me is usually a pleasant experience of getting to savour the flavour of chocolate whilst getting one of my many needed caffeine hits throughout the day.

    And again, this entire spread was the very reasonable price of £9.99. A sit down lunch in an independent cafe can very easily cost more than that in other locations, and getting a moment to sit down with a close friend to talk about a hobby we both share.

    That covers everything for today. Thank you for reading this edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to enjoy the weekend. If you are one of the many who works on the weekend, I hope you are able to navigate the trials of everyone coming at you for the most minor of things. I see your hard work, and appreciate you persisting through it all the same.

  • Redundancy Review: Day 259-286, “Building Things”

    (for context on what this series is, please see my Day 1 post here: Redundancy Review: Day 1, “A New Beginning” – Rosalia Rambles)

    Good morning constructors and builders, welcome to Day 259 to 286 of Rosalia Rambles Redundancy Review.

    On the plus side, it was only a twenty-eight(ish) day gap between posts this time!

    On the down side, still a long ass time not to be writing anything.

    Past me would have said “long time not to be doing anything productive”, but honestly, the reason I have been away so long is because I have been finding my own ways of productivity outside of my work that has kept me away from writing, alongside a holiday taken a few weeks back that served as a major reset to my system that has basically reshifted my current outlook on things substantially.

    There was a lot of stress at my day job, which took priority during the day and I was working on other small projects at the same time, but after that holiday and having an extended period of time to just zen out not doing much put my brain into this current state where all stress and anxiety are basically on the back burner… which has led to me joking that I actually just burnt out the part of my brain that feels stressed causing me to be incapable of feeling it anymore.

    Outside of the jokes, there is a certain paranoia that has come with this relaxed state: why am I not stressed?

    It could be entirely down to the fact that I have spent the last couple of months dealing with stress meaning now that my body has been given the absence of stress it does not actually fully know what to feel. Or perhaps that these feelings of relaxation in the past have often been omens of impending doom on the horizon relating to job news so I am constantly thinking about what might be coming.

    Whatever comes, I feel I am adequately prepared for it, especially when looking back to a year ago. A year ago I thought I was in a relatively secure position, some amount of savings, and things starting to settle right after a big move forward in my life – right before everything became suddenly unsettled with the collapse of the last company I worked at.

    Sitting here now, writing a piece that was meant to start as something else and has now evolved into a reflective piece, I look over my situation seeing a much improved position. I would still be fucked six ways from Sunday if I were to lose my job again, but in terms of financials I would at least be able to take time for soul-searching in order to properly find out what I want to do next.

    There is one thing I know I will always want to do in life though: build things.

    What do I mean by that?

    Well, it can mean almost anything in a way. When someone says they are building something, it can be a piece of software, a physical item, or the vague concept of a “brand”. Humans are creatures that enjoy building things, and there is joy to be found through the process of creation.

    For me, I have several things I can build, and I have always found a fascination with being able to build things.

    Writing on this site is me building my “brand”, one focused around human creativity, honesty in the face of adversity, and talking about my hobbies in a roundabout way.

    But the hobbies I have are also about building. I am back into the flow of building Warhammer 40k models, something which I hope to finally talk about now that I have found my writing spark again. I play a lot of video games that involve building mechanics of some kind, more so now that my partner has tempted me to the dark side with playing Satisfactory. And I build complex flavours into the food I make on a daily basis when the passion and creativity hits me in the kitchen.

    I will always want to build things, and I will always want to take the time to build those things because the journey of creation is what makes the final results satisfying.

    And now, for the first time in… seventy six days fucking hell, it is time for the Redundancy Review to actually feature a review about something… though not about something I built, in fact the review topic for today was picked on impulse based on the route I had to take on my lunch walk today.

    In the past, I was someone that went to KFC fairly often. The allure of a Zinger Stacker topped with a hash brown brought me in a number of times over the years, but as time went on, I found myself going less and less, with the times I did go back in often yielding disappointment as the quality dropped further down in comparison to the prices going up. It was only cause of a recent promotion I found completely by chance when checking the website to see what offers they might have that I decided to go in today, specifically because, as a self-respecting trans woman, I cannot pass up the opportunity for pickle-based foods.

    “Pickle Mania”, as KFC is calling it, is a series of special menu items revolving around the humble pickled cucumber. A staple addition to most fast food burgers now brought to the forefront through a series of pickle-themed offerings, including a chicken burger with two types of pickle paired with a “creamy pickle ranch”, and pickle loaded fries featuring the crispy pickle pieces, popcorn chicken, and the creamy pickle ranch again.

    But the one that caught my eye, both for being one of my favourite items of fried food in existence alongside the fact a mainstream fast food has put them on the menu were the frickles. Sliced pickle that are coated in batter and then deep-fried for a crunchy & briney bite that is hard to beat.

    So naturally, I decided to try all three offerings. Loaded fries on the left pickle burger in the middle, and the frickles on the right.

    Small aside, “loaded fries” is definitely a food trend right now, as I have seen several places do their own variations on the dish. I am not entirely sure where it has come from but considering the infinite possibilities for loaded fries and the fact it has been a concept long before this current trend makes me tolerate it a lot more than whatever the hell was going on with matcha or Dubai chocolate.

    Anyway, I will go in order from left-to-right across the items, starting with the pickle loaded fries. These are standard KFC fries topped with the creamy pickle ranch, crispy pickle pieces, and standard popcorn chicken.

    These were… alright. The crispy pickle pieces are an interesting take on pickled cucumber but I felt they lost a lot of what appeals to me in a pickle, they were not briney, they were not salty, they just kind of tasted like dehydrated cucumber more than anything else.

    What stood out to me though was the creamy pickle ranch. Ranch is not a sauce you find often in the UK due to cultural differences but this tasted absolutely divine… provided you like briney/vinegary flavours as it was strong in the sauce, to an almost overpowering degree. Good for my tastes, but might not be to someone else’s.

    Next up was the pickle burger, which kind of gave me the vibe of what a standard American “chicken sandwich” is like compared to the chicken burgers you often find over here. No cheese, just chicken, sauce, and two kinds of pickles: the crispy pieces plus your standard gherkins. This was also just alright, outside of the creamy pickle ranch it tasted like a standard chicken burger, which would be great if the price reflected as such, whereas this was priced at £1 more than other burgers on the menu.

    Finally, we came to what I had come to try, the frickles. These were slices of pickle coated in a black pepper infused batter, which bizarrely did not come with a side of the creamy pickle ranch for dipping. Some places do their frickles as spears rather than slices, but I have a soft spot for slices, little discs of perfection.

    Whilst these were the highlight of the spread for me, I do also sadly have to give them another rating of “alright” with an added “but” afterwards. As far as frickles go, these were not the best I have had, not the worst I have had either, just simply “alright”. That said, for the price of £2.49 for a small portion of frickles in KFC of all places, you could do a lot worse, especially when compared to the price of £8.99 for the pickle burger meal with a £1.99 charge on top of that to add the loaded pickle fries – on their own the pickle fries would cost an almost disgraceful £3.99 which I do not think is worth it on their own at all for what you get.

    It is an interesting little experiment KFC has tried out with these ones, but sadly, it is not really enough to draw me back in regularly compared to the other places I can find lunch where I live. A shame, but we carry on.

    First time in a while writing a proper review, hopefully I managed to get my points across without much rambling. Thank you for reading today’s edition of the Redundancy Review. Wherever you are, I hope you are able to relax with whatever brings you comfort in this weird, fucked up world that we live in sometimes.