More Healthy Raiding

Raiding takes a big part of my time when I play World of Warcraft. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, you get a bunch of people together and you go kill fake monsters in one fake location. There are monsters termed "trash", meaning they are just there to add color and variety to the encounter. There is a "boss", a monster that is harder than the trash leading up to it. The boss has a variety of attacks and you all have to work together, do your job, push the right keyboard button at the right time, in order to kill the boss and get the fancy loot he carries. That's a "raid".

That's all in the virtual world. What you want in your real world is a comfortable chair and adequate computer on which to watch yourself stand in stuff you're not supposed to or have the boss run up and smoosh you. You are also to have your beverages and snacks with you before we start. When my guild and I get together, we often have a "drink check". This is a silly check to see what everyone is drinking when we raid. If someone talks on voice chat with their mouth full, we ask if they brought enough to share.

As you know, if you snack in front of the TV, this can be a mine field for good eating. I like my popcorn dripping with butter but that's not good for the keyboard. The diced fruit was a good idea, but again, with the juice, that's not good for the keyboard. Hence, I buy crackers or chips which are not good for the diet.

I remember this stuff my mother made. She called it "gorp". It was granola and chocolate chips and other things all thrown together in a big container. We took it with us on family camping trips. I've never been able to replicate what I remember and I'm always on the lookout for other trail mix type things that would be suitable for eating by the computer and suitable for adding to the diet. Plus, making a big container of some kind of trail mix is far better financially than buying the premade stuff.

I tried a new recipe this weekend.

This uses spoon-size shredded wheat which is baked in a brown sugar, butter and ginger mix. The recipe uses margarine but I don't think of margarine as better for me than good old butter. Into the shredded wheat goes dried cranberries and peanuts. When I was doing the grocery shopping over Labor Day, I saw peanuts on my list. But I was on a tight budget and couldn't think why I wanted peanuts, completely forgetting I was making this. So I rooted in the cupboard and found sunflower seeds and M&Ms.

This is pretty good. I could keep some of this on hand for noshing. I want to try it without the M&Ms and the sunflower seeds. You add the peanuts while the shredded wheat is baking. I like the brown sugar ginger taste, too.

I'm still on the hunt for the perfect gorp recipe. There were some suggestions in the latest issue of Cooking Light that I will try next month when I grocery shop. I can see having a few containers of different mixes on the shelf. I probably am perfectly capable of tossing whatever I feel like eating into a mix and calling it gorp, but I like to have some guidelines for what others have found good.

This will be gone by week's end. The nice part is that I found a bag of M&M's I didn't know I had.

Beverage:  English Breakfast tea

Deb