It’s weird eating healthier and exercising more. I feel like I am losing weight, and that I am feeling overall a bit better. I’m even thinking about picking up Ring Fit Adventure again to try to get in a bit more cardio at home in the mornings.
Pop culture psychology says that it takes 21 days to build a new habit, but I am not so sure that it is true. Sometimes, I feel like I am constantly making a hard choice to eat more chicken and drink more water instead of picking up that Cherry Pepsi or to eat a quick burger from McDonalds that I can get cheaply through the McDonalds app. I thought it would be easier as time went on, but it kind of isn’t for me. Even these healthier soups and stews that I’ve been making and eating for Cooking Eorzea seem to get a bit tough to enjoy from time to time simply because of how much chicken is a regular part of my diet now.
I’m also trying to actively be more social and see people here. It is a lot harder to make friends as you get older, but I will do my best to defy those odds if I can.
As a side note, I’ve started to level the Dancer class in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online, and it is a bit exciting to finally see my character’s back tattoo. I regularly forget that it is even there, since there aren’t a whole lot of decent glamor options for male Elezen that show off the upper back.
I genuinely want my life to improve, and I want to be healthy and happy and enjoy life with Love, Eorzean Style. It just is a lot harder than it looks to make happen.
If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.
Recipe of the Week
The final entry in the Soups and Stews section of The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook is the Skybuilder’s Stew! This recipe from the Firmament and the Ishgardian Restoration project in the Coerthas Region. With a difficulty level of ‘Easy’, and it being the 35th recipe, I was excited to see how this dish turned out!
Here is what the professional photograph of the stew looks like:
Featured Ingredient of the Week
Cream cheese is made from milk and cream, and it is usually not matured and has a high fat content. It is commonly used on top of bagels for breakfast, and it is fairly mild tasting.
I have used all sorts of cheese and other dairy-based ingredients in this column so far, but I had no idea that cream cheese could be melted down to be used as part of a cream base or anything else. All of this made cream cheese an easy, but simple, choice for Skybuilder’s Stew’s Featured Ingredient of the Week!
My Cooking Attempt
For this week’s Skybuilder’s Stew, I pulled together ALMOST all of the ingredients for a group shot. It was only while I was making the dish that I realized that I had left out the All-Purpose Flour.
First, I measured out a pound of chicken thighs, sliced it into bite-sized pieces, and then seasoned the pieces with salt and pepper.
I sliced the onion in half and then diced it into bite-sized pieces. I ultimately had to measure out the onion to make sure that I had enough for the recipe.
I then minced a few garlic cloves and then cut up a potato until I had enough for what the recipe called for.
I then sliced up the carrot and the daikon radish, and weighed both to make sure that I had the proper proportions for the Skybuilder’s Stew.
I then weighed out the broccoli florets and sliced off as much of the stem as possible for each one.
I added olive oil, the onion, and the minced garlic together in a pot and I let it cook for about five minutes while stirring occasionally.
I then added in the chicken, and I let it cook while stirring occasionally. After seven minutes, I saw that it was still pink and so I cooked it a couple more minutes until it was fully done.
I then added in the carrots, potatoes, and daikon radish pieces.
I then added in the chicken stock until it barely covered up all of the pot ingredients, and then brought the entire dish to a boil.
I then added in a bay leaf into the pot.
After lowering the temperature to let the pot simmer for 20 minutes, I started to make the cream base. First, I added the butter and cream cheese into the pot and let them melt together.
I slowly added in the flour to the saucepan and blended it in with the melted butter and cream cheese. After a few minutes, it started to smell a bit like bread.
I added in the milk, and then mixed it all together until the cream base started to thicken up.
After pulling the cream base off of the heat and setting it aside, I added the broccoli into the pot and brought the dish back up to a boil.
I then added in the cream base to the pot and stirred it in.
I then added in more salt and pepper to season the stew.
After whisking the seasoning in, I removed the bay leaf before ladling out the dish.
And here is the final dish for this week’s Cooking Eorzea!
The Skybuilder’s Stew wasn’t anything special, unfortunately. I loved the cream base, but I felt like the chicken and vegetables really weren’t anything different than normal. It was definitely hot, but I definitely wasn’t in love with the end result. I think it was because there wasn’t too much seasoning in the overall dish to enhance the overall flavor. But I would absolutely make the cream base again for another dish!
Afterword
Ultimately, if I was to make the Skybuilder’s Stew again, I would go beyond the recipe and add in some other spices and seasonings. I think it would have really enhanced the stew. However, there are other stew recipes, especially the Orobon Stew I made last week, that I enjoyed more!
Thank you, thank you’s…
I want to thank Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook and I also want to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes are actually supposed to look. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice, and you can check him and his works out over on Twitter.
Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game. This column simply wouldn’t be possible without both of their input into creating Eorzea.
Next Week
There will be no Cooking Eorzea for at least one, maybe two weeks due to me covering the FINAL FANTASY XVI launch event and other activities. However, Cooking Eorzea will then make a triumpant return with the start of the Main Dishes section of The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook, Banh Xeo from the Othard Region!
Let us know in the comments below!
