The Good Week — A Gaming PC and a New Dream

Hey everyone!

Another week has gone by, and thankfully it wasn't uneventful — I'll get into the details shortly. You could also say I boosted my dopamine quite a bit this week :D I ate some good stuff and some not-so-good stuff too (though I'm trying to cut back on the latter). So it definitely wasn't boring, let's leave it at that.

First, let me get into the food. Here's what I'd highlight from the week:

Tuna scramble with red onion, tomato cubes, and toast

This was definitely not your standard scrambled eggs, that's for sure. And it was filling, that's also for sure. I know this not just because my stomach was full afterward, but because I started out hungry and figured 4 eggs would be just right, maybe even a little short. Well, let's just say 3 would have been more than enough. No harm done, good lesson learned. I peeled and deseeded the tomato nicely, then chopped it into small cubes — completely diverticulosis-friendly.

Four-cheese chicken with cream-tomato sauce and fusilli pasta

Now, this was the meal I literally ate for three days straight. Following the scrambled-egg pattern, I didn't get the proportions right here either, and once again started cooking while very hungry, so it ended up being a bit much. No matter, it got eaten. Taste-wise it was pretty good. Usually the flavors really come together a day or two later — well, this time it was the opposite xD, it was better fresh. Here's the lesson: in a fully stainless steel pot, the bottom of the food burns, I've noticed, and not just with this dish. So that kind of pot will be good for other cooking methods — like boiling in water, where nothing burns. Anyway, since the bottom got a bit scorched, I scraped it up, and by the third day it wasn't quite as "steely"... it had a rather distinctive taste :D The cheeses, by the way: plain cheese, trappista, parmesan, and mozzarella.

Layered chicken with potatoes, topped with sour cream (one-pot dish)

I have to say, out of all the meals I've made in my life, this one is easily in the top 5 taste-wise. It was insanely good — didn't even last three days :D Top 1, 10/10, at least by my palate. The potatoes cooked to perfection, the chicken was in cubes, and it had a perfect flavor from the chicken seasoning. The sauce was sour cream, mayo, and herbs. I assembled everything in a glass baking dish and baked it at 180°C, done in about half an hour. Beforehand I par-boiled the potatoes and lightly pan-fried the chicken with onions, then layered everything into the dish. When it was done, the cheese was a perfect golden brown, and when I dug in with a fork it stretched beautifully — the bottom was still very gooey, while the top had browned nicely. Ooh. So the flavors were spot-on, even though the chicken was only 250 grams. I thought that would be too little, but for two people it was the perfect portion.

Just for the record: on the weekend there was the usual round of ordered food too — a pad thai with egg and chicken, a proper Neapolitan salami pizza, and a nice contact-grilled toasted sandwich (that one I made myself, didn't order it).

The gaming PC

As I mentioned in the intro, there were a couple of dopamine-boosting events this week. The first: I bought myself something I'd wanted since childhood. Sadly I couldn't afford it before, but now I managed to create the conditions for it — so I bought a gaming PC :D Ah, I love it! I spent the whole weekend gaming, and I feel like now, for years to come, I can play the games that are currently hyped — not just a few years later once their system requirements drop. It feels good to have been able to do this for myself. Considering everything I've been through lately, I feel I truly deserve to think about myself and my inner world too. And if a good, powerful gaming PC is what that takes, then so be it. You only live once — and now, apparently, at hyperspeed too!

The new dream: bushcraft

The second event was a realization that had probably escaped my attention until now: I love the world of bushcraft. It really crystallized in me over the past few days, and it keeps getting stronger. I'm still searching for the right words for it — why exactly I want this, and how. It's all still a bit tangled in my head, but roughly, I know I love it when people are out in the wilderness — in a forest, a clearing, or anywhere without people, just nature and them. Building the camp with your own hands, gathering wood, making fire, preparing food, and enjoying the whole environment — I think it would bring me a huge dose of dopamine and happiness.

I haven't thought much about how I want to make this happen, but I do know it's not easy to do this in the forests here in Hungary. There are often fire bans, you can only do it in designated spots, you can stay for a maximum of 24 hours, and the options are pretty limited overall. So it's not simple — but I don't mind, because you have to start somewhere, and I don't think I'll jump straight into a week-long camping trip in Alaska xD If I pitch a tent by some fenced-off lakeshore, cook, and make a fire where it's allowed, that'll be plenty of stimulation and experience for quite a few outings. Then I can raise the stakes — and there's plenty of room to. For instance, I thought an ultimate goal could be camping in a Norwegian pine forest under the northern lights. Now that would be the wow category. Jesus, I think I just discovered a new bucket-list item I didn't even know I had. Where has this been all my life??

On top of that, there are plans for cooking videos like this for YouTube/TikTok, or wherever it makes sense. I'd wanted to record what I write about here in the blog in video form someday anyway (maybe I haven't even mentioned that here yet), and this could actually be tied together — say, with one bushcraft/survival wilderness-cooking video a month. Might not be a bad idea. Fun fact: there's currently no content creator in this style in Hungary, or at least this niche is nowhere near saturated :D almost no one does this in Hungarian. Nice little gap in the market.

To sum up

This was a pretty good week. Maybe even a defining one — perhaps when I look back on it later, I'll say, "there, that's where something good started." Who knows. I think I've already improved my weekly eating on the junk food front, since even what I ordered wasn't that bad. I simply love the gaming PC, and it'll serve me well for years (including for editing YouTube videos), while discovering a new bucket-list item and a fresh hobby has completely energized me. I'm happy I found it. To close: I'd 100% bring my own food to any camping trip — partly because I don't like fish (wary of the bones), and partly because I won't be shedding any blood in the forest for the sake of my little hobby.

Oh, and I almost forgot — I went for a run this week… Ooof, I'd rather not go into detail. Let's just say I was still panting for a solid hour afterward. Half an hour completely destroyed me :D to be continued next week!

Have a good day, and eat well!

Vona