Saturday 14 April 2012

M is for Mikelmerck, Malfi and Meringue failure

M

Mikelmerck


New followers may not be aware of this, but I've been tatting about with an RPG setting for a while now.  It's been in abeyance lately due to having to be in shows and direct stuff, but there's a fair bit of material to be found on this vanity project already.

Mikelmerck is a fantasy Yorkshire turned up to 11.  For a selection of Mikelmerkian posts, take a look here.  Chris over at Bladesharp also has a couple of great Mikelmerkian entries which are well worth a look.  Although I'm not a mechanics bunny, I have been using Swords and Wizardry stats for the few bits that have such things.  Part of me would rather not use any stats at all, but the gamer-side rebels at having no numbers.

As is probably obvious, I'm a lot less interested in working out the mechanics than I am in the crossover between real and imagined myth.  It has been enormous fun and I'm semi-planning to see if I can do a test run with some of this material.  Possibly on G+, possibly just by good old-fashioned email.

None of this can happen until I've got Duchess of Malfi  out of the way.  This possibly overly-ambitious Youth Theatre production hits the stage in four weeks which is a petrifying thought.  We're pretty close to OK on it, but there is still a genuine knife-edge terror about the whole project.  Getting Webster's language sorted has been a huge issue and despite the numerous cuts, it's still one heck of a long play.  I am currently crossing my fingers and hoping the cast have the same sense of urgency that I do and have spent the Easter holiday constructively (i.e. making sure they know it).

On another issue entirely, I woke this morning to find the kitchen floor looking as though it had been hit by a polystyrene explosion.  Closer inspection revealed that someone had tried to eat one of my failed meringues and suffered the consquences.

Unfailed meringues

I made a batch for our Easter party last weekend and didn't beat the eggwhites long enough.  The results are explosive and not particularly edible as they turned into very hard biscuits of crystalline property.  I made a second batch which worked just fine, but my record with meringues is variable.  Either they are a howling success or they go drastically wrong.  No middle ground here.  I don't eat the things.   Egg white and sugar?  I ask you.  Why is that even a food?.

Even so, this particular failure is still better than my all time best failure when I made a superb batch of impeccable looking meringues only to discover that I had used salt instead of sugar.  Or rather I didn't discover it, but some pavlova lovers did.  Gastronomic treats of our time.

The lesson?  When re-using containers remember to label them properly.

18 comments:

  1. Egg whites and salt. Sounds kind of good actually, but I'll take the sugar egg white please.

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    1. Ummm ... to each their own :)

      Found more exploded remains this morning, so someone is attempting to eat them. Luckily they keep practically forever.

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  2. Hey, don't knock the failure - Cadbury's make a small fortune off their 'mishapes' chocolate.

    :)

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    1. So you think there may be a market for salted eggwhite cooked into a sweet little spiral? Might be a little niche :D

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  3. Thanks for the shout-out! I really like what I did with those posts. :)

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    1. As did I and we've neither of us done enough on this one for ages. Time for a test drive?

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  4. Hi...I'm hopping over from the A to Z challenge...lovely blog...good luck with the challenge!

    Donna L Martin
    www.donasdays.blogspot.com

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  5. 'Mikelmerck is a fantasy Yorkshire turned up to 11.'

    :)

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  6. Interesting blog, I really enjoyed this post!

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    1. Thank you :) Glad you enjoyed it. A-Z is taking me slightly off my admittedly not very coherent track, but gaming does get a pretty large look in at normal times.

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  7. A fantasy Yorkshire? Sounds right up my alley!

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    1. Great! Keep an eye open for future play testing ...

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  8. Hi Amanda .. sounds like you've got your hands full .. Eton mess sounds like a good choice for the meringues .. lots of cream, red berry fruits .. strawbugs, raspberries, blackberries .. even cherries .. could be tinned too .. and/or on shortbread .. a gungy delicious mess - I enjoy meringues - as you've probably gathered!

    Good luck with all the work .. cheers Hilary

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  9. Hilary - yet again your comments are not showing up and I have no idea why. I'm getting notifications, but none of the comments on here. There be gremlins at work for sure.

    Eton mess is certainly a possibility. Which may be somewhat cryptic for those who don't know what I'm responding to.

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  10. Very cool... I'm curious to learn more about Mikelmerck as it emerges, and I'll be digging through the past Mikelposts, too. :-)

    Last fall, I posted about a similarly "turned up to 11" post-Arthurian Dark Ages Britain setting in a series of posts that started with this one. (For the whole list of RPG posts during that month's blog challenge, see here and scroll down to the "Avalon Lost" mini-series.)

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    1. Oooh. Excellent stuff and very interesting indeed. I'll take a good long look at all of this.

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