In my costing study of 5-bean stew, I used Diana brand black beans, based on 3 cups per (12oz?) unit bag. Most bean nutrition reporting is based on 1/4-cup servings. But Diana black bean nutrition is strangely difficult to google, so I'm falling back to Iberia, which is much more recent and which I can corroborate online. According to a certain fascist small-business-killing superstore chain's website, each 12oz Iberia bag of black beans is 9 servings, at 9g protein and 70 kcal per serving, or 81g/630 ... (...more)

Instead of blowing my entertainment budget on craft beers this week, I thought I'd actually, gasp, go out and see a movie. Or two. I'll have 30 minutes between Man of Steel and World War Z to get a bite to eat. There's 2 economy options in the theater's mall area: McDonald's, and Boston Market (which is also a McD's franchise group brand lol). Needless to say, I'm not overjoyed with the choices but if I have to pick one I'll pick Boston Mkt. Which leads us to the question: what's good at Boston Mkt? And... (...more)

After Arena season 7 finished, I noticed an adjustment to Item Archives, where the max applicable number of many items had been increased. For example, previously the max number of applicable Helms of Dragon Power was 5; now it's 8. I thought I was done with dragons forever, but no. On the bright side, I had an abundance of two of the 4 ingredients to alchemy 3 more HoDP. end of first-gen, through second-gen: suck-ass loot for the effort So I made a list of archive items, in the same order as the monst... (...more)

I've had it in the back of my mind for some time that I'd like to do something interfaith-y. The idea I had was a web resource that lets religious orgs, mainly churches and "community centers", post and share community events. Let's stick with the term "org" with the understanding that it may include conventional churches, YMCAs, JCAs, Muslim community centers, civic youth programs and more. The basic idea is that people who belong to one org, but who have friends or family who belong to another org, can b... (...more)

Maybe I'm way behind the times in Castle Age here - I just figured out something rather game-changing about the Bronze Ingot Stack of Piercing (BISP) in the conquest duel shop. BISP grants +25 physical piercing, each 10 points of piercing is effectively +1% attack in PvP, so if your raw attack stat is, say, 1000, then forging a BISP on your weapon gives +25 attack. For comparison's sake, you would have to level an attack rune to L6 (at 5 att per rune level over 1) for the same +25 bonus; but the BISP bo... (...more)