CPKreepy

What happens when you get a bunch of geeks together for Halloween? 
It gets CPKreepy

Halloween 2016 was a great success. Below are some pictures of our Annual Halloween Extravaganza as well as some instructions as to how you can make your own fun and scary Halloween party!

Costumes are a must! 

Jon Snow and the Mother of Dragons. Oh, and my dragon :) 

Photo Credit to Dylan Jeffery and Hollicakes

Out for a stroll

Photo Credit to Dylan Jeffery and Hollicakes

Doctor Pepper 

American McCree and Witch Mercy

A penguin and her keeper

Pumpkins are also mandatory. We included a pumpkin carving contest to spice things up. 

It's Mike! 

Reaper here...

Photo Credit for all pumpkins to Dylan Jeffery and Hollicakes

Decorations must be hung with care to create a really good scare! 

Photo Credit to Dylan Jeffery and Hollicakes

Photo Credit to Dylan Jeffery and Hollicakes

In the cave, the creepy cave, the dragon sleeps tonight! 

Photo Credit and cupcake credit to Panman and Hollicakes

Shrimp brains! Yum! 

Hey girl, heeyy! 

Overall, I think it would be safe to say everyone had a wonderful time. Here is to making next year just as awesome. 

Happy Halloween 2016

Happy Halloween! 

From Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen and a Dragon

Jambalaya Recipe

Normally, my recipes get posted on Fridays (Food Friday and all...), but this Friday we will be busy with Halloween-related things, so... Happy Food Friday on a Tuesday. Tasty Tuesday? Sure.

Years and years (and years) ago, I found a recipe for jambalaya. With a few exceptions, I realized I liked everything in the recipe and thought I should give it a try. I found about 3-4 more recipes on jambalaya, took those, tore them apart, and put them back together in what is now my own unique recipe that I am actually not 100% sure could actually be considered jambalaya, but you know what, people like it, and I enjoy making it, so.... there. If it is not actually jambalaya, someone come up with a name for it. I'm flexible.

The recipe, like many others of mine, has seen so many changes it could make your head spin, but every time I make a change, it seems to get better, so obviously I am doing something right. With the exception of writing it down for a friend of mine (to the best of my memory), I have never actually recorded or written down my recipe for this. Normally, I wing it and try to remember as I go.

BreakyCPK turned 30 this past weekend!! What better to way to celebrate than to make him my jambalaya and actually write it down so people can also make and enjoy it!






















Ingredients:
Shrimp-24 count
1 package of ground hot sausage
Hot sauce- to taste
2 teaspoons "Wing" sauce- a few tablespoons
3 Bell peppers
- Red
- Yellow
- Green
2-3 cloves of garlic-minced
hot pepper (2-3of your choosing based on how hot you like it ;)
Pinch of Brown sugar
2 cups of Chicken Stock
1 table spoon- olive oil
2-3 Cups of V8 juice
1 can of tomato paste
Rice (depending on how many people)

Tools:
Big pot
Big pan
Spatula
Strainer (I have something like this, and let me tell you, worth every penny)


*Disclaimer: as with all my recipes. the amount and directions are estimations, and can and should be changed depending on who you are making this for and how many people. I encourage everyone to play and change this recipe to make it truly your own..

Directions:

• Dice up bell peppers and hot peppers
• Add a little olive oil in the pan
• Add minced garlic to olive oil and cook for just about a minute
• Add the bell peppers and hot peppers to the garlic and olive oil and cook until peppers are soft-ish
• Once peppers are cooked, add ground sausage

• Add hot sauce
• Once ground sausage is cooked and mixed with the bell peppers, drain the grease and set mixture aside
• Add water in a big-ish pot and bring to a boil
• At the same time, take the pan the pepper and sausage mixture was cooked in and coat the pan with butter
• Cook the shrimp until pink
• Add tomato paste
• Cook tomato paste, continuously stirring, until the paste is more brown than red
• Add about a pinch or less of brown sugar to the paste
• Once the mixture is more brown then red, add the sausage/pepper mixture to and stir in the wing sauce and cook until all is warm. Then turn off the heat
• Once the water is boiling, add the appropriate amount of rice for the number of people you are having
• After about 5 minutes, add chicken broth/stock and v8 juice
• Remember, the rice will soak up both the water and the chicken stock
• Add the complete mixture in to the big pot
• Stir occasionally, as the bigger the pot you have, the more likely the rice will fall to the bottom and burn (NOTE: THIS IS FROM EXPERIENCE!) 

• Add more hot or wing sauce if necessary
• You are going to be cooking/stirring this for quite a while. You will know it is done when there is very little liquid left and the dish is pretty thick (thick enough to use a chip to eat it)
• Turn off heat, but keep stirring (you do not want this dish to burn!)
• Serve in a bowl, add a little more hot sauce if you are adventurous

Happy Birthday Breaky!

Guess who turns a whopping 30 years old tomorrow!?


This guy:

He is doing a birthday stream today on twitch.tv/breakycpk, and I encourage you to check it out, and wish him a very happy birthday!! We have a jam-packed weekend planned full of fun stuff with friends and family, but Breaky wanted to make sure he did a stream to celebrate too.























Oh, and I'll be joining the stream around 5 ish and we'll be playing some Overwatch. I wouldn't miss it for the world!

Tis the Season....to be spooky

I cannot tell you how excited I am about this Halloween.

Mind you, if you knew how excited I get EVERY Halloween, you would know without me telling you.

Pretty much ever since my sophomore year of college, I have hosted, not just attended, but hosted a Halloween party. Mind you, one year I think two people showed up, so we drank and watched Nightmare Before Christmas, but you know what, it counts.





So, needless to say, outside of Christmas (which is special for very different reasons), Halloween is very important to me. Luckily, Breaky matches my enthusiasm, so every year, we host a bangin' Halloween party. I will have a whole other blog post about it once the decorations and preparations are up and ready. That will be more of the pinterest-y side of my blog. Now, it is strictly gaming related.

For the past few years, streamers such as Breaky have streamed horror games in the month of October, to get ready for Halloween. One of my favorite memories was the one time I was in bed, and he was streaming a horror game and all I hear is this loud "FUCK....holy......ooOOooooo" *BANG*THUNK* then silence....... and I am holding my breath, making sure I didn't actually have to get out of bed to check to see if he was alive or not.... and I hear a whisper "No....nope..... I think I am done with this game tonight guys.


Watch live video from on www.twitch.tv Here is video evidence.

Now, on his channel: twitch.tv/breakycpk, he is doing "Menacing Mondays" so if you want to see more freakouts like this, follow AND subscribe to his channel!



Also, on the Halloween gaming front, Overwatch JUST announced their Halloween loot boxes and a co-op brawl. Check out the video here:






Super excited to see all the Halloween "spirit"! Here is a preview of what we will be doing costume-wise for this Halloween. More to come!

GPS Appreciation Week!

I looked it up in Google. I do not think there is an actual "GPS Appreciation Week" so I am starting one. Right here right now.

This comic by the lovely and talented Adrienne Hedger, prompted some memories about pre-GPS driving.

You see kids, before the likes of phone GPS or even Tom Tom and Garmins, we old folks had to use printed out maps from Google Maps or rely on our memories and "good" senses of direction. Needless to say, I sucked at both, and often got hopelessly lost. Including what should have been a two hour drive to my school, which turned into 4, because I got lost IN Kalamazoo (stupid one-way streets)




I do have to tell one more story on myself. So, equally as "directionally challenged" as I am, my cousin joined me in a car ride up to our cabin from the west side of the state, which I was not used to. So, Google Maps (the printed kind) was our friend. Until it told us to take this bass-ackward way down dirt roads with one house maybe once a mile. In the dark. With no cell service. Getting low on gas. Again, all before the wonderful world of phones with internet or GPS.

Despite our best efforts to not panic, stories of axe murderers and other horrible things crawled into our brains.

Here is how the conversation went(ish) from what I can remember. It was a "few" years ago after all:

Me: "If we run out of gas, at least there seems to be a house once every mile or so"

Cousin: "What if someone attacks us. They could be murderers. Like Texas Chainsaw Massacre"

Me: "We can hit them with a shovel"

Cousin: "You have a shovel? Where is the shovel?"

Me: "........I'll just pull one out of my ass"


At the time, all we could manage was a nervous chuckle. Once we found humanity in the form of a gas station and subway shop, we managed to laugh a little more. Once we were with our family, who was already up at the cabin, raucous laughter ensued. Now, often the "ass shovel" makes a reappearance in the form of an inside joke.