Hi everyone!

My name is Diana, a.k.a Nahdala in several online/virtual worlds. Welcome to my kitchen! I’m one nut short of a fruitcake about two of my favourite things to do – cooking and gaming, so in this kitchen of mine I don’t just cook up a storm every once in a while, I actually get to combine those two – and I’m not talking about having my computer set up in my kitchen.

How could these two possibly be related, you might wonder… I’ll come to that in a bit.

Every time I have been cooking for friends, family or larger gatherings I had people complimenting me and asking me for the recipes. I’ve made a name for myself with my chocolates, sweets, sauces, chutneys, spice mixes and, in general, fancy combinations of aromas. After a while I lost that sinking feeling about presenting my stuff to people I didn’t know along with the suspicion that the people close to me were telling me my food was great just because they didn’t want to insult me. So the first thing that came to mind was starting a blog to share the recipes for the crowd-pleasers and my favorites.

Up until I started preparing for this blog, I had all my recipes either in my head or handwritten packed into little folders. When I realized I’d better turn my collection into a digital version to make working with it easier, I had hour after mindnumbing hour of transcribing recipe after recipe to sit through. Only on the back of going through all of my recipes, I noticed that a large percentage of my personal favourites, from everyday to special occasion dishes, combine fruit, nuts or berries with savoury components. Sure, I always knew that contrasts in flavor and texture were something I liked and used a lot, but until that moment I wasn’t really aware of the extent of this. Cpt. Obvious had just popped me a good one, judging by the look my better half gave me when I asked him about it. So here’s a heads-up: a lot of the recipes I’ll be sharing with you in the Wednesday Special category will head in that direction.

Anything involving creativity needs a healthy jolt in the inspiration department from time to time and sometimes even the usual sources of inspiration shoot blanks at you. This is where the gaming comes in for me.

One of my sources of inspiration are the crafting recipes of the Chef’s profession in the wonderful world of Guild Wars 2, Tyria. The ingame recipes consist of 2 to 4 ingredients and basically leave the rest up to interpretation, which is absolutely perfect to get my mind working. These „recipes“ usually push me along the lines of the classics and all-time-favorites, brushing dust off of long forgotten recipes or inspiring me to try out something new.

I know the whole concept of bringing ingame recipes to a real life dinner table isn’t new, so I’m not trying to re-invent the wheel here. The Guild Wars 2 inspired recipes I’ll be sharing with you guys in the Weekends in Tyria category are simply my personal take on the Tyrian recipes. Sometimes my recipes are pretty straight forward, along the lines of the ingame version, sometimes the ingredients or names took me down a different road.

I decided to combine my usual-unusual recipes with the dishes GW2 inspired me to cook up, traveling between the worlds from post to post. I hope you enjoy the ride as much as I do!

♥