Cooking Mama Summer ๐ฉ๐ปโ๐ณ *เฉโฉโง
Let's make a panna cotta together <3
Happy Friday โ.ห แกฃ๐ญฉ .๐ฅห
Hello my 11 12 subbies! If you are receiving this email, that means you are reading the eleventh Cute, Kind Of Weekly Newsletter! Today, I am talking about one of my favorite games growing up โ Cooking Mama! I was inspired to write this post after I tried an amazing soup recipe last week (I cannot find it now ๐). I also give a mini-update on the BYOMA Phyto-Mucin Glow Serum I have been using.
I hope you enjoy - Laila
Before reading the newsletter, PLEASE have this playlist playing in the background to get the full Cooking Mama experience.
Nothing <3
Random, but as you guys know, I used to love Into The Gloss. It sadly has disabled the comment section, which was honestly the best part, but I went on the site the other day and saw a postcard. It was about how celebrity hairstylist Jacob Schwartz got Bella Hadidโs blonde hair for Cannes. She attended opening night on behalf of Chopard. I have no interest going blonde but if I see Bella Hadid - Princess of Nazareth - in a headline, I click.
While Jacob Schwartz did Bellaโs color and styling. Her makeup was done by the gorgeous, talented, and fellow Princess of Nazareth Nadia Tayeh. Nadia has been doing Bellaโs makeup since the launch of Orebella back in 2024. Check out some of her looks below:
(โ) after a product name denotes it is an affiliate link.
In my previous newsletter, I talked about how I have been using the BYOMA Phyto-Mucin Glowโ recently, and while I have not used it long enough for a proper review, but by golly, it is pretty good.
It is a snail mucin-based serum, like the reputable COSRX Snail Mucin Power Essence. So if you have tried the COSRX Snail Mucin Essence and didnโt like it for whatever reason, I would try the BYOMA serum. I personally do not like the COSRX Essence. I have tried it a few times and it honestly did not help my skin. However, I prefer their Advanced Snail Mucin Power Sheet Mask instead.
I use the BYOMA serum every morning and it does make my skin look fresh and radiant, especially when followed by a cosmetic-finish sunscreen.
If you do not know who Cooking Mama is, she raised an entire generation of chefs who now have the confidence to boil water for noodles. That was a joke because I know some members of this said-generation will eat raw chicken because they donโt know how to cook it properly.
Anyways, Cooking Mama franchise started in 2006 when it was released its Nintendo DS game. It is a cooking simulation game where your job is to make dishes by completing fun minigames. For example, if I was making a pasta dish in the game, my minigame tasks would consist of stuff like boiling the pasta, making the sauce, and more. At the end of the minigame, your dish would be rated by the Mama based on how well you performed each task. If you overboil the water or burn the pasta sauce, you would fail and get a bronze medal. If you boil and cook both the water and sauce well, you will get a silver medal. If you do everything perfectly, you would get a gold medal. The goal was to get gold medals for each recipe in the game.
The first Cooking Mama game was developed Office Create, which later changed its name to Cooking Mama Limited due to the unforeseen success of the franchise.
The game was published by Taito Japan from 2006-2009, however from 2011 onward, Cooking Mama games were published by esteemed video game company Square Enix. Square Enix actually bought Taito in the mid-2000s and eventually merged it into SQEX Corporation (Square Enix) and turned it into a subsidy by 2006.
Just some fun video game business stuff for my beauty business fanatics.
I first played this game when my friend Reem showed it to me. We used to play it for hours. No joke. She also had Cooking Mama Cook Off for Wii, so we played together too, but playing Cooking Mama on a light pink Nintendo DS Lite is unmatched.
Later on, I got Cooking Mama 2: Dinner with Friends, which was the same as the original but with more minigames, recipes, and the option to customize the Mamaโs look by giving her different color head scarves, earrings, and more!
What made Cooking Mama so successful? It was fun and simple. While each recipeโs minigames were slightly different, it was really fun trying to make recipes from all over the world. Like, I did not know what a panna cotta was until I played this game. I still kind of don't know but still.
It is one of those games you play in spurts. It is addictive trying to complete the entire recipe book but gets boring pretty fast when replaying each recipe for gold stars.
If you are wondering about Mamaโs family - there is a Papa, and their two kids Ringo and Ichigo. The names mean apple and strawberry in Japanese, respectively. She also has a dog named Max. There is also Grandma and Grandpa, who are Mamaโs parents. Honestly, very lovely family.
I donโt what else to say regarding Cooking Mama. I just wanted to share a little piece of my childhood :)
I finished Modern Family the other day and I feels bittersweet. I think the show ended the right way with the characters moving on and starting new chapters. It was very sweet and a fun 200 episodes.
I restarted playing Persona5 after pausing it to focus on more important things like Pokemon: Letโs Go Pikachu. I forgot how to play it but I am about to finish the Madarame arc. I am about 25 hours in and it is 100 hours, but it is an interesting game. The cutscenes are long af and when you gotta go, you are literally begging for it to end so you can save a go to sleep.
Honestly, this newsletter made me hungry. I am craving Chinese chili garlic noodles nowโฆ
Love,
Laila
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