Name That Sandwich

I am sure that I get the best ideas when I am on the tread mill or folding laundry.  My mind tends to wander and look for avenues to distract myself from what I am actually doing.  I was folding the endless supply of socks when some jingle on the radio made my brain take a left turn.My brain certainly picks odd things to get distracted over. Part of it could be that I was getting hungry, or that I have heard the same commercial for a Rueben on the radio over and over again and it made me wonder why it was called a Rueben.  

If you were to have a sandwich named after you, what would it be called and what would be on it?

With no rush to get back to matching white socks with a logo in one spot to other white socks that have the logo in a different spot, I texted a dozen friends to find out what would be on their sandwich.  The results amazed me.  I feel like I have enough good recipes to open my own cafe.  Can you guess who suggested what as a sandwich? 

Creators: Faye, Nic, Hannah, Barbie, Erica, Ken and Teresa

• The Outcast
• Ingredients: Chocolate M&M Cookies with dark chocolate ice cream filling rolled in black sprinkles
• The Irish Gal
• Ingredients: Slices of Corned Beef, Dubliner Irish Cheese on homemade white bread
• The Descendant
• Ingredients: Capocolla Ham, Genoa Salami, Aged Sharp Provolone, Roasted Red Peppers on a yeasty roll
• The Gaia
• Ingredients: Freshly mashed avocado with scallions and caramelized onions mixed in, sautéed portobello mushrooms, dijon mustard, roasted red peppers with Mediterranean spiced sea salt on Boston Bibb lettuce on a gluten free Texas toast that as a thin smear of basil pesto
• Don't Heat Up the Bacon
• Ingredients: Sliced turkey, bacon, tomatoes, spinach, red onions with chipotle mayo  on toast
• PB on PB
• Ingredients: Creamy Peanut Butter with Strawberry Jelly on a Potato Bun
• The Sea Pig
• Ingredients: Tuna Salad with sliced hardboiled eggs, thin sliced Black Forest Ham and thick slice of extra sharp cheddar cheese with a slice of tomato and hand pull of spinach and couple of spicy pickles on toasted sour dough bread 

Thank you every one that gave me a sandwich order. It sounded delicious and I apologize for not being able to use everyone’s response. I was somehow was able to finish the laundry despite the grumbling of my stomach and now I have a bunch of new sandwiches to try!

9 Board Games to Check Out

The day after Thanksgiving means lots of things to lots of people. For some people they are trying to recover from the turkey coma or trying to catch up on their NaNoWriMo word count, others get jazzed up about Black Friday Sales Shopping.  Black Friday for me means Game Day.  I am not a shopper. That is why they make the internet.  I am a board gamer. 

About a dozen years back or so it was established that the day after Thanksgiving was Game Day or BFGD.  Friends pop in throughout the day to roll some dice, count some cards or have mini war games with lovingly painted miniatures.  It is probably one of my favorite days of the year.   There are so many games to play and hardly ever enough time to do more than a dozen. 

I am fond of lists, and hinted in a previous post on a Games List. I am a person on my word.  Below are 9 games worth checking out. I like a wide variety of games, and tried to touch upon several game types.   

1.       Dungeon Run

• This is a tile based exploration game that ends in betrayal. You are exploring a dungeon with your trusty friends, and whoever finds the treasure first is corrupted. Your trusty team needs to kill the traitor before they can exit the dungeon and destroy the world.  
• Every time I say Dungeon Run, all I can think of is Finn and Jake.  This isn’t related to that but just a weird tangent and lots of fun to sing Finn’s dungeon crawl song. 

2.       Exploding Kittens

• This is a card game of chance and strategy. There are two versions of the game. A family friendly one and a definitely not family friendly one.  They are played the same way.  It is kind of like a game of war and go fish all rolled into one, but with kittens.  Nice quick game for those that don’t have a lot of time.  
• If you like the Oatmeal’s humor, I would highly recommend using the non-family friendly deck.  
  

3.       Dixit

• If you like strategy games, then this game might not be for you.  This game is a guessing game, where you have to deduct a person’s card based of their description in among everyone else’s cards that were put down based off that same description.  It is all about speculation.  The art in this game is beautiful and it is a lot of fun to play. 

4.       Smash Up

• This is a strategy card game that is a lot of fun and has several expansion packs to it. You are all trying to conquer different locations that are worth different points. You reach the set point value first through conquering, you win.  Simple, easy, and can quickly ruin friendships.  
• I don’t pay this game that often, because my husband says I have cheat moves.  I don’t. I am just friends with robots and aliens and they do my bidding. 

5.       Roll For It

• This is a dice and strategy game that I am actually good at.  Mostly because you are not expecting me to roll a D6 to try and heal you.  It isn’t going to happen. The dice hate me, which is clearly evident when I played Shadows of Brimstone.  Anyway, this game is about matching dice to cards that have values and when you get to a certain number you will.  Easy, quick fun that is good family fun. 

6.       Shadows of Brimstone

• If you are looking for an epic adventure game that can go on in several hour long sessions with a posse of friends, this game is for you.  There are lots of toggles and jimmies that go with the game and it is a miniature painters dream.   It is a lot of fun, and has strategy, dice, cards and group coordination involved.  
• Don’t leave me in charge of the dice. I won’t heal you, and will probably give you a cursed item or lose a weapon or change your son into a pig. 

7.       Ticket to Ride

• This game is a strategy game where you are a railroad baron trying to get your track down before else gets their track down.  It is an easy to pick up family friendly game that will have you gnashing your teeth as you try to complete your routes. 

8.       Pandemic

• This is a group survival game that I have yet to survive. I have been told it can be done, but have yet to see it. The came combines strategy with chance and is a lot of fun to play. 
• Ken- It’s your fault we get yellow fever every time and die.  I am not holding a grudge, just stating fact. Yellow Fever!!!

9.       Battle of the Electric Vikings

• If you like word games, you will love this game. The purpose of this game is to make heavy metal song titles based off of randomly drawn tiles. It is a little like scrabble, that you have to connect to tiles together, but no spelling is necessary, just your best growly throaty metal voice. 

Grave Robbers from Outer Space is not on the list, because my husband informed me that it is out of print, but they have a Version 3 that is available. I haven’t checked it out, so I don’t know if they changed anything.  Happy Black Friday Game Day!  

Remember the Mini Sausage Roll

I was going through my cookbooks and realized that I had accomplished two cookbooks that I had not blogged about.  I thought that I would take this lazy Sunday morning, where the snow is coming down in delicate manner and try to remember what these recipes, while sipping a hot cup of Earl Grey.

A couple of weeks ago, we had Kung Fu movie day at the house. From early in the morning till the blurry hours of the night, we and several friends over to watch a large succession of Kung Fu movies, ate the foods and drank all the drinks.  I think that having the friends over is a perfect reason to experiment with finger food.  Cracking open the Best Ever Appetizers, Starters & First Courses cookbook (another book from Hermes House)  was a good start to finding something good to eat.

The recipe that I found was a Mini Sausage Rolls, and it was ridiculously easy to make, or at least I from what I remember it was easy to make. It was sausage, onion, spices and pie crust all rolled together and baked.  (I had store bought pie crust, because I still can't make a descent pie crust.)

The Mini Sausage Rolls all got consumed, which I think is a good sign that they were passable. I have been told that they turned out well, and that the ones that I rolled thin, were better than the thick rolls, but over all I don't remember.  I just know that Jackie Chan punched a lot of things that day, and everyone fell asleep in Battlefield Baseball and that I still love Kung Fu Hustle will all my heart. I might have to make this recipe again, just so that I can remember more about it and not just the movies that I watched that day.

The other cookbook that I had used was a Thai cookbook, that also is apart of the Hermes House publishing line. I am sure that my addictions to these cookbooks had a lot to do with the fact that I worked in a book store that constantly had me fixing the display and that everything looks so good and simple to make.  Pork Belly and Five Spices was a testament to something that was rather easy to make and tasted awesome.

It has been several weeks since I made this, but from what I do remember is that I had to buy fish sauce for this recipe, and that is the one thing that has never been in my pantry until this moment, and it was not the easiest thing to find at my local grocery store.  I ended up finding it in the International Section of the grocery store. I think that next time I make this recipe, I am going to go to an specialty Asian grocer to pick up the ingredients.

The one thing that I can say about this recipe is that the finished product did look like the picture. Very few things that I make ever actually look like the picture. The fact that this one did, just proves how easy it is to make this recipe. I am looking forward to trying other recipes in this book, and if you ever see a copy in the bargain bin, I would pick it up.

Mine

How it is supposed to look