Smoked Ham, stuffing, sweet potatoes, and cranberry sauce are all Fall items to me. And I can’t really name Spring, Summer, or Winter items either.
Quintessential Fall Dinner
Author Archives: Mark
Game Day 12/02/2009
Before we could play games tonight, we had to displace the cat. But not before we took pictures of it…
This is the new hot game. It was discovered late during BGG (on the last day of the con). It is definitely my favorite new Essen game. Unfortunately, it is rather expensive because they had to air-ship it from Essen to BGG.con. This tacks on an extra $12 per game. And I didn’t know about it then so I would have to pay an extra shipping charge to buy it now. So I will wait until the reprint…
I was able to win this game by creating a large network. Unfortunately, I did not have enough action points to end it immediately. So I set up an obvious game ending move and finished my turn. Jeff, ended the game before it got back around to me (which cost me like 12 points). But it didn’t matter since no one was able to catch up to me.
I did notice that Jeff was trying to connect across the board. But I was able to stop him by taking a bottle-neck point. He should have built there first rather than from the other side…
We ended the night with a light game of Roll Through The Ages…
Disc Golf 11/28/2009
We went to the Rivery for some disc golf today and noticed some great improvements at the course. Since the course was altered a couple of years ago and they didn’t change the baskets around, the baskets have been misnumbered. They repainted the numbers recently.
They also fixed up some tee boxes.
Jon even did his part and carried out a discarded balloon.
Unfortunately, there has been some vandalism. Someone put shit on one of the baskets. Sigh.
Awesome Crokinole boards
At BGG.con this year, there were some AWESOME, hand-painted crokinole boards! I normally hate finger-flicking dexterity games, but I would love to own the Dragon’s Lair or Magicola board.
Disc Golf 11/14/2009
I went to Wells Branch for some very easy disc golf today. I wanted to scope out a new disc golf course at Stoney Creek Park. But apparently they haven’t started building it yet. Wells Branch was the fallback plan. This course is so short, it is easy to get birdies. And I got 6 of them…
There were a couple of changes to the course. A new bridge to nowhere was built. And they removed most of the fence that occasionally trapped our discs when we first started playing disc golf.
I went to Red Robin’s for lunch and ate the Burning Love Burger (fried jalapeno slices, spicy seasoning, pepper jack cheese, and jalapeno cornmeal kaiser roll) and the Gingerbread Monster Shake. Both were pretty flavorful!
Tree removal / Ventanas
I went to Ventanas for lunch today. But first I paused for a bit to watch the removal of a bunch of Italian Cypress trees. Around half of them died this year. So the solution it seems is to remove all of them. One of the things that I hate about our site’s policy is that they never replant trees. So sad. And so environmentally unfriendly…
I had the French Onion soup, an eggplant dish, and an apple tart. All of them were very tasty!
Game Day 11/11/2009
I definitely looked forward to trying out Wallace’s new game. However, we got a really late start and only played out one of the three eras. Sigh.
Cheap and varied vegetarian lunches
Lately, I have been using Indian side dishes, packed in foil pouches, and stored in the pantry to compliment mixed frozen vegetables. Each of those boxes cost 2 dollars for 2 servings. And the Indian grocery store/restaurant that I go to, Teji’s, has a selection of more than twenty of them.
At H.E.B., I buy bags of four frozen vegetables for around a dollar a piece: green peas, sweet corn, crinkle cut carrots, and broccoli & cauliflower. I can get 7 or 8 servings from them.
$12.50 for 8 meals is pretty darn cheap. There are 143 calories from the vegetables and an average of 145 calories from the side dish (a low of 80 to a high of 208).
Bacon, guacamole, and tomato sandwich
Sigh. I forgot the lettuce at the store. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me from using the bacon in a sandwich.
I didn’t spend much time futzing around with the picture. But, looking at it afterwards, I know that I could have done better. The top of the bacon could have used a low angle, oblique flash to bring out the 3D texture.
Two swings, two misses. But at least the sandwich still tasted good…
Wurstfest
It’s time for the yearly German celebration around October. And, because there was a lot of German immigrants in Central Texas, there are some good places to go to. Unfortunately, I went alone this year. But I was still in a mood to go. Even after having gone recently to the Oktoberfest in Lantana.
I also wanted to stop by the New Braunfels Smokehouse. My eyes were certainly bigger than my stomach. I bought five pounds of peppered bacon, two and a half pounds of smoked boneless ham, and a half a pound of smoked cheddar cheese. When I got home, I immediately cut the bacon into three sections, wrapped two of them and put them into the freezer.