Friday dinner and games
Feb. 18th, 2008 10:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackI had a really good weekend. On Friday, I was productive enough at work to be able to leave a little early and do shopping for Meggie, Mobbsy, Sonic and Martin coming round for dinner and games.
Food
I made a pasta and veg bake, heavier on the vegetables than normal, and with some "beef" quorn, coated in a little flavour and friend. With sides garlic bread, salad and sweetcorn, which felt very nice. As always, I made a large bake and saved the rest for the weekend, but I think I should start learning to cover half of the tin when I bring it out so no-one expects to eat 1/6 of it :)
As always, my cooking is a little uninspired, compared to people who are practised. But the presentation is certainly quite nice, with tablecloths, dishes for every dish, jugs of squash, trays to bring out glasses or plates from the kitchen. Ideally I'd practise more on my own and then invite people round, but until then, if I'm inviting people round, cooking is probably more interesting than take-away, so I invite without apology.
I certainly don't expect people to come round for my cooking :) But on the other hand, it's sufficiently competent than maybe it's as nice as we'd eat elsewhere -- I certainly like it. But I can't decide if my habitual apology for not having something more exciting is a nervous reflex (I think not, I do do that sometimes, but am fairly clear that I don't feel bad about anything here) or just acknowledging that it's acceptable, (but I won't pretend it's superb).
Games
We had to nurse the conversation along politely a bit, but it was very pleasant, they are very nice people. We played Mobbsy's birthday Caylusthe Unforgettable.
This is a resource-collecting-building-german-like game. The rules are a little intimidating, but it's pretty well designed, once we started, the rules were entirely intuitive. It was pretty late, we didn't have time for a whole game, though I don't know how quick it might be if everyone knows what they're doing from the start and has got used to the various different strategies of a turn. But it seemed a pretty good game.
One suggestion for how to speed up getting into a game is to give everyone arbitrary unrelated goals, instead of playing for points -- try to build this building, try to accumulate money. This game (or similar) are sufficiently open-ended that those are probably not a completely bust strategy, but means you can play the first turn without seizing if you can't play it with a perfect strategy. *Martin* has the right idea here, his personal aim is "evil" :)
On the other hand, my head is too full of games, I don't have enough board game generalising skill to play without thought (which is lamentably sometimes not instant), and feel it'd be more fun when you're familiar with it. So it's a good post-dinner game, but I may never get round to playing it (or other board games) for years, if silly games and emergent games take precedence in my head.
Food
I made a pasta and veg bake, heavier on the vegetables than normal, and with some "beef" quorn, coated in a little flavour and frie
As always, my cooking is a little uninspired, compared to people who are practised. But the presentation is certainly quite nice, with tablecloths, dishes for every dish, jugs of squash, trays to bring out glasses or plates from the kitchen. Ideally I'd practise more on my own and then invite people round, but until then, if I'm inviting people round, cooking is probably more interesting than take-away, so I invite without apology.
I certainly don't expect people to come round for my cooking :) But on the other hand, it's sufficiently competent than maybe it's as nice as we'd eat elsewhere -- I certainly like it. But I can't decide if my habitual apology for not having something more exciting is a nervous reflex (I think not, I do do that sometimes, but am fairly clear that I don't feel bad about anything here) or just acknowledging that it's acceptable, (but I won't pretend it's superb).
Games
We had to nurse the conversation along politely a bit, but it was very pleasant, they are very nice people. We played Mobbsy's birthday Caylus
This is a resource-collecting-building-german-like game. The rules are a little intimidating, but it's pretty well designed, once we started, the rules were entirely intuitive. It was pretty late, we didn't have time for a whole game, though I don't know how quick it might be if everyone knows what they're doing from the start and has got used to the various different strategies of a turn. But it seemed a pretty good game.
One suggestion for how to speed up getting into a game is to give everyone arbitrary unrelated goals, instead of playing for points -- try to build this building, try to accumulate money. This game (or similar) are sufficiently open-ended that those are probably not a completely bust strategy, but means you can play the first turn without seizing if you can't play it with a perfect strategy. *Martin* has the right idea here, his personal aim is "evil" :)
On the other hand, my head is too full of games, I don't have enough board game generalising skill to play without thought (which is lamentably sometimes not instant), and feel it'd be more fun when you're familiar with it. So it's a good post-dinner game, but I may never get round to playing it (or other board games) for years, if silly games and emergent games take precedence in my head.
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Date: 2008-02-18 01:11 pm (UTC)Which friend? ^^;; :)
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Date: 2008-02-18 01:38 pm (UTC)