Recipe Weekend: Curried Chickpea Soup

I mentioned last weekend that I have some friends who are trying to lost weight, sometimes in significant amounts. One of them reported this morning being down 8.5 pounds, assuming his gym scale doesn't need recalibrating. Go Dustin!

In the meantime, this week's recipe to help them out is one that I only made for the first time just after Christmas. I'd intended to have more people than showed up over for a game-centered open house. (Several were traveling, which I knew; a few had things occur at the last minute.) As part of that, I made Red Bean, Rice, and Sausage soup for the omnivores, and put this soup together in my crock pot for the vegetarians. I tried it myself, and ate the rest as lunch for pretty much the entirety of the week remaining. It's pleasantly Indian flavored without being overwhelming in heat.

Curried Chickpea Soup

Original Source: Slow Cooker Revolution from America's Test Kitchen

Ingredients:

• 2 onions, minced
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 4 teaspoons curry powder
• 1 tablespoon minced or grated fresh ginger
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 6 cups low-sodium chicken broth
• 2 (15-oz) cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 2 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 zucchini, quartered lengthwise and sliced 1/4-inch thick
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1/4 cup minced fresh cilantro
• salt and pepper

Combine first 6 ingredients (through garlic) in a large, microwave-safe bowl. Microwave for about 5 minutes or until onion is softened, stirring a couple of times. Transfer to slow cooker.

Add broth, chickpeas, and carrots to the slow cooker. Stir to combine. Cover and cook until carrots are softened and the soup is "flavorful", roughly 4 to 6 hours on the low-heat setting.

Stir in peas and zucchini, then cover and cook for 20 minutes on high or until zucchini is tender. Finish with cilantro, salt, and pepper and serve.

Serves 6 to 8.

Recipe Weekend: Red Beans, Rice, & Sausage Soup

I have a number of friends who are actively working on trying to lose weight - in some cases, near triple-digit quantities. I'm still the same skinny guy I was when I graduated from high school, but I've promised to lend them some support by posting a health-conscious recipe on a weekly basis. Whether they cook it or not is up to them, but it'll be there.

I'm starting with one that's a go-to in my household if I'm thinking about having company over for dinner. My parents have taken the recipe from me, and make it regularly as well.

Red Beans, Rice, and Sausage Soup

Serves 6-8

Ingredients:

• 2 tsp olive oil
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 2 large garlic cloves, minced
• 1 large celery stalk, diced
• 1 large carrot, diced
• 1 red bell pepper, diced (substitute green bell pepper if preferred)
• 4 c. chicken broth
• 1 1/2 c. water
• 1 15-oz can tomato sauce
• 2 16-oz cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/4 tsp (generous) thyme leaves
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/3 c. long-grain white rice
• 6 oz turkey sausage, cut into 1/4-in slices.

Heat oil in a Dutch oven or stock pot over medium to medium-high heat. Saute onion, garlic, celery, carrot, and bell pepper until onion begins to brown - usually 5-8 minutes. Add all remaining ingredients. Bring soup to a boil over high heat. Lower heat, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until rice is tender, flavors are well blended, and soup has thickened slightly - roughly 30 minutes.

If 8 servings, 240 calories per serving.

A primer on Dominion strategy

As written about earlier today on ChambanaMoms, I wrote an article about Dominion. Of all the games I've written about to date, Dominion has the most depth to it. Since my word count there doesn't give me the ability to talk strategy about any of the games I profile, Dominion deserves a few words about some elementary strategy.

I won't pretend to be an expert player, and I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of games I've played using expansion sets. So, I'm going to focus these comments on the cards from the base set.

Point number 1: The fewer cards in your deck, the more likely you are to draw any individual card. In particular, this means that Silver and Gold cards (which have values of 2 and 3 coins, respectively) are worth more than the 1-coin Copper cards in two respects. Not only do they have a higher monetary value, but if you can replace your starting Coppers with Silvers and/or Golds, you'll increase your buying power at a faster rate. Similarly, since there's nothing you can do with the point cards (Estate/Duchy/Province), when you're ready to buy point cards, buy the highest-value one that you can. The Chapel card also lets you permanently remove cards from your deck, increasing the likelihood you'll draw cards you want.

Point 2: Your one action is a valuable thing. Cards that give you an additional action during your turn will let you play an extra card in addition to whatever other benefit they provide. There are two cards that will give you 2 additional actions for being played, and they're especially useful for that reason alone. However, they need to be supported through having cards that will let you draw more cards from your deck.

Point 3: Sometimes the best offense is a strong, fast offense. One possible method of using this strategy is to buy Attack cards early and often, especially the Militia (which forces your opponents to discard cards) or the Witch (which makes them each get a penalty point card). If you take this route, remember that the Witch's curses can be one of the piles that empties to trigger the end of the game.

The last point to consider is that on your first two turns, you'll have one of two arrangements of hands. Not counting the point cards, you'll have a money split of either 3/4 or 5/2 in one order or another. Start out by looking at the Kingdom cards in the game and decide what you're going to do with those first two buys.

All that said, there are a few common basic types of decks that tend to crop up. None of them are expert-level decks, but they can serve to help frame an approach to a first game or two.

- "Big Money": Buy a Province if you can. Buy a Gold if you can't buy a Province. Buy a Silver if you can't buy a Gold.

- Village/Smithy: The Village is one of the cards that gives you more than one extra action, and the Smithy draws more cards than almost any other draw card in the basic set. This approach pretty much consists of only buying Village and Smithy cards as action cards, and with the goal of running through your entire deck every turn so that you can buy first some Golds and later a Province per turn.

- The attack deck works pretty much exactly as described above. Buy attack cards early, buy attack cards often, and play them at every opportunity.

As said in the main review, if you're somebody local and haven't played Dominion before, I encourage you to check it out from the library or try the store copy at Armored Gopher. Should you get bitten by "the bug," the BoardgameGeek page for Dominion contains a wealth of strategy articles, most of which are written by people with far more games under their belt than I have, and some of which include discussing cards from the expansions.

The Grasshopper's gaming education

Over the weekend, the topic(s) of games with kids, ages of kids, and what the Grasshopper (age 7) plays and likes all came up several different times. I've been meaning to write something like this for a while in connection with the writing I do for ChambanaMoms, but that would have to stand along here as being a little less directly relevant to what I do for them.

The first thing I really started playing with him was when he was a few months shy of 4 years old. It's a card game called Coloretto, where the goal is to collect cards with chameleons in different colors (but not too many different colors). Normally, you can either draw a card and add it to a row that has fewer than 3 cards, OR take a row. We just made the modification that the rows had to get filled completely before taking rows. I then made him grab the container of crayons and help count out his points.

His sister was born when he was about 4.5. The summer after that, he had a knack for asking for attention just as she was getting fed/changed/put down for a nap but not yet asleep. This is when the Grasshopper moniker was acquired (patience, Grasshopper). That summer, we worked on a slightly modified version of Carcassonne. He was able to do the tile-drawing and matching part of the game; we modified scoring to be that completing a road, city, or cloister scored one point per tile in the feature. This last fall, I've finally taught him something closer to the real rules (still leaving out farmers); he beats me about half the time in a two-player game but doesn't far as well in multiplayer games.

I've played Pente with him several times, although that doesn't hold his attention as well. One of the next things we started on were the two Blokus games I own (Trigon and 3D). At first I just let; him play with the games, he was over 5 before we started trying to play by the rules. Similar to those, he's played Ingenious a few times, but I think doing well at it is still a bit over his head.

A favorite of his is Battleball. I acquired both this and Forbidden Island the summer before he turned 6, if memory correctly serves. My only complaints about Battleball at the moment are that it's a strictly 2-player game that I can't figure out how to hack to accommodate more people, and his 3-year-old sister would be all over the pieces in such a way as to mess up the game. Despite Forbidden Island claiming to be ages 10+, he does a really good job of running his own turn, with only occasional suggestions about re-sequencing actions, especially if he has the Diver (one of his favorite roles).

His birthday present last October was Dungeon!, and we're finally to where it'll play pretty quickly if the Munchkin doesn't mess things up. He's also played Attika (and does surprisingly well if it's 2-player), Roll Through the Ages, and Race to Adventure! more than once each. There have to be other things he's played more than once, but I can't recall them all right now. He'll play almost anything at least once - those include Dominion, King of Tokyo, Rattus, Guillotine, RoboRally, Castle Panic, and Monopoly (I own the original Star Wars edition) that I can quickly remember. Sorry and Battleship factor in there too, although I can't get them into the sequence.

I'm publishing this now without links because I anticipate getting called back to a recovery room to see my wife pretty soon, but I'll gradually add in the links over the next couple days.

Preparing the menu for A Holiday Feast of Gaming

Although it's not quite May, I have November on the brain because I write a monthly column on playing games with kids for a local parenting blog. as I write, I've found my sanity is best served, and deadlines best met, by working several months ahead. In the first drafts of the column for November, I was trying to write a gift guide, but quickly realized there were two problems:

• I haven't played nearly enough games published in the last 5 years.
• If I tried to write it, I was going to blow past my word count before even making it past games for 7-8 year old kids.

Retooling the idea for my personal blog, where I'm more comfortable writing about things I haven't played personally, didn't help much. But the idea spent most of a day taking over my brain, to the point of (nearly) interfering with work. And thus was born the notion of trying to run it as a blog carnival. The theme, and the categories for organizing it, came almost by themselves, although there are a few categories and some miscellaneous areas where I could use some extra help.

So, the basics...

A Holiday Feast of Gaming is a blog carnival whose goal is to create a "menu" of suggestions for those unfamiliar with hobby games and looking to purchase a gift for a loved one, library, or school. The feast theme and categories are inspired by the timing, since this will run from November 1 through November 29 (Black Friday).

The current proposed "menu" categories, and descriptions with examples are:

• Caterers (reviews of Friendly Local Game Stores -- a good FLGS owner is like a game sommelier)
• The Kids' Table (games for those ages 5 and under, like Chicken Cha Cha Cha or Loopin' Louie)
• Appetizers (light games that play in under 30 minutes and cost ~$20 or less). Examples include No Thanks!, Forbidden Island, or any of the Zombie Dice variants
• Side Dishes (light-to-medium weight games that are too big in time or price to be Appetizers). Examples include Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, or Race to Adventure!
• Entrees (medium-to-heavy games). Examples include Puerto Rico, Power Grid, or Titan.
• Salad Bar (party games) - Apples to Apples, Wits & Wagers, Telestrations.
• Adult Beverages -- game that should not, for reasons of theme or content, be played around pre-teens. The prime example I can think of is Cards Against Humanity.
• I'd like a category to cover story games and RPGs, but can't think of what to call it.

The main thing where I know I could use help is that I have no skills at logo design or image manipulation. I'm also happy to take suggestion for category names. Otherwise, I"ll start trying to recruit people heavily later in the year, although I'll probably e-mail a few people to specifically request submissions.

Freelancer Aspirations: Thrumbolg Extras Part I

So, Dragon issue 420 got published today, and with it the article I wrote with Tim Eagon titled "Thrumbolg, First Lord of Mag Tureah." I'll post something next week or so about the real source material for the story we told, but in the meantime wanted to give people the following visual guide.

The article includes a table of random destinations for the myriad magical portals in the underground citadel of Mag Tureah. Almost all of these are based off of real-world buildings or geography, and I thought I should do people the courtesy of showing them what we were looking at as we came up with the destinations.

A guide to the visual inspirations for the random portals in Mag Tureah:

1. A ruined castle of glass atop an earthmote, spiral staircase connecting it to the ground.

My inspiration here is the "Castle in the Air" from The Phantom Tollbooth. If you haven't read the book, it's fabulous. Go read it and then come back to read the rest of the post. I'll wait. Shouldn't take you more than an afternoon.

The mouth of a flooded cavern, the beginning
of an undersea road paved with huge stones.

2.  I've known for a long time about the Bimini Road rock formation, but until I saw the picture above, I'd forgotten about how large many of the rocks are.

3. A partially toppled circle of stone menhirs overgrown by jungle vines -- I was thinking primarily of what Stonehenge might look like in a jungle environment.

A gargantuan statue buried in desert sand up
to its monstrous head.

  4. For most of its existence, the body of the Sphinx has been buried until only the head & shoulders are visible. Start here, and swap on your monster's head of choice. (Or, take monstrous to refer to size.)

5. An abandoned dragon’s aerie perched on the lip of an active volcano. Nothing more need be said here, I think.

6. A temple to a long-dead god whose collapsed  ceiling opens to the night sky. (I'm sticking with our original phrasing here because I think it's more poetic).  I haven't been able to re-locate the picture that was the inspiration here, but any number of ruined cathedrals and monasteries could serve as a jumping-off point.

7. A forgotten chamber that opens up to the sewers of the largest city on the continent.  Like the dragon's aerie in number 5, I don't think a lot more need be said. Kudos to Spiderweb Software's "Avernum 2" as a starting point.

A tower overlooking a courtyard filled with petrified soldiers standing in neat rank.

8.  My inspiration here was the famous terracotta army, at the tomb of the first Qin emperor in China. I learned around the time we were writing this section that the army was originally painted!

A deserted priory sprawling across a rocky tidal island

 9. The image above is of Mont St. Michel in France. Until the causeway was built in the 19th century, the monastery was completely cut off from the mainland at high tide.

A crumbling observatory open to the skies above

 10. You might have seen the Caracol thanks to the major "Mayan apocalypse" phenomenon last year. I knew about it long before that, and still love this image.

A covered bridge, woven from the roots of
living trees, over a murky river.

 11. This is a real thing. The bridges take years to create, and can be found in the Khasi Hills of India.

A frozen city built on a terraced mountaintop,
with no trace of its former inhabitants.

 12. The photograph above is of Machu Picchu in Peru; we simply encased it in ice.

Freelancer Aspirations: Battlemind Basics

In the April/May 2012 pitch window for DDI, I submitted roughly a half-dozen pitches for articles. Some of them are things I may still get around to writing on my own (Vestige Pact Hexblade and psionic item sets, I'm looking at you). One of the pitches in that batch represented my most ambitious solo piece of gaming writing to date, an article for the (Class) Basics series on battleminds.

Despite some of the ridicule the class got right after its release, I have a thing for battlemind characters because I like characters who are tough. I also liked the challenge of picking the limited number of powers to deal with a plethora of situations. There are people - including a friend of mine around here - who strongly dislike psionic characters in D&D games, feeling that it mixes science fiction into their fantasy. It's an argument that I'm sympathetic to, and would probably even accept about battleminds if it weren't easy to portray one as somebody who doesn't know they're using psionic abilities.

When this article was rejected, they rightly called me out on a number of grammatical errors that I've since caught & cleaned up. The editorial team's other comments were that this article didn't excite them to play a battlemind, nor did it offer enough strategy and tactics to help play one effectively. They also felt like many of the recommendations were too obvious. It did get noted that the Basics articles are among the hardest to write.

I found it interesting that this would have been the first of the Basics articles that had no new mechanical content. I'd specifically inquired about creating a power or two that could be used as a melee basic attack without the expenditure of a power point, and was told not to.

I think that the piece is solid (especially after cleaning up the grammatical errors that never should have crept through to a final submission), and present it here for your downloading and viewing pleasure.