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Monthly Archives: March 2016

I play! Qwirkle edition

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Apparently I put down one tile for 17 points in this picture. But I don’t remember what I did exactly. Nor do I feel like figuring it out now.

Here’s a game that’s quite suitable for younger children but also adults.  Qwirkle is a tile game which one of my kids described as being “Scrabble for people who don’t know how to spell.”  You start with six tiles and players take turns to lay out connecting tiles in which either all the tiles are printed in the same color but with different shapes or all the tiles are printed with different colors but with the same shape.  No duplicates are allowed in a line.  Points are awarded per tile in a line.  If you complete a whole set (six tiles of all the same color but different shapes or six tiles of all different colors but the same shape), you are awarded an exta six points and the privilege of yelling “QWIRKLE!”  The yelling part may not be a part of the actual rules.  I may just happen to like saying Qwirkle.

Anyway, I’ve played the game with kids as young as 8 and they were able to catch on to the rules without any problems.  For the younger ones, I would just tell them to repeat “different colors, same shape or same color, different shapes” to themselves the first few times they put tiles down or whenever they were confused.  They caught on pretty quickly.

One of the older kids (5th grade?) caught on very quickly (he’s a very bright kid) and then proceeded to talk so much trash to me as he quickly pulled ahead at the beginning of the game when I was getting a lot of bad draws.  I proceeded to beat the snot out of him because he hasn’t quite gotten the hang of strategy and the art of blocking your opponent.  Poor kid.  But also…🍭.

I have the travel edition of the game which I believe is a quarter size of the normal edition.  I chose the travel edition mostly because of storage reasons.  The normal edition is a large box for a bag of tiles.  Meh.  But the normal version would be easier to play with when you play with four players or in bad lighting.  There was a lot of “what color is this?!?!” when my brother and I test played.  Neither of us is color blind, btw.

I make! Lamb neck stew edition

Right now if I reach blindly into my freezer and pull something out, I’d say there’s an 80% chance that I’ll pull out some kind of salmon.  But this post isn’t about salmon.  It’s about lamb neck.  Because before pulling out all of the lamb neck in the freezer, I’d say there was an 18% chance that I’d pull out lamb neck in were I to blindly reach into the freezer and grab something.  Because…my mother.

So, I’ve been trying to get rid of lamb neck.  But lamb neck is kind of a weird cut of…meat(?) to work with.  It’s pretty easy to figure out what to do with chops or ribs or something, but what about lamb neck?  Well, I opted for stew.

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I did a fairly standard stew with things that go well with lamb.  I coated the lamb neck (about 2lb) in flour (about 0.33c) and then browned them (I used an electric pressure cooker, which has a sear function) and took them out.  With the leftover fat in the pot, I sautéed a bunch of chopped celery, carrots, and onions (whatever I had on hand) and then coated the vegetables with the rest of the flour leftover from dredging the lamb.  Added some chopped potatoes (also whatever I had on hand), salt, pepper, dried thyme (about 2tsp).  I nestled the lamb on top of the vegetables and then added 3-4c of chicken stock and a bunch of Worcestershire sauce.  I cooked it on high pressure for about 45min.  I’m really liking the pressure cooker guys.  But I’ve also done it on the slow cooker before, 3-4 hours on high or 6-8 hours on low.  But seriously.  Pressure cooker.

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I ended up serving it with focaccia and salad.