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There’s a Japanese grocery store (called Mitsuwa) nearby with an attached food court. One spot has matcha soft serve which is a bit overpowering on its own but the vanilla twist with it is quite good. We usually go for the ramen at Santouka because it’s amazing.
There’s also a small local chain called Fanny’s Thai Rolled Ice Cream that is made in an interesting way and has fun mix-ins.
I tend to eat ice cream so fast that it’s kind of wasted on me. I used to have a self-imposed rule that I’d only eat ice cream if it’s on pie- because pie was such an infrequent occurrence. New girlfriend has a sweet tooth so that rule is kind of gone now.
Typically there is no faster way for me to pass on a food if it’s labeled light or diet or zero calorie, but I’ll put in a good word for Halo Top ice cream. It’s a little harder than your typical pint, but they don’t skimp on taste and flavor. Just watch out for their keto line. It’s just a frozen dessert.
Played a little face to face gaming for the first time outside of family/SO. Our DM was busy, so the Zoom D&D group got together. We talked a lot and played some lighter games, which was perfectly fine.
Abandon All Artichokes was a cute twist on the ascension-style (single random deck, actions unlimited) deckbuilder, where you start with a deck of ten artichokes and win once you've composted (trashed) cards to the point that you draw a full hand of ‘good’ vegies at the end of your turn. Pretty fun, with a good amount of interaction. If nothing else, it might be a good training exercise in why Chapel is a good card.
Scooby Doo in betrayal at haunted mansion might actually be better than the original. It’s streamlined a bit and made shorter, which means it didn’t overstay its welcome.
Then we played Point Salad which is about as groundbreaking as the name suggests. On your turn you take two vegetables, or one card for how it scores on its back. There are three piles and the game is over once all cards are taken. I won handily by getting a bunch of carrots and cards that scored for carrots.
ubarose wrote: All the ice cream for a region is made by the same one or two manufacturing and packaging facilities. I had a friend that owned a "craft" ice cram place. You contract with the manufacturer, and choose your fat content level, and the amount of air you want whipped in. There were a couple other choices you made, which I can't remember mostly having to do with quality vs price - like sweeteners, organic - but the primary ones where fat and air. Bingo you have you your own ice cream label.
Then, usually on a monthly basis, you order your flavorings and add-ins from a menu/price list. You could design your own flavors, or choose from some already designed ones. There were some quality/quantity levels involved with those as well (example: good, better, best chocolate chips; and number of chips per/some unit of measure). Sometimes he'd let me help choose/design the flavors for the month.
Also, the soft serve is a big money maker, because it is cheap garbage.
Although I live in Utah, which consumes more ice cream per capita than any of the lesser states, Salt and Straw in Portland, Oregon is pretty good, and there's a recipe book if you want to try your own. In my house we refer to Soft Serve as "symbolic food," something that exists because you need to go through the motions of eating but for whatever reason can't get to the real thing. I wonder what
Baudrillard,
would say about soft serve. If hyperreality is living in a simulation and not knowing it, then what do you call partaking of an obvious simulation with the knowledge that it isn't real?
If my wife has too much ice cream before bed she's up all night with diarrhea and sometimes vomiting. It reminds me of a story Brett Favre told about throwing up a vicodin before a game, picking it out of the vomit and washing it down. I went out and bought a small, cheap container of low end chocolate ice cream tonight because of this thread. The power of social marketing.
I’m pretty hooked on TMB now...it’s super addictive. It kind of reminds me of Roll Player in a way because really, building your character is such a central part of the game. There is of course a ton of decisions o the tactical battles, but it goes back to which decisions you make in the upgrades. I got a couple of the extra Skin Gremlins, it is really cool how completely unique each plays and then you’ve got the build options.
One thing I really like is that unlike many games of its type, the difficulty is consistently challenging but never capricious. It’s not a game where your win or loss is dependent on what you draw or anything like that. The dice mechanism where your fails go into a kind of power meter is pretty brilliant.
After some more plays of those Garphill games, I’ve let them all go on to new homes. They all play really well and have great solo modes. But after two game’s, there is nothing left to discover. I love the small boxes, they look good, and they are good games but I just don’t think they have dimension that warrants repeated plays. They feel very much designed to today’s market, where a solid play or two shows you all it’s got. They come across as very sturdy and well built but pretty soulless.