Hello from Newburyport, Massachusetts, where I have been mostly sleeping with swollen eyes, trying to get better from one of the Top Two sicknesses I’ve had in the past 365 days. (The other one was COVID.) (I had another really bad one two weeks ago, which I thought was the second-worst one, but this one is much worse. And maybe it’s because I am traveling. But gunk is coming out of my eyes and I think I have had more fevers, and it’s lasting much longer.) (Or maybe they’re just like, the same illness?)
Annnyway, I’ve been in such a brain fog that nothing is quite computing. I keep thinking there are cats in this apartment, where there are no cats. Things like that. So I thought I’d scroll through my Camera Roll and recommend ten things that I’ve photographed but not yet recommended to you. They are from the past, but remain relevant, as the best things usually do. The first three are free; paid subscribers get a lot of fun surprises this week!
BAKE: Cast Iron Pizzas
From July, 2015
This is a nice workaround if you don’t have a pizza stone. People love using a cast iron for pan pizzas, which, sure. Here’s a good article about at-home pan pizzas in a cast iron from the NYT. But we prefer to make a nice ball of easy pizza dough (allow yourself time to let it rise), then liberally oil it, and put a bunch of vegetables on top. Preheat the pan at 500 degrees so when you put the dough on it, it’s already piping hot. You’re eight minutes away from a beautiful pizza. I think this is a picture of one of the first dinners Luke and I ever shared with each other. Cute.
PLAY: “Bohnanza,” “Hoopla,” and “Dominion,”
From August, 2015
It’s wild to look at our early game collection, which now takes up a whole ginormous closet in our house and no longer includes half of these games. Luke and I had just moved in together and we wanted to be the kinds of people who played games with their friends. “Catan” was very chic among a certain type of nerd in 2015, although I don’t think we ever played it. Three of these still get a lot of play in our house. Here they are, ranked out of ten.
“Bohnanza” - A simple German card game where you plant and harvest different types of beans to earn coins. It’s fairly easy to learn and involves a good amount of strategy, so it’s a good one to pull out if you have thirty minutes. Plus, it requires minimal setup, as it’s just cards. My sister, her husband, and I tried to play it when my sister went into labor, but she was in labor, so. 8/10.
“Hoopla” - This was a collaborative offshoot of “Cranium” that did poorly in the marketplace but was much more fun. It is only available on eBay. We take this out at dinner party with Boomers, and it is usually a hit. Since everyone is working together to beat the timer, it is a really good icebreaker game for any group. I also bring it to classes with anyone 12 and up. We played it on the last day of school this year, and the first day of school in a different class. Even very shy children can get behind Hoopla. It’s simple and silly. Every household should have a Hoopla. 8/10.
“Dominion” - This is a deck engine-building game that is comparatively easy to learn (compared to, say, “Catan” or “Risk” or, like, the other really nerdy games that the boys with beards want to get you to play with them). There are tons of different card combinations, so every time you play, you are playing a different version of the game, but the mechanics stay the same. This keeps it interesting without ever being overly complicated. That said, it’s still a conquest game, and I am annoyed that so many of these games have to be conquest games. But whatever, they do and they are. This is still pretty fun. Lots of expansions exist for it. 7/10.
MAKE: A Cactus Hat
From October, 2016
Every Halloween, I get it into my head that I should make a papier-mâché costume element. Sometimes I do this, but it’s usually an iteration of what you see in this photo, which is a cactus. To make this (it’s easy): fill a balloon with air. Mix equal parts flour and water in a bowl, and then get a bunch of strips of newspaper; dip the newspaper strips in the flour-water mixture and then cover the balloon with them. After you’ve done a few layers, let it dry for two nights. Then, paint with acrylic paint. Hot-glue white clay balls with toothpicks sticking out to complete the look. I put mine on top of beanie. A lot of getting a papier-mâché crown to work is finding the right hat to put underneath it, it turns out. Maybe figure that part out first, before you cut the hole in your cactus. But I kept this for years, and thought it was beautiful.
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