deathmtn

I had hoped a couple of days to just find some map tiles to print and cut so we could play with them the same way we play with Carcassonne tiles, which is using them to make ad hoc town structures, mostly roads and sandboxes, and having the meeples invite each other over to play. Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything out there that was usable.

We did Plan B, which was to draw our own tiles on foam-backed poster board. My son is four, so I did most of the drawing, but coloring in green backgrounds was satisfying for him, as well as drawing the river bones and putting leaves and apples on trees.

We used tempera markers, which are ostensibly paint markers. They feel very waxy; in effect, it feels like drawing with lipstick. They are forgiving, though, in that you can paint layers to a degree. I had to do this a lot because we didn't have a brown marker, and brown is needed a lot in town landscapes.

Cutting seemed a lot harder than anticipated. I started with a box cutter, which seemed to mostly rip the paper, then tried a kitchen knife, then scissors. I then thought to open the box cutters with a screwdriver and flip the blade around to the still-sharp side, and cutting became smooth and easy.

It'll be interesting to see which tiles are popular. I made some rail intersections, which I thought would be used every so often, but the guy put them all together to make some weird mega rail grid.

If nothing, he's very happy that we have 150 tiles, good or bad!

The tile sheet, before cutting

Tiles: Seeing action in the field

Abundant buns!

Wily is also season greeting!

Smidgeo"s Greeting from Smidgeo to you! From: Smidgeo

My cut-and-paste job on the puff pastry resulted in A) a filling leak and B) some Giger-esque lumps on the side. Both of these would have put us in automatic last place on the Great British Bake-Off. Still, this is the best chicken pot pie we've made to date. And it does in fact have the layers prized by Mary Berry.

Making your own puff pastry is probably worth doing only once a year for most people, but it is in fact better than factory-made, should you bother to do it.

Time to pretend you're riding the T all day because you don't know how terrible that would be.

Not happy about a last minute cut-and-graft I had to do with the puff pastry, but there was no way I was going to be able to successfully roll it wide enough. Should've kept the actual pan dimensions in mind instead of the 8"x16" from the recipe.

Very curious to see what the effects of me rolling it possibly too hard early on are.

Da filling

Cream's in. Added an extra potato because I put the original one in too early, and it'll probably disintegrate.

The puff pastry's final unbaked form

Didn't read recipe well and put chicken cubes back into the liquid. Had to do this 70 times to correct it.

Gambling a bit by using slightly spicy broth, but pot pie is buttery, so I figure it'll be fine.

Pot pie begins!

Revere thy cakes

Reaction gif material

Heh, a few spoilers in the Mega Man 11 soundtrack (which is good). Well, I guess not really for anyone that's player any other Mega Man game.

We're trying to make puff pastry from scratch. We won't know if it's good until we fold and roll two more times tomorrow.