Last Thursday we held our weekly Pray and Play game night- an informal, chill evening that we first started as a small group for our church, and then opened up to the community at large. We begin with about 30 minutes of catching up on the week and talking about any praises and prayer requests, pray about those things, then head downstairs for snacks and strategy! Because we usual have a larger group, often with non-gamers, it often ends up being more party style games. But this last Thursday was pretty small, only five of us, so we were able to play a game of Cascadia- one of my favorites! I paired that with a new to me recipe, Post Punk Kitchen’s Apple Peanut Butter Caramel Bars! Appropriate that my firsts post here is a nod to my PNW roots, and the apple based treat paired well since Washington is the #1 apple producer in the States!

At a Glance…

Apple Peanut Butter Caramel Bars

Honestly, when I saw the picture and read “apple, peanut butter, caramel”, I was sold. What can go wrong with those ingredients? I followed the instructions quite closely, despite my doubts that there were way too many apples to slice (thanks for composting that Lomi! #lovemylomi). The taste was fantastic. It reminded me of a lazy snack Jon and I often make that his family invented, appealingly called ‘mush’. It consists of a sleeve of graham crackers broken up into a bowl, a spoonful of peanut butter, a few spoonfuls of applesauce, and a dash of cinnamon, all mixed together. Although this Post Punk Kitchen recipe was called ‘bars’, mine did not hold together enough for that and it became a mush-like dessert to be eaten with a plate and utensil. Not sure what happened, but they were tasty regardless! (To make these gluten free, just use gluten free graham crackers and ap gluten-free flour!)

Cascadia Thoughts

We’ve been a big fan of Cascadia every since it came out. Its predecessor, Calico, was much too tight and restrictive for us. We love the theme and flexability of Cascadia, and with the expansion, it’s great for a medium sized group of gamers! It’s usually pretty quick and chill, and moves pretty smoothly. On your turn, you simply take a pair of landscape tile and animal token and place them in your ecosystem. The tile can go basically anywhere, the animal token must go on a tile that has that animal pictured on it. At the end of the game, you’ll score your largest group of each land, and you’ll score each animal based on the cards chosen for that game. There are a few other minor rules, but that’s basically it! On this particular evening, we did have a few AP-induced players which slowed things down a bit, but that’s ok 🙂 I’m a big fan of how the goals can be swapped out from game to game and are different enough to keep things fresh but not so crazy that you feel like you have to relearn the game. This was a favorite of ours when I was canvassing for Amnesty International. I’d come home late at night and want something that felt like I’d played more than a filler but was still relaxing. This hits that spot and is so fun to admire when you’re done. The Landmarks expansion adds a fun twist where you want to go for those end game goals and add a fun 3D dimension to your ecosystem, but add them too soon and you’re quite restricted. Overall, I highly recommend Cascadia to anyone who loves games of a more welcoming weight, animals/nature, and puzzles.

Want to buy Cascadia? Check out your FLGS (Friendly Local Game Store) or Board Game Bliss using my referral! Or at Amazon US or Amazon CA

Interested in Lomi? Impact-Site-Verification: c4fa2fa5-9103-4d8a-87dc-5326a285e18c