It was time for our bi-monthly soup & games night, and we maxed out the table! We have a pretty large dining room table, but we typically say it maxes out at around 10, and we hit the max at our most recent soup & games night! Any more than that, (like the 2 maybes who could’ve come), and we would’ve had to pull out MEGA TABLE, aka shoving two tables together lol. But this night, it was the the 10 of us! We had a fantastic dinner full of new to me recipes, and some great gaming as well. Read on to find out all the details, and don’t forget to check the ‘at a glance’ tables where I always include quick stats and links to the original recipes.

At a Glance…

The Meal

In the afternoon, the RSVPs were anywhere from 7-12 people. By about an hour before, we’d narrowed that to a solid 10 and were ready with our dinner and game plans! I’ve been doing a lot of recipe browsing lately and kept seeing delightful skillets and soups titled “Marry Me…”. Now, forgive me but I haven’t done the research on this. Is this a new trend? What’s with the name? My current theory is that these dishes are so tasty and creamy they make the person eating it want to marry the person who made it? This is my best guess. Now luckily for our two gluten free people, I was able to find some gluten free gnocchi at my local store. Hopefully it’s easy enough for you to find as well, because I love a good gnocchi. I was worried that having gnocchi and chickpeas would be too much, but it was actually a good balance! The recipe called for 2C of coconut milk or cashew crew (with me doubling the recipe), and since I only had about half a cup left after making the cheesecake, I also whipped up a batch of the cashew cream that was linked in that recipe. Thank you Nora Cooks (new to me website!) for the soup and the cream recipe; both were so good. People were swooning all dinner, and I got requests for the recipe afterwards. I used Yupik’s sundried tomatoes, which I now have a big bag of to make more Marry Me things 🙂 I probably could’ve chopped them a bit smaller, but who has the time??

The salad was super easy to whip up, including the dressing. I added some bell pepper, and in the future might add some cucumber as well. The avocado and flavor of the dressing combo got many a compliment for how surprisingly simple the soup was.

The real test of the meal was the cheesecake…

It didn’t use any cream cheese substitute, just cashews, which can be a real test of my Ninja. I have not had super great success in the best getting my little guy to make cashews super creamy for things like sauces, cheesecakes, etc, but the Ninja prevailed and the cheesecake recipe was forgiving! Between the crazy amount of cashews (I like Yupik’s) for both the cheesecake and the cream for the soup, and a TON of dates for the cheesecake, my Ninja was really put to the test today. Love that lil guy. I had to get a good early start on the cheesecake so it could have a proper amount of time in the freezer. I think I took it out a bit too early to thaw and it would’ve been better a little more solid, but overall I give it a 9/10. It did indeed taste like a Snickers bar from my childhood!

Mars & Monsters

On to the games! Jon had been itching to play Terraforming Mars and had that all set up and ready to go. While it can technically play up to five, it’s really better at four players so it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Since that was happening, that left me with 6 players until one left around 7:30pm.

Terraforming Mars is a fantastic game with lots of tableau building and engine building, with a slightly cooperative vibe of working together to make Mars habitable. It’s one of those games where you can keep taking turns as long as you have the stuff you need to do so. Each round, you get income and cards (which you have to spend that precious income on to even keep those cards 🫠), which you can then pay to play later. You’re also playing ocean tiles and park tiles to raise the temperature, oxygen, and water supplies. The game end is triggered after all those habitation goals are met; person with the most points wins! I highly recommend getting the Prelude expansion, which speeds things up a bit, and the alternate boards are fun for variety as well.

While they terraformed, we attacked Tokyo 😂. The six of us already knew how to play, so we were able to do a quick refresher and get into it quickly. If you’re unfamiliar, you play as giant monsters (Godzilla, King Kong, Kraken, etc.), trying to either get to 20 points first or be the last monster standing. I have a fun history with this game where I played a giant version at GenCon one year, and WON! This never happens because I’m usually terrible at King of Tokyo, so I was thrilled to take the title that year. This evening’s game was pretty epic because one friend was about to win by points, and then we had another friend who got a little over zealous with exploiting her card powers and ended up killing her, haha. The winning monster won with only 3 points!

After King of Tokyo, we were down to five and I was able to stumble my way through teaching Tiny Epic Galaxies to the group (as Jon and his continued terraforming). Same previously mentioned friend with very powerful cards in Tokyo managed to pull some sneaky stuff in the galaxy as well. though did not pull off the win. In the game, you are sending itty bitty ships out to planets to …explore them, while upgrading your empire, getting energy and culture, etc. through a similar Yahtzee mechanism as King of Tokyo. The fun, interactive twist is that if you have the ‘culture’ currency, you can spend that to follow an action someone else does, keeping you competitive in the race for colonization even when it’s not your turn.

We ended the night with a quick game of 10 Days in Asia as they wrapped up scoring for their Terraforming. 10 Days in (Asia, Africa, US, Europe, National Parks, etc.) is a great series where you’re playing a bit of Racko (I’m told, I’ve never actually played Racko), to build a legitimate trip using planes, trains, cars, ships, and walking. It’s pretty random, but definitely a good way to wind down the night with a few minutes to spare.

Overall, the food was a success and definitely worth saving those recipes, and the games were enjoyed by all!

Want to buy these games? Check out your friendly local game store (FLGS), Amazon [here], or get a first-order discount at Board Game bliss [here].

Or buy Terraforming Mars on Amazon.ca or Amazon.com, King of Tokyo- Amazon.ca, Amazon.com