For this throwback Thursday, I bring you my husband’s birthday dinner and game night from 2024! I made one of our favorite soups, a cake he surprisingly requested, some healthy salad, and played some of his favorite games. There’s lots to talk about, so let’s dive right in! As always, check out the At a Glance tables for the quick stats.

At a Glance…

Dinner

This Superfood Crunch Salad by Oh She Glows is bright and colorful, is super simple, and has some unique ingredients. I love the combination of pomegranate, coconut, and various seeds. Bonus if you can find the pomegranate arils prepared; I often find it in the produce section by the packaged salads. Makes life so much easier! This is a light salad best paired with a heavier soup, a great contrast to things like potato, pasta, or beans, as this will provide some freshness and cheer to the table.

The Chicken-less Pot Pie Soup by One Green Planet has been a favorite of ours for years. The combination of creamy base with the chicken, potato, and veggies, combined with the pie crust makes this, *chef’s kiss*, absolutely delightful. One reason I’m blogging about this as a throwback rather than making it fresh now though is that I do have a hard time finding gluten free chicken, so if you consistently cook for gluten free friends like I now do, this one might be a bit tricky. Let me know if you have a great gluten free, vegan chicken substitute I should look for! If you’re not gluten free, this one is definitely one to add to your list to try!

This Lemon Drizzle Cake is a recipe I found online when we lived in York, UK that I loved and typed up to add to my Google Drive of recipes. I usually do that with recipes I want to save, as I find it easier to search later amongst my favorite recipes. Unfortunately, when I typed this one up, I forgot to put the author in my doc 🫢. I do see a lot of similar recipes if I google it, so feel free to use those. I’ve also included a screenshot of my version. You’ll notice that my version includes 4 eggs, as this was a recipe I found before we became vegan. I’ve made it since becoming vegan, just swapping out the eggs for flax eggs. One thing I haven’t tried yet is swapping the flour for gluten free flour. This cake is light, airy, and moist, and I’m hesitant to try the swap, as gluten free flour can sometimes struggle with those textures. Let me know if you try it!

Games

Robo Rally is one of my husband’s childhood favorites. The story goes that Richard Garfield came to the publisher Wizards of the Coast, where my husband’s parents used to work after their college friend started the company, and said he wanted to design Robo Rally. This was back before big board games had really taken off in America, so WotC said what they really needed was a small card game people could easily pick up. If he could design that and it took off, then WotC would publish Roborally for him. Well, Richard Garfield turned around and designed Magic the Gathering, and the rest is history!

I personally have a bit of a love hate relationship with Robo Rally. I’m pretty bad at spatial reasoning, and the first few times I played with Jon’s experienced family, I got super frustrated, and demolished. But a few years later, I got Jon our own copy for his birthday with a note that I promised to play it with him, and I’ve since gotten a bit better at it. We even played a giant version of it one year at Gen Con!

In the game, you are little sentient robots, racing around the factory floors after the workers have gone home. The factory has conveyor belts, lasers, gears, and more, and the robots have their own lasers as well that can shoot other robots. You have to program your moves with simple cards (move 1, 2, or 3, turn left, right, u turn, etc.) to get to the flags that have been placed at the beginning of the game. First person to tag all the flags wins! The trickiest part I still find for me is not only programming your own moves, but also predicting what other people around you will do so they don’t mess you up. If you get damaged from all the laser fire around you, you start getting less cards to work with in your programming, making it even trickier in the future. You definitely have to go into this one with an open mind and a spirit of chaos, but if you roll with the punches, it can be a fun one. Also, Twonky is the best robot.

Cat in the Box is a strange little trick taking game. In it, there are no suits. All the cards have numbers, but no colors. When you play a card, you declare what color it is, and put a little marker down to indicate that number and color is no longer available. So you are slowly eliminating options for yourself and others as the game goes on. At the end of the round, you get points if you won the number of tricks you predicted, and you can also get more points if your little markers are adjacent to each other. But, if someone ever has a time where they cannot play based on what has been previously declared, a paradox has been created and the game ends immediately.

I’m not the biggest trick taker, as I didn’t grow up with them, but I find this one fascinating to play and enjoy the puzzle of it. If you have a trick taking fan in your life, you should definitely check this one out with them as they might appreciate the fresh approach!

Picture Perfect is a unique came that involves bidding, auctions, memory, pleasing a plant and a dog, and taking an actual picture with your phone. I’ve previously written about it here.

All in all it was a fantastic evening with our friends, food, and fun games!

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 get Picture Perfect on Amazon.com , Roborally on Amazon.com or Amazon.ca, or Cat in the Box on Amazon.com.