A Vindaloo, Chickpeas, Dragons, and Dwarven Halls

It's Covid-19 Day 101 here at home, and it's both (A) a beautiful day, (B) Father's Day, and most importantly by far (C) in the vicinity of Grace's 16th birthday from a blog-posting perspective.

A few weeks ago, I made the Pork Vindaloo recipe from Cover and Bake, by the editors of Cook's Illustrated (I've noted their wide range of books that I own previously - May 7). Today, having a nice leisurely Father's Day ...at home (shockingly)... I needed something to make with some cubed beef stew meat. We all loved the vindaloo recipe, and there's no reason you couldn't swap out the pork and replace it with beef. So that's what's for dinner.

Beef Vindaloo

For a side dish with an Indian recipe, or frankly, any recipe these days, is my modification of a chickpea recipe, which I will post the details of separately for anyone who might be interested in that sort of thing.

Chickpeas with Coconut Milk and Spinach

For Father's Day, I picked out a few miniatures things for myself, and we did curbside pickup from Games Keep in West Chester when we were in the neighborhood to pick up the new Pilot a few days ago. There were 4 large miniatures from the Wizkids unpainted lines, and included a Gargantuan Skeletal Dragon, a Young Red Dragon, a Behir and an Adult Remorhaz. Now I have lots (more) things to paint...

Father's Day minis

From a crafting perspective, I have had the urge to do some EPS foam board crafting, so I have pulled out the Proxon hot wire table and made some more Dungeons and Dragons terrain pieces (modular caverns and passages, as well as some "Dwarven Halls" dungeon tiles). Given that I have all the dungeon tiles I really need (in two color schemes, no less), it made sense to scratch the itch by making a few fancier pieces. A few of these are shown below (work in process), and I'll continue to tweak some of the techniques and colors. Painting red squares onto the piece at upper left in the picture below was way too stark. The very watered down wash on the other pieces looks much better.

Dwarven Halls tiles

Lastly, and most importantly, Grace is now 16. Hard to believe. As with many of her friends who have had birthdays during the quarantine, and mostly Sweet 16s, it totally sucks that she doesn't get a real birthday party surrounded by her friends. We (I) spoil our kids, admittedly. And we would have spoiled her on her Sweet 16th. We do have a few things up our sleeves, and we will make it up to her when things allow. Until then, Happy Birthday, Grace! You bring me joy each and every day.