One thing I really appreciate about our trip to Belize earlier this year was the way in which it broadened our culinary vocabulary. We just got done eating some homemade garnaches for lunch– it was the first time I've used my tortilla press to make the masa cakes. Garnaches are basically like a shredded chicken taco on corn cakes with sautéed onion, cabbage, and tomato and cheese topping. And of course doused with tons of Marie Sharp habanera sauce. This morning we had fried plantains as part of our breakfast. Last week I ate Belizean coconut rice and beans almost every day for lunch and last weekend I made a coconut pie and managed to precisely duplicate the taste of the ones served by the street vendors on Caye Caulker. It will be interesting to see what culinary contributions we adopt from Paris, London and Brussels on our Christmas trip this year.
L ast year I reviewed Expeditions and ranked it #1 among all Stonemaier games on account of the challenging intellectual puzzle it presents. This year I have played my way through the new expansion, Gears of Corruption , and I’m delighted to let you know that it makes the base game even better. That the expansion so cohesively builds on the base game should not be a surprise to anyone who closely examines the original box for Expeditions. All expansion components perfectly fit in that box including the 2 new mechs that nestle in the placeholder cubbies clearly made for them. That can’t be coincidence. There might a few features rolled into Corruption of Gears that were developed as a result of consumer feedback on the base game (I’m looking at you, wild meeple), but my theory is that Stonemaier did a Lord of the Rings maneuver with this game and its expansions, designing the entire game with most of the additions integrated up front, and then breaking it into base + expansions fo...
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