Week 1: Vacation Cooking and Board Games

Week 1 of 2017 saw us wrapping up the festivities of winter break and settling back into the work and school routine.

Christmas weekend kicked off with a visit by our friends Bala and Shankar and their two dogs. Bala and I met as fellow food bloggers in St. Louis (and fellow dog-lovers) and have been friends ever since.

Bala is an artist by profession and I've always been a fan of her intricate, graphic, henna-inspired designs. The life of an artist seems like it would be an idyllic one, painting the day away in a color-filled studio. Chatting with Bala, it was interesting to learn how busy and varied the work is- applying to get into the big art shows, driving to art shows almost every weekend, the sheer physical labor of setting up tents and displaying one's work, being on social media and connecting with patrons, all while painting and dreaming up new designs. It is fascinating to learn of a working life so different from one's own.

More of Bala's work:
Art by Bala and on Facebook

Board games were a major theme of this winter break. Bala and Shankar introduced us to one of their favorite games- Settlers of Catan. This is a wildly popular game and I was glad to finally get a chance to play it, but it is a strategy, role-playing type of game and not really my thing.

Right after their visit, we packed up the car and the kids and headed out to Tybee island on the Georgia coast for our first family vacation since Mr. Baby's arrival. Close friends of ours drove down all the way from Boston and Philly, and so we were 3 families- 6 adults and 5 kids-  getting together for several days of sandy fun.

On Tybee, we climbed the lighthouse at the North end of the island. The kids- ages 3, 4, 5, 8 surprised me by climbing up and down all 198 steps of the steep circular wrought iron staircase quite enthusiastically. We walked the beach, dared each other to run into the frigid Atlantic and collected shells.

We took a day trip into picture-perfect Savannah where the kids loved the artzeum and the iconic Leopold's ice cream- I tasted the eggnog and lemon custard flavors and they were indeed outstanding. The lemon custard flavor has been sold in this shop since 1919.

But the stand-out highlight of our vacation was the adorable cottage that we rented for the week. The cottage had a cabana in the backyard, a heated salt-water pool, and a big screen TV, so it really was a self-contained place to hang out and connect with friends.

A vacation with this gang is all about the food. Tybee island has seafood galore (which the rest of our group enjoyed) but no vegetarian food to be found for miles and miles, so in the interest of self-preservation, I carried along a car-load of groceries. Other than two restaurant meals and pizza take-out once, we cooked and ate our meals in the well-equipped kitchen at the cottage. 10 people eating 3 meals a day, for 5 and a half days. That certainly involved a bunch of food and a bunch of planning.

5 vacation cooking tips that worked on this trip:

1. Pack a cooler: Our first meal on arrival was a dinner, and everyone would be tired and hungry after driving long distances, so in the days before we left, I made egg curry (the base sans eggs) and dal fry and packed them in containers and froze them solid. I carried these frozen containers in the cooler (where they doubled as ice packs) along with blocks of cheese and paneer, butter and cream cheese. At the destination (5 hours drive away), all I had to do was re-heat the curries, make fresh rice and boil some eggs, and a hot dinner was good to go.

2. Buy some refrigerated stuff on arrival: Right after arriving on the island, we stopped for milk, plain yogurt, eggs, flavored yogurt cups for the kids.

3. Take all the breakfast things: People sleep in, wake up at different times, and can help themselves to their breakfast of choice. Accordingly I packed bread, pancake mix, cheerios, home-made granola, almond butter, jam, maple syrup, fruit, hot chocolate mix. And there were the aforementioned eggs, milk, yogurt cups, butter and cream cheese. We even took some pesto for V's favorite breakfast pesto-egg-cream cheese sandwiches. So that covered all the breakfast bases and then some! As a plus, many of these ingredients also doubled as snacks, and on the last day, we could all pack sandwiches and snacks for the road trip back home.

4. Plan for favorite meals: I really wanted to make pav bhaji one night, and on new year's eve, I wanted a "snacky" dinner of sev puri and paneer tikka, and I had to write up ingredient lists for these meals. For Mexican night, I took along stacks of tortillas, canned beans, peppers and onions, a jar of salsa and a packet of taco spice.

In addition, I took along a box of pasta and some dry rice and dal and we ended up using it all.

5. Make a spreadsheet. It was the only way to make lists and keep things straight. I'll save this spreadsheet for future vacations.

We ate very well, and in a relaxed way, and most importantly there was no food waste. Whatever did not get used up on vacation came home with us to be eaten here.

This vacation worked because everyone was loving and cooperative. A couple of us did most of the cooking, and one friend was great about doing dishes and kitchen clean-up promptly. Others kept the kids busy in the pool and at the playground. Everyone pitched in and everyone got some time to themselves to go for a beach run, enjoy some quiet reading time and so on.

My favorite part was the board games we played over the week. A couple of them were old favorites- Taboo and Pictionary. Two of the games were new to me and I can't wait to play again- Apples to Apples and Codenames.

While sitting around the campfire and toasting marshmallows, someone started playing a game called "I went to the market" and that was lots of fun too- although I was pretty terrible at playing it. It is a hidden-rule game very similar to this going on a picnic game and this camping trip game. I love discovering new games like these which can be played anytime, anywhere, to pass the time.

This year I want to play more board games and card games- how's that for a new year resolution that I might actually keep?

Lila is at the age where she is learning to play board games as well. Memory games (with matching pairs of cards) are great at this age. Lila's favorite is a fairy memory game where she has memorized the backs of the cards. Playing with her is like playing in Vegas- the house always wins.

Go Fish is the first game that she understood the rules for and is able to play properly. Chutes and Ladders (what I knew as Snakes and Ladders) and Candyland are top favorites right now. They are not the most exciting but they do work on turn-taking and counting skills. Perhaps the most important thing to learn at this age is that it is only a game and not to fall apart when one loses! She also has Sequence for Kids, SET junior and Very Silly Sentences and we'll soon learn how to play those.

Do you like cooking on vacation? Tell me about your favorite board games!