Today’s game that we’re theming food around is Ice Cool and Ice Cool 2. The games are basically the same, but Ice Cool is a four player dexterity game where you are flicking penguins around a school. Some trying to catch truant penguins, and those students trying to just get a snack of fish.

The Drink
I thought about doing a Bloody Mary with fish sauce, but that doesn’t actually seem to fit all that well. Instead, we’re going to save the fish for later and go with hot chocolate. That’s the drink of choice when you’re a cold penguin on a cold winter night, and if you are old enough, you can spice it up with Baileys or Kahlua or whiskey.

The Appetizers
We’re going back to the fishy theme here. I’m going to recommend that we go with some fried calamari. It’s easy for finger food so it’d be easy to eat while playing a round of Ice Cool. And you can get them frozen and they are fine, so it’s easy to get them to the table without much prep work.

Main Course
Sushi is going to be my choice for the main course. We got something fried to start, then we’re going with something a little bit fresher. Again, it’s a good finger food, if you want, so you can continue to play throughout. Otherwise, set the game aside and add to your party by rolling your own sushi which can be a great group activity. You’re keeping with the fishy theme, and you can eat your fried calamari while doing this as well. I probably would save the hot chocolate though for later.

Dessert
For dessert, I’m going to suggest we go away from anything fishy again. Instead, make black bottom cup cakes and make little penguins out of them. To do that, make a chocolate cup cake, but before you bake them, you put a dollop of cream cheese with chocolate chips into the middle of them. That sinks down into the batter as it cooks and leave a white center. You could then cut them in half and frost the top to look like a penguin head, so you’d have a dark cake, built up frosting to look like the head, and then the cream cheese in the middle would be lighter to look like a penguin’s stomach. This would be the ideal time to break out the hot chocolate as well.

I’m sure there are other fun and fishy food ideas. You can definitely use things like Swedish Fish and Gold Fish crackers to add in as snacks if you don’t want to go all out for a meal.

Let me know what your ideas are in the comments. Would you want to eat the themed foods for Ice Cool?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

For those of you who might not know what Eureka is, it’s a show about a small town that is full of geniuses and the normal sheriff who has to deal with all of the crazy problems that they cause. There’s never a normal day in Eureka. There’s also a restaurant called Cafe Diem that does crazy foods.

Drinks:

Coffee
Cocktails
Beer

The coffee and the cocktails need to be fancy. Cafe Diem wouldn’t serve just any sort of drink, you would have to use lavender infused simple syrup and with a cardamom whipped cream for the coffee. Cocktails would ideally use some dry ice in them somehow so that you get that smoking scientific effect, and if you want to go all out, you serve it from a beaker. Then you have beer as well for the Sheriff Carter’s of the group who just want a nice and normal drink. This is going to be a theme that you come across probably in most of these, there are going to be a fancy options and more standard options.

Appetizers:

Pigs in a Blanket

Okay, so I just went from saying that there would be multiple options to having a single one, but I realized that this is an example of how you can spice up something that seems pretty normal. First, you start by rolling the dough that’s around the hotdog section or better yet Little Smokies (they’re fancier) and adding everything bagel seasoning to them. You can either put together the seasoning yourself or Trader Joes sells that mixed. Then you create a bunch of fun dipping sauces. I’d recommend a blackberry ketchup mix, stone ground mustard, and a balsamic onion jam. Now you’ve taken something that is normal and brought it to the next level.

Main Course:

Spicy Glazed Carrots
Meatloaf
Corn Bread

So another pretty straightforward meal. The spicy glazed carrots I would go with a chipotle and ginger glaze on them. We’ve done something like that at home before, and it turns out very tasty. There are recipes out there that explain the whole process, but thankfully it’s not that hard to do. Then with the meatloaf, it’s pretty plain, but I needed something that would match with the appetizer, otherwise I would have gone a bit crazier with it. However, meatloaf is good because it’s a pretty blank canvas. Think about what would work well with the carrots and corn bread, and then go crazy with the meatloaf. You could lean more into a BBQ and cheese feel or if you wanted to go a bit further afield than a normal meatloaf, you could go with something like a Cajun style meatloaf or Caribbean. The corn bread is going to give you a chance as well to do something that’s more creative by creating a compound butter for it. I’d lean into just doing a simple whipped honey butter and not going too crazy with this as you want it to cleanse your palate between bites, but you could give a few different options here as well, like you did for the Pigs in a Blanket.

Dessert:

Ice Cream Sundae Bar

Again pretty normal, but you can have a ton of a fun with a lot of crazy toppings for it. Everyone can make their own experiment with various toppings. I’d stick primarily with normal toppings, sprinkles, hot fudge, nuts, etc, but I’d try and find some unique toppings as well that people might not think about. A balsamic reduction/glaze would probably drizzle nicely over the top and paired with raspberries and a little mint would make a very tasty combination and dessert. Have some fun with this and let you creativity run wild as you come up with ideas. Hopefully none of them will cause the world to almost end, and if they do, you’re on your own.

What would you do with a Eureka themed party and meal? Is there something obvious that I missed? I was trying to keep it simple enough that it could actually be done, but weird enough that it would do Cafe Diem proud.

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

Drinks:

Punch/Koolaid

Booze for mixing

Jello Shots

For something like Ghostbusters, I’d recommend creating the brightest green drink that you can. The slime (and Slimer himself) are the inspiration for the drink part of the meal. The brightest green that you can get, the closer you are to actually getting slimed, like in the movie for the game. And with Jello shots, you are taking it to a whole new level for better or worse. Now it is actually closer to the slime.

Appetizers:

Deviled Eggs

This is a callback to early on in the first film. Now you’re trying to remember the scene with deviled eggs in it (or you’re hungry), but there isn’t one. It’s a callback to when Dana first encounters the ghosts and the supernatural and the eggs on her counter start exploding and frying. It’s also just an excuse to make deviled eggs, a food item that requires too much work to be made often, but is oh so tasty (in the humble opinion of the author).

Main Course:

Hot Dogs with all the fixings

Chips

Fruit or Veggies and Dip

Again, I’m focusing in on Slimer. He pops out of the hot dog cart and that’s the inspiration for this one. If you do hot dogs right, you can make it into a fun main course, but you do need to have all the fixings. I’m talking about sauerkraut, mustard, onions, relish, pickled jalapeno, and if it still existed green ketchup. But since green ketchup doesn’t exist anymore, you’ll just have to go with plain old ketchup. To get that correct green feel to the meal and the true green Slimer feel, there is relish that is about the greenest/weirdest thing that you’ll see. Go with that stuff. We’re talking about Ghostbusters here, so keeping it paranormal (and possibly radioactive) when it comes to the relish makes it right. Chips and fruit or veggies are basically there to make it so you aren’t eating only hot dogs because according most people, hot dogs by themselves aren’t a complete meal.

Dessert

Whoopie Pie

Was there really a question as to where the meal was going to end? There shouldn’t have been, a giant marshmallow, Stay Puffed, to end the first movie that explodes everywhere into marshmallow fluff means you have to have a marshmallow dessert. Instead of doing something easier like S’mores (which would have fit along with the theme of the meal which is kind of camping now that I see it), a whoopie pie gives you something different. Two chocolate cookies with healthy marshmallow fluff sandwiched in between might not be how the movie ends up, but you know all of them were thinking it.

How would you make a Ghostbusters themed meal? Are there some of your favorite scenes that you would draw upon, or would everything have an unnatural green hue to it thanks to Slimer?

———————————
Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

“@TheScando @NerdologistCast @BeskarTom Sushi Go at Sushi. Or spicy hot foods with Flashpoint: Fire Rescue.” – Alex L

“@TheScando @NerdologistCast @BeskarTom Catan. Wood-fired lamb in a brick oven with Stone brewing co beer. And, uh golden beets.” – Richard KL

“@TheScando @NerdologistCast better yet skip the meal and play Diplomacy and drink scotch and smoke cigars” – Tom Cantwell

But this one, thanks to Tom Cantwell (@BeskarTom), was the one that really stuck out to me:

“@TheScando Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective with bangers and mash or some other classic British dish is the first thing I think of”

I’m not just going to stick with the board games, but also if you are watching the Benedict Cumberbatch show, the Robert Downey Jr. movies, or are reading the book aloud as part of a book club, or playing Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective or 221B Baker Street. If it is Sherlock Holmes themed, here’s an idea of what you can do to get into the mood and mindset for the greatest detective of all time.

I had a few different thoughts. What Tom suggests in his tweet, bangers and mash or something like a meat pie would create a classic English feel that you could build off of, but that’s not the direction that I wanted to go. I also thought of molecular gastronomy, but that seemed less accessible than the idea that I landed on, food that isn’t as it seems, food that is the mystery.

Drinks:

Beer and Pop/Soda

So this seems like it would be really normal. You can have beer or pop any night and it doesn’t seem to be Sherlock Holmes themed, but I do have a reason for both of these. For the beer, get a sampler pack and then remove the labels from every single beer. Most beer comes in a darker colored bottle now, so it stays fresher longer,so you’ll have no idea what beer you are picking out of the case. Or will you? Can you through process of elimination, studying the bottle, and anything short of opening the bottle and sniffing, figure out which beer you are getting so you’ll get the one that you want? Same thing for the pop. Get two liter bottles of Coke, Diet Coke, Root Beer, and Dr. Pepper, take off the label, take off the caps and the little ring that goes with the cap, can you determine which soda is which without tasting or smelling it?

Appetizer:

Wontons

Why wontons, they don’t seem too English? They really aren’t, but what sort of fillings will you conceal within your wonton wrappers? Some ideas might be – cream cheese, cream cheese and cranberries, cream cheese and chocolate chips, cream cheese and onion/balsamic jam, pork, and you can really go crazy with this. Make it so that you have a number of different varieties and fry them up so that you as the host, you don’t even know what is what. And again, use your sleuthing skills to try and figure out which one is which. Here’s a real mean trick to play, you can get capsaicin in a bottle, it doesn’t have a ton of color, and could be an interesting surprise for someone. Now, if you control how much you put in there (and test it out yourself mixed in with cream cheese), and people like spice, it would be a fun thing to use.

Main Course:

Mashed Cauliflower

Chicken Fried Steak

Gravy

This is less about tricking people. It’s more about creating stuff that will look differently than you’d expect. Mashed Cauliflower can make a nice change of pace from mashed potatoes that people would expect. Chicken Fried Steak would take a food preparation that people are expecting for one sort of protein, but preparing it in another way, and if you break it up well enough, people still might be surprised when it’s beef and not chicken. Finally, you’d want to make a nice dark colored gravy. We’re not talking about a creamy gravy. Go with something that is dark and work on building it up so that it kind of matches a darker BBQ sauce color. Things won’t be exactly what people are expecting, but it’ll be a good meal still.

Desert:

Brownies

When I say brownies, I really mean brownies, with a little bit of a twist. When you go to make your brownies, add in a bit of habanero (with seeds) in a couple of the brownies. You probably know what size you normally cut brownies, so make it so it’s stuck in the middle of a brownie and then turn it into a game. People grab a brownie and let’s see who gets the pepper. And if you do get the pepper, maybe see if you can hide it form everyone so they don’t know you’ve gotten it. That way the rest of the brownies, people will be taking a bit of them in dread. Note that keeping the seeds in there is important, I’ve had one with habanero (pretty sure it was that an not jalapeno) and it didn’t have the seeds and it didn’t really taste hot.

What would your idea for theming a Sherlock Holmes meal be? Would you go with something more traditional? If so, what sort of English meal would you create?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

Dead of Winter is a horror themed survival game (and a game that Kristen and I just played at Insight Brewery so we could learn the rules better), where the zombie apocalypse is upon the human race. There is a band of humans, controlled by the players, who are trying to find food, fend off zombies, and generally just survive through the winter in hopes that things will get better. So, how do you theme a meal around a world where food is supposed to be very scarce, you can start starving, and generally it’s all canned goods?

Dead of Winter

My thought process for this isn’t that it should only be foods that would survive a long time, but also foods that are going to keep you warm through the Dead of Winter, and being from Minnesota, that can be just terrible.

Drinks

Hot Toddy & Hot Chocolate with Bailey/Kahlua

Tea & Hot Chocolate

These are two great wintery drinks. The Hot Toddy warms the soul through hot tea with honey and lemon fighting off any cold that you might be coming down with, and then adding a little bit of fun with your choice of brandy, rum, or whiskey. And the Hot Chocolate can be turned into an alcoholic dessert easily with the likes of Baileys (or any Irish Cream) and Kahlua. If you aren’t a drinker, just take out the booze and you have some more great winter drinks that are going to keep you warm in the evening while you listen to the zombies moaning and shambling outside.

Appetizer

Roasted Nuts

For this you can go a couple of directions, you can go salty and sweet or salty and savory. For an appetizer I would look at doing something like rosemary roasted pecans or walnuts or if it just a snack for while you play the game, maybe go with sweet and spicy roasted pecans with cinnamon and a hit of cayenne to give it that good kick. Once you roast the nuts they get that nice toasty flavor, so while they are a bit better warm, you can definitely make them ahead of time and have them sitting out to snack on as you play and to welcome the other survivors when they arrive.

Main Course: 

Stew

If you want to be really thematic, consider going with a venison stew. Now, you probably need to be a hunter or know someone who hunts to easily get your hands on venison, but beef stew works as well, even though slightly less thematic for the whole survival aspect of the game. Load up your stew with a lot of root vegetables that would be the most readily available during the winter, and you’ve got yourself a zombie survival meal. It’ll keep you warm, stick to you for a while, and give you energy for when you run out to find some more food,  maybe that gas station over there has some frozen pizza’s left, it is the dead of winter, after all.

Dessert:

Baked Apples

Simple and nice.  Again, apples are going to be able to be stored through the winter, so you can reasonably get your hands on some of them, and while the best eating apples are probably gone, the heartier baking apples will be available. Find a good baking apple, put some butter, cinnamon, and sugar on it, and get a nice warming tasty dessert. You can also class it up to something a bit fancier, maybe make your own ice cream, or those canisters of whipped cream probably have survived in the grocery store, make a daring run out to get one of those to top off your dessert.

So, how would you survive the winter? Are you going to theme it for winter or for the apocalypse? It’s certainly possible that all you have left is canned foods and maybe should just break into that can of pork and beans, it probably doesn’t even need to be heated up because you don’t want the fire to attract any more zombies than are already there.

If you have suggestions for future Eating Nerdy articles, e-mail them nerdologist@gmail.com and let us know what want to tackle.

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

This was actually my first idea for the series, to tackle what Pacific Rim, the themed meal or at least themed snacks would look like. However, after a couple of early ideas, got a little bit stuck with it. But it’s time now to get my brain unstuck and see what I can come up with.

 Pacific Rim

Drinks: 

Blue Margarita

Jagermeister

Tropical Punch (Kool Aid)

The reason behind both of these drinks is that they are just fun. When you think of the Pacific Rim, you think of oceans, so we are going with drinks that have that sort of tropical feel to them. Tropical Punch just makes a lot of sense as a non-alcoholic option. And adding Blue Curacaco to a margarita just gives it a nice ocean feel. Plus, there is a lot of blue going on in Pacific Rim in terms of color choices. Finally there is Jagermeister, because Jaeger/Jager obviously. Less themed, but a fun play on words.

Appetizer:

Calamari

Now, the monsters aren’t technically squid monsters, but they come up out of the ocean. So to keep that water theme going, deep fried (or baked) Calamari bites makes a lot of sense. You get into the head space of being near the water, and a lot of people are going to think about squid as being from Japan.

Main Course:

Crab (or Salmon) Cakes

Coleslaw

This is where I had gotten stuck originally. The blue margarita and the calamari just made a ton of sense, but what would make good sense for a main course? So as I’ve been typing out this post, what I came up with was crab cakes. This plays towards the monsters which are sea creatures and often times have some sort of tough outside shell. Crabs are just their tiny baby cousins and they must be destroyed before they kill us all (or something like that). But crab can be a little bit more expensive than getting frozen salmon and thawing it out and using that. So if you want to stick to a slightly lower budget, crab can easily become salmon, or if you want to go to an even lower level than that, you can make fish cakes out of swai or tilapia. Cole slaw is going to give you something lighter to go along with this meal. Sure, fish and calamari aren’t very heavy, but the crab cakes are going to be fried and the calamari might be as well, so you’ll want a slaw in a light dressing to balance out the main course.

Dessert:

Popcorn Balls

Now, there isn’t a direct thematic correlation for this, other than in my head. When I think Pacific Rim, I think of something that is really shiny. The visuals are really good, and it just seems very flashy and bright. So I’m thinking not of caramel popcorn balls  (though that would make a decent light desert), but of ones that as kids we’d make for Valentine’s Day. Where you melt down red hot candies into sugar and some other stuff to make it into a caramel, but when you tossed the popcorn in it, and as the caramel hardened, it had a really cool shiny red color to it. So in my brain, that is why red hot popcorn balls makes a lot of sense. I’d also say that because it is a movie, you’re probably going to want some sort of popcorn, and this is fun way to change it up.

So, what do you think on this menu? I don’t know that it pulls you into the theme quite as much as the first, but I also do know that I really want to eat it (partially because it’s near my dinner time as I’m writing it and partially because it just sounds really good).

We have one final menu that will be coming out next week. This one came in through a suggestion on Twitter from @BeskarTom, he had a board game that I wasn’t familiar with “Race for the Galaxy” but also suggested Dead of Winter, so I’m going to try and tackle that next, who doesn’t like theming a meal around a game where you could end up losing because you can’t feed the colony.

———————————
Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

So, as an exercise in insanity, I’m going to come up with menus/ideas for three different events that nerds get together around, and how to create an appetizer, main course, dessert, and drink(s) for them. I’m going to intentionally shoot for things that are a little bit out of the norm, as people can probably come up with an old fashioned meal for Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, or do a sweet “fish finger” (finger cookie) and custard for Doctor Who, but what do you do when you want to show a lesser known film or show? I’m picking on idea to start, but I would love suggestions over on the Facebook page (search for Nerdologists) for the next two.

Arkham Horror

This is going to be a very challenging one to start off with, a couple of things jumped out at me right away.

Drinks:

Old Fashioned & Martini

Root Beer

These are a couple of classic drinks that can take you back to the turn of the century when Lovecraft was writing his works. If you’re a skeezy private eye who is tracking down some weird goings on, you drink an Old Fashioned at the bar in the evening after a long day on your feet. The Martini works well for that time period and gives you a bit of that dangerous feel thanks to James Bond. I don’t think it makes much of a difference if you use Gin or Vodka for your Martini as both will give the desired visual affect which is what you are going for.

Root Beer is for the part of your group that might not drink or may not be old enough to drink yet. It’s one of those old time drinks that makes a lot of sense, and you can even turn it into you dessert and do root beer floats if you want.

Appetizer:

Peanuts in the shell

To me this kind of keeps that old time feel going. There is something about shelling peanuts, while it is messy, that brings in a classic stake out, something to do with your hands while you are watching for something strange to happen.

Main Course:

Corn Chowder and biscuits

You could also go with a seafood chowder here, but a creamy corn and potato chowder seems to go well with the theme. Arkham being based off of Danvers, MA would have had different types of chowder and the biscuits would give it a nice rounded feel to the meal, more so just than the soup. If you think that the people who are showing up would all like clams, I would recommend doing a clam chowder instead of corn, but corn chowder is probably safer for most peoples taste buds.

Dessert:

Cranberry Apple Crisp

This keeps with your New England area theme, any desert with cranberries would be pretty typical. The reason for doing a crisp is that you can make it gluten free if you desire, so it’s safer to serve everyone. Also, New England has plenty of apples of their own, and crisps, to me, have that more classic dessert that would have been more common from that time.

So there you have it, an idea for more fun foods to eat to keep the mindset of 1900’s Massachusetts in a Lovecraft world, what would you do?

———————————
Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.

I’m hear to tell you that branching out is easier and simpler than it might seem!

The first, and most important thing, is to know your flavors. This is the biggest thing and probably the hardest thing. If you are aren’t familiar with what paprika goes in and what it tastes like, you are going to have to take a guess at it and you might end up with too much, or you might end up not being able to taste it at all. And that doesn’t even cover what might happen to a flavor if you put oregano and nutmeg together. Now, that might not be a bad combination, but if you are expecting Italian foods with a new red sauce, you might not end up with what you are expecting.

There is no great way to learn your flavor combinations and how much you like of different spices and herbs beyond trial and error. You can cut down on the risk a lot simply be following a recipe the first time you make something. But if you want to get more adventuresome and creative, you should wing it some and learn from your mistakes until you hone your own recipes.

Secondly, keep a well stocked kitchen. This doesn’t mean that you need twenty different cuts of meat and every spice under the sun. In fact, if you can limit your spice rack to those that you use regularly it’ll help keep the spices fresher and the flavors stronger. There are definitely some basic things that you will want to have in your kitchen. Spice wise, I always need to have paprika, cumin, chipotle, chili powder, red pepper flakes, garlic powder, onion powder, and cayenne on hand and I use herbs like sage, oregano, basil and thyme quite often in my cooking. A few other things that are useful to have on hand that you will end up using often are olive oil, butter, vinegar, tomato paste, onion, and potatoes. With that in your cupboard you can create quite a number of different meals with just adding a couple of ingredients or even by just adding a protein.

But how do you put together something that is easy and interesting? With our busy lives, it seems harder and harder to have time to spend on cooking, and sometimes a frozen pizza or ordering a pizza is the best option. But there are some different things that you can do quickly. The first simple option is popcorn. You can buy and air popper and melt butter, neither of those takes all that long, but you want something special, something different than just popcorn, butter, and salt. That is where your spice rack can come in handy. chipotle powder is great to add some heat to your popcorn, or garam masala can add an Indian twist to your food. Chicken, like popcorn, is really a blank canvas when it comes to adding flavors. A marinade on chicken can keep it from drying out as much and add flavor into it. Lime juice and some lime zest on chicken gives it a great different flavor from what you would expect.

This is a jumping off point, I’m going to spin it into how to make different theme meals around different nerdy things. Some of them might require a lot of work, and others might only require a little more work, but before I leave you, here’s a recipe for some lime chicken that is great on the grill.

Lime Chicken

2 chicken breasts (thawed)

1 to 2 Limes

1 tsp dried parsley

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

Salt

Pepper

To do 12-24 hours before:

Put the chicken in a ziplock bag. Zest the lime into the bag and then cut the lime on half. Squeeze the juice of the lime onto the chicken, if it doesn’t cover the chicken all that well, cut the other lime in half and squeeze it’s juice in as well. Add the parsley, red pepper flakes to the bag along with a pinch of salt and pepper. Put that in your fridge for 12 to 24 hours.

Once you are ready to cook the chicken simply pull out of the fridge and slap it on a grill. If you don’t have a grill, you can cook it on a pan on the stove top or in the oven. I would recommend, if you aren’t that great and judging how well your various types of meat are cooked that you get a digital kitchen thermometer and check with that to verify the largest chicken breast in the thickest spot has hit 165 degrees Fahrenheit in the middle.

Happy eating!

Do you have a favorite recipe that you like to cook? Or what sort of meal do you really love and want to spice up?

———————————
Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter at @NerdologistCast
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.