It’s that time of the week again. Welcome to another installment of Sunday Suggestions! This week, we’ll be covering the following suggestions:
Movie: *61
Website: Armor Games
Novelty Item: Deadbolt Mystery Society
Homemade Recipe: Slow Cooked Cheesy Sausage and Potatoes
Movie
*61
Starring Barry Pepper, Thomas Jane, Anthony Michael Hall, Richard Masur, Bruce McGill, Chris Bauer, Jennifer Crystal Foley, Christopher McDonald, Bob Gunton, Donald Moffat
TV-MA
Released in 2001
Purchased digitally via Amazon
My love of baseball is vast and founded in my childhood participation in the game. In 1998, I was glued to the television screen while I watched Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire chase after the single season homerun record held by Roger Maris. I was and still am a huge St. Louis Cardinals fan, so to watch Mark McGwire, all steroid usage aside, hit homerun after homerun was an amazing concept to my small 10 year old brain. A few years later, my dad rented a movie called *61, which tells the story of Roger Maris’ season when he set the new record, thus ending Babe Ruth’s historical season. The movie follows Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle as they battled through the season to break Babe Ruth’s record. Throughout baseball’s history, journalism ruled Yankee Stadium as the reported word of the press was like scripture. Maris went through a stellar season, but he didn’t break the record with ease. His season was filled with turmoil, struggles, issues, and backlash from fans. *61 tells his story and that fateful day in 1961 when he broke the record. This is one of my all-time favorite baseball movies, and I want to share that love with as many people as possible.
Website
ArmorGames
Founded by Daniel McNeely in 2004
Headquartered in Irvine, California
During some of my earlier college years, I was going through a phase of staying up for 48-72 hours at a time every so often. During those stints of staying up, I found myself constantly browsing the internet in search of good time wasters that also fulfilled enough entertainment to make me feel like I wasn’t wasting my life away. Through a random happenstance, I once found myself on Armor Games, a flash-based game website where independent and larger developers can put their games out to be played. A majority of the games on the site are able to be played through in one sitting, usually only taking as little as 15 minutes or up to a few hours. They’re typically minimalist in nature but some games do exist that are fully fleshed out stories and mechanics with days worth of playing time. The website has developed over the years, transforming into a catalyst for some game developers. A few of the games on the website became so popular, that some fully fledged games were released on consoles and PC with fleshed out ideas and gameplay. If you’re looking to kill some time while having a relatively decent time playing games, give the website a try. You might just find something worth your time.
Novelty Item
Deadbolt Mystery Society
Founding Unknown
My fiancee and I both enjoy a good escape room. The ideas of an escape room are fascinating in principle; being stuck in a room, tons of riddles and puzzles, solve them all in order to escape. In a past Sunday Suggestions post, I wrote about a video game called The Room, where it was basically a digital escape room with unlimited possibilities. With Covid-19 raging through the world, the ideas of doing a digital escape room seem ideal as they fulfill that adrenaline rush without making you leave the house. Deadbolt Mystery Society took it one step further by taking their original escape room concept (Deadbolt Escape Rooms) and translating them into a murder mystery in a box. If you subscribe to them, you get one box a month. Inside the box is a full murder mystery with a really interesting story, unique puzzles, challenging riddles. The price might seem a little heavy at $24.99/month for their standard package, especially given that the boxes can’t really be replayed once you solve them, but the price is easily comparable to doing an actual escape room. The creators of the boxes put the boxes up for sale as single purchases some time after they’re released. We have about ten of them in total, and so far, we’ve enjoyed every single one. If you’re looking to take a few hours of time to sit down, whether it be by yourself or with others, Deadbolt Mystery Society offers an extremely fun little quest of whodunnit.
Homemade Recipe
Slow Cooked Cheesy Sausage and Potatoes
Ingredients:
1 can of Cream of Chicken soup
1 can of Cheddar Cheese soup
1/3 cup of milk
1 bag of shredded cheddar cheese
1.5 pounds smoked pork sausage
1.5 pounds petite potatoes (I used red)
Seasonings to taste: Garlic powder, Thyme, Marjoram, Pepper
1 sweet onion (diced small)
1 red bell pepper (diced small)
1 green bell pepper (diced small)
Mushrooms (diced small, amount by preference)
Directions:
Mix seasonings, milk, soups, and shredded cheese into crockpot with whisk.
Dice all vegetables and add to crockpot
Dice potatoes into fourths or eighths depending on the size of the potatoes
Slice sausage into smaller round pieces
Put remaining foods into crockpot
Stir thoroughly to make sure everything is covered in sauce.
Cook on high for 3-4 hours or low for 5-6 hours.
If sauce is too thin, add cornstarch and stir well.
Serve and enjoy!*
*As a side note, you might want to wait to add the peppers and mushrooms until the halfway mark of cooking. Sometimes, the peppers and mushrooms become grainy or overly chewy and dominate the flavor of the overall dish. This is a preference call based on your personal tastes
Until next Sunday!
Random Ramblings of a Redheaded Nerd 