The directions said I needed to play with my food. But the challenge was to play fair.

People have a lot of advantages over food - there is a reason, after all, that we are at the top of most food chains. People are smart. We are social animals, and so we have each other. We have thumbs, which means we have technology and all the power that brings.

In many cases, food has none of these advantages. And it's no fun to be the bully on the block.

How could I play with my food in a way that didn't guarantee a shamefully easy win on my part?

I decided it would need to be a game that involved more chance than skill. For example, it would be very hard for food to beat me in a foot race, or playing tetris. Maybe dice, which are very random, would even things out? But dice seemed boring. Anyway, before deciding what game, I first needed to determine who would play.

First there was me:



I also had this banana (the only survivor of a bunch I had purchased last week, whose solo situation was an excellent illustration of the state of being, well, food):



There was some leftover pizza in my fridge. It was flat, so I decided to prop it up to give it a better view:



And some croutons:



How could I play with them so that they had a fighting chance?

Then I remembered a game I had played as a child, whose outcome was entirely random, though it didn't always seem that way: War.

The food and I would play war.

I found my deck of cards, and we went to work. I liked this game, because it was entirely possible that I would end up being beaten by a banana.*

I shuffled the cards, dealt each player their own stack, and we began:



The croutons took the first hand, with Jack high:



We played a few more, and I then I won my first hand, also with a Jack high:



But the leftover pizza was getting its ass handed to it on a platter. Soon it was down to two cards:



It lost the next round.

One card left. The croutons put down a five. My next card was a two. The pizza got a nine, and it looked for a second like things might be okay -



The banana played a ten! The pizza was out of the game, cardless, defeated, morose.

Three players remained. We looked pretty evenly matched - though I, in the middle, seemed to be doing a little worse than the banana and the croutons:



Unfortunately the situation only worsened:



... A LOT:



Crap. I only had two cards left. I took a deep breath, and gameplay continued.

If I was going to lose, I could at least do it with a stiff upper lip.

My next card was the lowest of the round. I was down to one.

The next round, the croutons played a two. I flipped my last card over - a ten! Fingers crossed. If I took this hand, I could go for at least another three rounds, and tens are nothing to sniff at -



The banana tossed down a queen, took the round, and I was out of the game.

It was time to step back and take stock. First, I had been beaten by food.

Let's sit with that for a moment.

Second, for all its martial prowess, the banana was actually doing worse than the croutons, who seemed to be gaining cards more through a slow war of attrition than any glorious victories:



We continued. After a little more play, it became clear that while the croutons had two of the aces, the bananas had the other two:



This was the point at which I remembered that war is a very unstable game when three or more are playing, and you lose players fast. But when you get down to two... the banana and the croutons were going to play for a long, long time. For an illustration of this, check out the timestamps on the pictures I was taking.

Gameplay began at 8:41pm.
The leftover pizza went down at 8:47pm (oooooo, embarrassing!)
I got knocked out at 8:58pm (no comment)
I realized that the croutons and the banana had the aces evenly split between them at 9:01pm, when the above picture was taken.

Let us continue.

After some pretty intense play, the croutons looked like they were gaining the advantage:



...but that didn't last:



Then the croutons played a Jack. The banana played a Jack. Tie! So the croutons played another card - ace! Then the bananas played an ace! Two ties. Two aces at stake. The next two cards would determine where power shifted in the game. The croutons laid down a nine.

A nine was high, but could be beaten. The banana played its card:



A two! The croutons now held three of the four aces. The banana's situation did not look good.

Weirdly, it still managed to capture a lot of the cards over the next bunch of rounds:



Please note that it is now 10:28pm.

I waited and watched as the croutons slowly ground down the banana, until that one, olympic moment - ace v. ace - tie!

What two cards would come up next?

If the croutons took the banana's last ace, they would be able to slowly gnaw the deck down with a set of four unbeatable cards - they'd have the whole game in the bag.

The banana played a seven. Not a good card. And the croutons' card?



THREE! The banana had pulled it off! At 11:10pm, it was once again an even game. In order to win all, the croutons had matched their ace against the banana's and lost it.

The speed and intensity of the game increased.

The banana lost an ace to the croutons.

Then won it back.

THEN WON ANOTHER!!!

The banana now held three of the four aces in play.

Hours had passed since the match began. The pizza had returned to the fridge long ago. But the banana and the croutons soldiered on. The balance of cards shifted back and forth for a while, but the banana's three aces took their toll on the croutons' stock of cards.

Then the croutons lost their last ace. After that it was just cleanup.

The banana took the croutons down to two cards:



It didn't look good. The banana played an ace. The croutons an eight. The next round, the banana played a four, and the croutons laid down a queen.

They were in for at least two more rounds, now:



But it didn't last long. A few more rounds passed - the croutons turned their two-round extension into about six or so.

Then they were down to one card again. They laid out a nine. The banana drew:



At 11:43pm, the game was done.

Croutons: KO
Banana: WINNER!



I think the banana looks rather self-satisfied in this picture, don't you?

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* For those of you who don't know, here is how you play War: 1) Shuffle a deck of cards and deal out the entire deck evenly amongst players. 2) No one can look at the cards they've been dealt - they just stack them in front of themselves. 3) Each player lays down one card from the top of their stack of cards - they do not get to pick which one, nor do they know what it is until it is played. 4) The player with the highest card wins that round. 5) Repeat until one player has all the cards. Update: This is not how you play war (see comments). Apparently in the case of a tie, both players lay down a card face down, then turn over the next card - the two face-down cards can be any value and will still be captured by the subsequent hand. We didn't do this as I was growing up, but this also handily gets around the tremendous amount of time waiting for aces to tie so that one side will capture them, and so probably speeds up the game significantly. It's a good rule.