Primrose vs Harrier - Troll Challenges

Originally posted by Primrose6789
I would like to add: The booze was great again! :f_biggrin::f_ugly::f_ugly:
No hangover this time, though, didn´t drink as much as last time! :f_biggrin::f_ugly:

Yes, we took care not to overdo it this time. Primrose also showed more discipline with unattended glasses that weren't intended for her...

I showed her some of the new stuff I got this week and also made her a new cocktail, shown here. Apart from that, we of course had Frangelico, which was finally in stock at Harrier's again, and some Dead Nazis, which may become our new go-to shots for the "afterparty". They involve one half of Jäger and one half of white crème de menthe, combined in a shots glass, making them very easy to prepare, without any need for measuring equipment or complicated mixing techniques.

We also had some hot mead shortly after arriving, to get warmed up. The weather was still surprisingly cold early on.

It may sound like a lot, but it was an appropriate amount which we spread out throughout the day, just a little bit of each. As you can see, you don't need to get wasted to have a great time at Harrier's.

So what was the "funny story" that happened on the way to my place?

I went to pick up Primrose in Gießen, which is a nearby town with a population of roughly 80K people. This town has usually been among the first stops to get any stuff that is not available in the smaller towns, including the one where I live. I'm also currently working in the outskirts of Gießen.

Ever since the days I took my first driving lessons, I have always disliked the rather confusing (for me, anyway) spiderwebby street layout in that town, not to mention that there seems to be construction going on constantly. Naturally, I needed a GPS to pick up the grindette, and to find my way to that one parking lot so we can pick up the sushi I ordered for the two of us. I'm quite bad with directions anyway.

On the way back with Prim, my GPS told me to turn right in 200 meters. By the time I hear that, I have usually traveled a little further ahead, and I noticed a lane to turn right, so I got in there. Unfortunately, it was too early, so I thought I'll just turn and let my GPS navigate me to get back on track. Except this wasn't a normal street... it led straight onto the entering ramp for a parking garage...

Being from a mostly rural area, I'll admit that I have never used a parking garage before - so what to do now? No choice but to drive to that gate, get my ticket, navigate that maze inside and try to get out asap, I guess... except the window at my driver's side was stuck too, adding to my frustrations.

Primrose asked me why I don't just reverse back out of it. "But what if anyone else wants to enter the garage?" I asked back. She said "There is no one there right now - now is your chance!", and I figured she was probably right... so I went on to carefully reverse out of there, taking good care not to test the quality of my car's paint job on any of those posts.

Just as I was about to leave that ramp, about three or so cars arrived who wanted to enter it. I awkwardly turned in that spot that is intended for entering only as those cars continued to honk aggressively. I eventually managed to (illegally) turn onto that street, which was right at a crossroad. Two cars were arriving there two, one wanting to go right and the other to go left - so I once again tried to awkwardly reverse into the lane for turning right, which was not easy to do from that spot, which means that ended up kind of blocking both lanes there too for a while.

Finally, we were able to turn there, getting us back on track. Prim noticed how stressed out I was from all of this, so she comforted me by saying "I think we solved that one wonderfully!", and I gave her one of those "are you kidding me?" looks. Sure, it's good that we got out of there somehow, but I don't think Merriam-Webster would use this as an example for "wonderfully solved".

It wasn't quite the end of it, as even on the "correct" way, my GPS still wanted to send me through some recently placed iron posts in a street that is now intended to be for pedestrians only - but we made it, and the sushi was worth the aggravation.

(Old picture, but we got the same plate yesterday)

The thing was that Harrier kept repeating: "I don´t want to drive into the garage! I don´t want to drive into the garage! NO WAY!" So, what I did is suggest a nice solution how we can avoid driving into that garage! Yes, I think we solved that wonderfully, because Harrier didn´t have to drive into the garage! :f_thumbsup::f_ugly: Yes, even though a couple of drivers were honking aggressively, I think Harrier did a great job at NOT driving into the garage! :f_biggrin::f_thumbsup::f_ugly:

Yes, well, it would have been wiser to do this from the beginning, before driving all the way to the gate, but I kept carrying the faint hope that there would be some kind of exit ramp.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that I shouldn't have taken that lane in the first place. But really, there should have been a sign if taking that lane leads you straight into a parking garage.

I mentioned there were some "bloopers" during our Troll Challenge as well. The first one happened as I was setting up those dancing pads. I checked the day before that everything was in working order, but we still had some technical difficulties early on.

I tried a few things, and then found out that I simply set the wrong pad in the wrong spot, so I had the Player 2 pad the whole time. So I swapped the pads, saying "I think that's the solution!"... and then tripped over the cable as I was walking away, knocking that mini-computer to the floor, which turned itself off, and ripping out all cables in the process. "That was not the solution...", I added...

As things were running smoothly, Prim complained during her second warm-up round of Dr. Mario that her pills were falling way too fast, and that she couldn't possibly react to that. Turns out that she was standing on the down arrow the entire time without noticing...

I would have taken a picture, but as I was getting the camera, one of us stepped on the Start button by accident too, automatically starting a new game.

Good times were had for sure...

I mentioned a new series to be added to this blog. I think we may see the first entry tomorrow, so let me introduce it already:

Haven't you ever seen a photo of some dish you never had, or maybe heard it mentioned somewhere, or possibly even had it in a restaurant or some other place and found yourself wondering how to make that one at home? This is what this series is all about.

Whenever Primrose or I find a recipe for a dish we never made before, or never in that form, we will post about it on Recipe Raiders in this blog - if possible, with a link to the recipe, so you guys might find something new that you like too.

We had the idea for this series as we were playing Cook, Serve, Delicious 3 on Steam together, where you are running a food truck and cooking several dishes under pressure for your customers. Some of those dishes looked quite good in the game, leading us to look up recipes - and then I thought that this happens a lot for me, that I hear about some new dish and start looking it up, so I thought we could turn it into a proper series here.

Anything goes on Recipe Raiders. We could make a dessert, a main dish, a salad, a soup, some breakfast, even just a sauce. If we make it, and we haven't done it before, or we are trying a new variation, it lands on Recipe Raiders. Recipes can be found on the internet, in old and new cookbooks, or even just as suggestions from friends and relatives - including the other Troll.

The only condition we have is that whatever we are posting must be our own cooking. New takeout dishes or ready meals from the store do not count.

I think the grindette has something specific in mind already to start off the series tomorrow... so stay tuned, I'm excited to hear how her dish turns out too.

Let´s get started: with Palak Paneer!

What is that? You may ask. It´s a vegetarian dish from India with spinach, tomatoes, onion, garlic, chili, turmeric, coriander, heavy cream (I took coconut milk instead, due to lactose intolerance) and of course paneer (a kind of "cheese"). You can prepare the paneer either yourself (what I did) or buy it. Making the paneer is easy: You boil about 1 liter of milk, add lemon juice (the lemon was kindly provided by Harriers mom, because I had forgotten to buy lemon), immediately take the milk from the stove. The milk is now separated from its solid components. You take the solid components, put it into a towel in a sieve, let it stand for about 2 hours and then put it into the fridge, let it stand for another hour (I let it stand overnight). Voilá!

I raided "Madame Cuisine" of this recipe (in German), but here is one in English.

For the Recipe Raiders series, I decided to try out recipes from either from the game "Cook, Serve, Delicious" or "Overcooked".

So, let´s see how Prim did at making Palak Paneer, shall we?

There it is: Prim´s Palak Paneer with coconut milk and coconut cream:

I would say: cooked, served, DELICIOUS! Guess the Onion King would give me three stars for that one!

It was really good, but pretty heavy on the stomach. Fills you up very quickly!
I made too much, the left-overs have been frozen down for Tuesday, which is our vegetarian day. Yes, I will make that recipe again!

Looks great, Prim! Glad you liked it. And I'm glad that you can finally stop calling it "the green soup".

Palak Paneer is a classic, I think my brother had it once in a restaurant when we were visiting Birmingham together. I had some Palak Murgh at one place there, which is a similar dish, but with chicken.

Originally posted by Primrose6789
What is that? You may ask. It´s a vegetarian dish from India with spinach, tomatoes, onion, garlic, chili, turmeric, coriander, heavy cream (I took coconut milk instead, due to lactose intolerance) and of course paneer (a kind of "cheese"). You can prepare the paneer either yourself (what I did) or buy it. Making the paneer is easy: You boil about 1 liter of milk, add lemon juice (the lemon was kindly provided by Harriers mom, because I had forgotten to buy lemon), immediately take the milk from the stove. The milk is now separated from its solid components. You take the solid components, put it into a towel in a sieve, let it stand for about 2 hours and then put it into the fridge, let it stand for another hour (I let it stand overnight). Voilá!

Unless you need the lemon for flavour, vinegar works just as well.
Vinegar is used to form the curd when making Mizithra. When we made it, we use cows' milk, so technically it was something else.

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Unless you need the lemon for flavour, vinegar works just as well.
Vinegar is used to form the curd when making Mizithra. When we made it, we use cows' milk, so technically it was something else.

Oh, is that how you would make the cheese curds that are used in poutine as well? I had a look at some guides, some of them suggested putting bacteria cultures in.

Well, the HORSE race is on, and it looks like some other Troll noticed too.

...and he even made sure to sit to the left of the fish.

Best of luck to all of us! :club::club::club:

Originally posted by Harrier88
Well, the HORSE race is on, and it looks like some other Troll noticed too.
I did OK for a while, but got busticated chasing lots of outs that didn't materialize

So it goes.
Congrats on lasting longer — did you cash?

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I did OK for a while, but got busticated chasing lots of outs that didn't materialize

So it goes.
Congrats on lasting longer — did you cash?

Still in, currently 8th out of 10 remaining. I will update when I'm done.

Sunday HORSE Race

All right, we're done. I just got out in 5th place for $12.12. There were two unlucky rivers during the Hold'em parts.

It was nice to have all the Trolls in there tonight.

You guys did pretty well too. I railed Vorpal for a bit, didn't see the exit hand, but he was ahead of both of us for a while. Prim also did well, but got unlucky with her acies in this Stud hand:

I'm glad that I was able to grab an FT for Team Troll. And I'll take the win in the challenge. More may be coming next week already - the grindette means business again.

Oh, and I guess Prim may be interested to know what I had here:

Troll Trivia of the Week

During a summer holiday in the early to mid 90's in Halkidiki, Greece, little Harrier loved to watch the games in the resort's video arcade in the evenings.

After being a spectator for many days, his parents finally gave him some drachmae to have a shot at a Tetris machine. Little Harrier...

1) Broke the high score
2) Damaged the cabinet
3) Froze up in panic

All three — in that order

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
All three — in that order

Interesting theory.

For any of you guys that joined later on, there are no such trick questions in here, each of our questions will have one correct answer among the three choices.

Well, concerning that poker hand in Limit Holdem: I just got one thing I want to ask, my friend:

:mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr:

Congratulations again on the lottery:f_drink::f_drink::f_drink:

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
All three — in that order

Originally posted by Harrier88

1) Broke the high score
2) Damaged the cabinet
3) Froze up in panic

It could be a complete story with a great start by overtaking the score without realizing that you have damaged and petrified aware that you have to repay the damage:f_biggrin:

Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the Week

During a summer holiday in the early to mid 90's in Halkidiki, Greece, little Harrier loved to watch the games in the resort's video arcade in the evenings.

After being a spectator for many days, his parents finally gave him some drachmae to have a shot at a Tetris machine. Little Harrier...

1) Broke the high score
2) Damaged the cabinet
3) Froze up in panic

I'm putting faith in a young Harrier to break the high score! Don't let me down!