Primrose vs Harrier - Troll Challenges

The Trolls are not going skiing like today's figurine from our Troll Calendar, but we'll be visiting a place on our Burgers around the World tour where we could find plenty of good spots for it.

Primrose accidentally made some rösti the other day, and I happen to have some more Bofrost treasures in the freezer...

This one will also involve cheese, naturally. It may be time to get that special patty maker out again...

You would simply insert your beef into this fine hunk of Chinese plastic...

... push down the middle part to form a little hollow in the center, which I have filled with a big slice of Emmenthal cheese, ripped into little pieces...

...and then put some meat over that hollow and press down again to seal it. The patties actually came out pretty well, I believe - and they are now stuffed with cheesy goodness.

I ripped up another slice of that cheese to melt it down with about 50 ml of milk and some flour and butter, to create a cheese sauce.

Also, I made some bacon again in the air fryer - diced bacon, this time.

The rösti are quite massive... the one on the right broke, but it's hard to see from here.

Let's build our burger, then. We start with yet another small slice of Emmenthal...

...then our beef patty. It held together quite well. Some bits of that cheese on the inside seem to have gotten through at the top, but that's completely fine.

For some visual comedy, here's one of those full size röstis...

I ripped off some pieces to get it to a more appropriate size for our burger.

Then some of my homemade cheese sauce...

And finally some bacon and roasted onions.

Our Swiss burger is ready...

...and it even comes with some extra rösti strips as a side dish.

Let's cut it up to see how the cheese on the inside turned out. Actually pretty nice.

I expected that this burger, despite being inspired by Switzerland, would leave little room for neutrality. When I was in the process of making it, I mentioned to Prim that this would either be really good, or really bad. Turns it out it was very good! In fact, I'd say this might be my new number one so far, beating Greece. Primrose approved too.

New ranking:
1st Switzerland
2nd Greece
3rd Germany
4th Texas
5th Mexico
6th England
7th Hungary

Yes, I would love to try it! Looks delicous!

Troll Calendar - Day 2

We drew a girly egg today. And this time, it has a picture of a gender-flipped version of me on it.

Here's what's inside. Some kind of gingerbread man?

It comes with this little template for drawing, as the instructions show.

Assembly is very simple. And as it turns out, that template doubles as a stand too.

That's all there's to it. This one came with a string as well, like yesterday's figurine.

A gingerbread-man for ginger-Prim? :f_biggrin::f_ugly:

Originally posted by Harrier88
Getting ready...

In preparation for our Trollsmas Market dishes, I already got some appropriate tableware.

I got some dishwasher safe stainless steel versions of those little fork things you'd get at a fries stall, and also porcelain versions of those paper bowls.

Could you tell me (gladly also by private message) the reference address of these articles?
I would like to buy them for us!
(PS: Ich befinde mich auch in Deutschland...)

It may not be too noticeable in the picture above, but they came in two different sizes.

Also some porcelain versions of other common paper plates.

Looking forward to using them soon.

Ah, sorry Mizzzzz, I couldn't tell what you were trying to say at first because your question was buried inside the quote.

I simply got those items on eBay. If you search for "Pommesschale Porzellan" and "Pommesgabel Stahl" you should find several listings for them. Especially with the forks, there are several different versions you can choose from, so pick what you like.

The four kinds of porcelain dishes were all available from the same vendor, which helped with the shipping costs. If you like to have some direct links, feel free to send me a friend request. I hope it's okay to post the seller's eBay names here, they were "www_benedikter_org" for the dishes and "mbmmetall" for the forks.

Do you have any more suggestions for Christmas market foods and drinks, by any chance?

Troll Calendar - Day 3

Another reg egg, and another one with a picture of me. Looks like we're getting all the squirrels out right at the beginning.

Ohhhhhh, almost looks like St. Paddy's Day is coming early.

Many of those figurines come with some dubious additional functionalities, and I think we're really starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel here...

You see, it came with this red bow thing, which looks like this on the other side:

As the instructions say, you could put a piece of paper on it, and then scribble over it to roughly make those indented shapes appear.

...or you could just attach it to the figurine. This one has nowhere to stand on... and it may have had a Guinness or two as well. Maybe that little string to hang it up somewhere would actually come in handy this time.

Aaaaaaaaaw That one is cute!

Originally posted by Harrier88

That reminded me of this:

And the reason: Safety, of course

I was not aware that Kinder Surprise eggs are banned in the US...

Though the United States are a pretty big place, with many different regulations everywhere, and that applies to both of these things. And there are usually more things attached to buying firearms than people are aware of.

I once heard that the cannons from the Lego pirate sets, like the one I'm currently building in the advent calendar on my own blog, used to be banned in the US too because they shot little plastic pellets that could hurt children if handled improperly. Would be really ironic to outlaw toy guns for safety reasons while still selling the real thing...

And it's a really poor showing that online poker is still not commonly back in America, over a decade after Black Friday.

This IS in fact a f*** Trollmas market challenge!! :f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::mdr::mdr::mdr::mdr:

Crêpes (standard)
Variation: with chocolate
Variation: with booze
Mulled wine
Mini Donuts (standard)
Variation: with "Christmassy" flavoring
Waffles (standard)
Variation: with "Christmassy" flavoring
Churros
Lumumba (cocoa with rum)
Bratwurst and fries
Variation: Currywurst
Cinnamon stars
Cheese fondue
Reibekuchen (potato pancakes)
Swiss Rösti with cheese
Austrian "Kaiserschmarrn" :wtf::coolface:

Bonus:
Christmas Stollen
Tarte flambée

:f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly:

:rage::rage::rage::rage:

Originally posted by Primrose6789
Austrian "Kaiserschmarrn" :wtf::coolface:

Primrose is such a Troll these days.

Pics and the story behind it coming up later.

Troll Calendar - Day 4

No squirrel this time.

"Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs. Lancaster?"

It's our telemark skier again. Now it showed up in a supposed "girly egg", after showing up before in what we thought was a standard egg.

Maybe there is no distinction between the pink ones and the other ones for those Christmassy eggs after all. I guess that would be a bit of a bummer if that's the case.

I put the two of them next to each other, so they can have a little competition now.

I was so excited to prepare some nice Churros ...

But the problem is: I have celiac disease, so, the Churros have to be gluten free. I looked up some recipes. So, it´s water, butter and sugar (in my case Erythritol, no sugar, as I live mostly low carb). Warmed up the water, the butter and the Erythritol with a little salt and added the glutenfree flour. Mixed everything well, the dough looked good. Let the dough cool down a bit and added 3 eggs. Dough still looked okay, so put it into a spray bag, warmed up some low fat margarine and wanted to spray some pieces of the dough into it. Then, I noticed that the dough - because it´s gluten-free - does not maintain its shape but falls apart. :facepalm::rage: Tried desperately to form Churros but the dough kept falling apart.

Well now: How do I safe it, so that I don´t have to throw it away?!

There:

It already tasted like "Kaiserschmarrn", so, let it be Austrian "Kaiserschmarrn"!

Homer would give 3 stars, because it was really good, but well, as actually those should have been Churros: 1 Star for good taste & the effort. :coolface::f_ugly:

Nice save yet again, Prim.

I'll see if I can get anything going today myself...

All right, my turn. I originally wanted to try making some crêpes today, but we had leftover buttermilk from the slaw we made this weekend... so let's make some waffles instead. And I happen to have a really good recipe from the dark web.

Actually, it's freely available online too. But I really did first encounter it in a dark web exploration video on YouTube. I was actually a little disappointed to see it on the regular internet, even though it made saving the recipe easier. It would have been more exciting if this had been some "top secret" recipe, only available in some corners of the dark web... but it's okay, I will still call them "Dark Web Waffles".

For this one, I need to separate some eggs... Well, let's do it. Some cocktails call for that too, better get some practice with it already.

It's critical to get this right. Getting some egg whites into the yolk is fine, but as soon as some yolk gets to the egg whites, you might as well bin the thing.

Okay, that's a disaster... On my very last egg, the yolk got runny and slipped right through. That's why it's wise to transfer the egg whites into a mixing bowl right away after successfully separating them, so you won't have to trash everything once it goes wrong, only the last batch.

What to do now... well, there was a way out of there. My mother lives one floor below me, and as it turns out, she had some leftover egg whites from some of her own cooking left in the fridge. It's a tiny bit of cheating... but yes, I'll gladly just take it off her hands.

It's possible, but not all that easy, to beat those egg whites by hand. But I happen to have this old appliance in one of my kitchen drawers too. It hasn't been used in ages...

Looks like it still did a fine job with the egg whites.

While we're at it, I might as well use this appliance for the rest of the dough, even though mixing by hand would have been quite doable.

I then transferred the egg whites into that bowl too, but I stirred that one by hand to make sure it won't overmix.

There's our finished waffle dough.

And here's my waffle maker, which has also seen a few years since its last use, I believe.

You're supposed to fill it up until about 2 cm, or a little under an inch short of the edge. This looks about right...

Well, I'd say it did come out all right.

And here is the finished pile of waffles:

Time to serve...

I didn't just go to my mum before to snatch some egg whites to undo my mistake, I also decided to visit her later on to spend a nice Advent evening together - and of course, I brought my waffles.

Note that the recipe for these waffles contains no sugar, and no kind of artificial sweetener either. Instead, you can top it with those things later on yourself, to your own taste.

These ones are with powdered sugar.

And these with cinnamon sugar.

For her own waffles, my mum also added some hazelnut cream and strawberries from our own garden... which were actually harvested just the other day, because the weather this year was so weird... Here they are served in her living room, where we enjoyed them with some coffee.

And here is one rolled up a little, just to give you an idea how soft and fluffy they turned out.

What's the verdict?

Yes, those are the real deal. Screw those commercial Christmas market waffles with all their sugar. Though adding some cinnamon sugar on top does upgrade them a lot, but no need to add it into the dough - you would end up topping them anyway.

New list:

Crêpes (standard)
Variation: with chocolate
Variation: with booze
Mulled wine
Mini Donuts (standard)
Variation: with "Christmassy" flavoring
Waffles (standard)
Variation: with "Christmassy" flavoring
Churros
Lumumba (cocoa with rum)
Bratwurst and fries
Variation: Currywurst
Cinnamon stars
Cheese fondue
Reibekuchen (potato pancakes)

Bonus:
Christmas Stollen
Tarte flambée

Sunday HORSE Race

The Trolls weren't just baking stuff today, we also met for our HORSE race in the evening again.

I had the better start, and managed to snatch a few pots, while Primrose did not get much until her great Razz hand which had a terrible runout, resulting in an early exit. Pokerstars has those new weird pop-up windows when you're done with a tournament, I don't really like them. In our case, they even made Primrose misclick out of the tournament before she could use her second bullet. Fortunately, it was still possible to re-join after opening the tournament lobby again.

It didn't go so well in my second rotation of games, and eventually I had to take a second bullet too. This one did not work out at all, totally card dead... Prim picked up an easy win in this challenge soon enough.

...but not only that she even picked up pot after pot to get a quite respectable run going. All the way to the final table, in fact! Final result was a 7th place finish for $7.53.

It's a good thing she found a way to take that second bullet after all... and that she brought her brown FT pants.

Way to go, Prim! Amazing job picking up such a great win for Team Troll.

Troll Calendar - Day 5

Today's entry will have weird lighting, because I didn't get to it until returning home late at night from my absurd work hours.

We drew yet another squirrel. The outside packaging doesn't matter, of course, we're looking for the stuff on the inside. It's still odd to draw so many of the same kind in such a short time early on.

Well, speaking of which...

It's yet another duplicate... already.

I'm seeing some problems with this year's version of the Troll Calendar. First of all, all those Christmassy eggs seem to have a pretty small pool of stuff to choose from, resulting in loads of duplicates, at least so far. Secondly, it appears like there is no distinction at all between what we thought were girly and non-girly eggs, now that we got two sets of duplicates over two different kinds of eggs already.

If we are going to do another Troll Calendar next year, we should definitely plan ahead a little more. Actually, I did plan ahead, but it looks like I got trolled... Fittingly, I guess.

Well, here's our gingerbread couple...

My Mum used to make gingerbread people out of wool for her great-grandkids.
If I still have one, I'll post a picture