Primrose vs Harrier - Troll Challenges

Friday HORSE Race

Yes, it is back after the long break. A bit too soon, possibly, as far as I am concerned. Juggling dinner time together with this and two other MTTs in different formats is a surefire recipe for disaster. To add insult to injury, I did this right after laying out some guidelines for more focused grinding on my blog the other day.

It can almost be considered a miracle that I lasted more than a couple of minutes, but it's no miracle that the grindette lasted longer than me, giving her essentially a free win in this challenge. She went on to show that she deserved the win, however, and brought her stack all the way to a mincash, finishing 30th out of 184. All that while dealing with an unstable internet connection, by the way. Well done!

Congrats again, Prim, and let's hope that our next HORSE race will be more of a game.

Only Saffo answering this time? Well, guys, I don't blame you.

Let me pick the question again next time, Prim.

Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the Week

Young Primrose (aged about 7 or 8) was in the car with her father once to pick up her mother from work. In there, he was reaming Prim out for her rude behavior, which was...

1) burping
2) farting
3) picking her nose

Solution:

Poor Primrose is feeling a little under the weather. Luckily, it is just a common cold, but still, her baking plans had to be postponed a little. But I heard she already made some delicious cookies using my nuts.

Troll Trivia of the Week

There were some setbacks during Harrier's sporting career. One included...

1) Scoring an own goal in a soccer match
2) Failing a judo belt graduation exam
3) Finishing last in a casual archery tournament

(Note: I participated in all three, so that won't be a loophole.)

I'll go with 1) Scoring an own goal in a soccer match

Pimp my veggie day! Prim presents for Recipe Raiders: Falafel!

Inspired by the game "Cook, Serve, Delicious". Finally, I tried to make Falafel and there they are:

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There are several recipes for Falafel online, but glutenfree, this one here worked best for me. I was struggling a bit with the shape of those Falafels, the dough got too liquid, couldn´t form nice little balls, so, there´s a bit room for improvment, but anyway: COOKED, SERVED, DELICIOUS!

Trolls verdict: YUMM YUMM! Four stars out of five, there´s room for improvment of my cooking skills.

Looks awesome. I even considered getting some falafel mix myself when I was grocery shopping today, but first of all, I forgot, and second, I think I should make them from scratch instead, just like you did.

I had some halloumi tonight again, this time in pita pockets. It was good, but quite messy to it. I will try to keep it a little simpler next time.

What, we do one quick poker challenge last Friday, then we're immediately back to being a cooking blog?

Well, we both do have many cooking ideas that we would love to try - just watch what I will whip up once I have finally used up all those expired Maggi packages at home. And yes, next Friday will most likely not have another HORSE race, because Primrose and I plan to do a special out of town meetup that day, including another Live Challenge. It's nothing we haven't done before, but it does require a little planning, we are still working out our routes and all.

Luckily, both of our poker grinds seem to show some signs of recovery, so maybe our poker challenges can be fleshed a bit soon too.

Honestly, though... I'm more excited for getting to try out new recipes soon.

We have seen some nice burgers in our ongoing Burgers Around The World series. I like them, at least. We are far from done, and I still have several ideas, but not all of them involve beef and pork. I have never tried making my own chicken patties yet, and store-bought ones are not always great... I don't think they even come in unbreaded versions.

Let's try it now, so I can get a bit more creative with it, if things go well. But today, I'm just going to try making some basic chicken sandwiches.

Today's Dish: Basic Unbreaded Chicken Sandwich
Cuisine: American?
Recipe link: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/232375/natashas-chicken-burgers/ (used as reference)

I got a little over 400 g of chicken breast from the butcher shop today, cut into little strips. I asked the lady in the shop to cut it extra small, but I of course didn't expect anything resembling ground meat yet.

Originally, I planned to use a knife to cut the meat as small as possible. However, I also have some appliance ready at home. It hasn't been used for this purpose before, but let's try it out.

The test run with the chicken didn't go too bad, I'd say.

Let's add an egg, around eight tablespoons of panko breadcrumbs, and a teaspoon each of garlic powder and onion powder (as opposed to fresh garlic and fresh onion as in the recipe). This is the final result.

It was still quite wet and mushy, almost like dough. I was still able to form them a little in the pan using a spatula.

Flip them a few times, and they come out all right.

They have a more than decent size for those brioche buns too.

My preferred toppings originally were honey mustard sauce, pickles and roasted onions... but the store didn't carry any bottled honey mustard sauce, and I didn't feel like going recipe raiding for it on short notice. I went for honey barbecue sauce instead... except that one was almost used up too.

Anyway, this is the finished sandwich:

And those are the toppings for the second one, where I used Mexican-style salsa and jalapeños instead.

For basic sandwiches, I'd say they were not bad at all. The meat turned out like it was supposed to be.

I think I'm ready for the "international" burger versions involving chicken patties now. Or some more advanced chicken sandwiches, possibly some using breaded patties.

Originally posted by Harrier88
Poor Primrose is feeling a little under the weather. Luckily, it is just a common cold, but still, her baking plans had to be postponed a little. But I heard she already made some delicious cookies using my nuts.

Troll Trivia of the Week

There were some setbacks during Harrier's sporting career. One included...

1) Scoring an own goal in a soccer match
2) Failing a judo belt graduation exam
3) Finishing last in a casual archery tournament

(Note: I participated in all three, so that won't be a loophole.)

3

Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the Week

There were some setbacks during Harrier's sporting career. One included...

1) Scoring an own goal in a soccer match
2) Failing a judo belt graduation exam
3) Finishing last in a casual archery tournament

(Note: I participated in all three, so that won't be a loophole.)

Solution:

Back to the Palmengarten...

Yes, Primrose and I met up at the beautiful Palmengarten in Frankfurt again, just like we did last year. And once again, my plan was to do another miniature golf challenge where Primrose could get her revenge: This time, we would add the 23 points margin by which I won last year as a handicap to my score.

Also, I would have liked to do another individual challenge at the boat hire. Either, we would get the paddle boats once again, but Primrose would be steering it, or we would get the rowing boats instead and have me rowing for both of us.

In the end, though... it wasn't meant to be. There was some light rain when we arrived at about 10 AM, something I actually enjoyed. It was late August when we visited last year, towards the end of a terrible heat wave, so I was looking forward to revisiting the botanical garden in some more brisk weather conditions. This is how things looked shortly after we had entered:

Unfortunately, this meant that the miniature golf course stayed closed to visitors, even though the weather cleared up a few hours later. I wouldn't have minded playing in the rain, but when the course is closed, there's nothing you can do... unless you can supply your own putters. Too bad, I was really looking forward to another match with the grindette.

Similarly, the boat hire stayed closed too. Bummer...

Oh well, Primrose still had a wonderful time over there, and I enjoyed it too - and at the end of the day, that's all that matters. It would still be nice to do a proper versus challenge during a live meetup some time again, it seems like ages since we had a good one. Luckily, we already have some ideas.

Also, there may be other "challenges" along the way that we could read about online. I bought Primrose some seeds for venus and sundew flytraps, and the grindette is eager to plant them next to her chilis. I'm sure we will be able to read about their progress on her blog.

Here are some the grown up plants along with some other ones behind glass in one of the exhibitions:

She also received a complimentary bag of seeds for other plants along with our purchase... I think they are called "succulents"? We saw a bunch of them over there too, I think they were included in the semi-desert exhibition, but I'm not sure if we took any pictures of them.

It was a lovely meetup, despite the lack of proper live challenges, and we will get back to those too. And until then, we should be able to meet up at the tables.

Pictures of our trip should be coming up soon, Primrose took some nice ones too. I hope we will be able to present all of them by tomorrow evening, at least.

Thank you VERY much for the seeds, Harrier! :heart::heart::heart::heart:
Besides chilis, succulents, cactusses and carnivores are my great passion. I inend to plant the seeds probably next week, but before I do, I have to do a bit of study how to care for those properly.

Primrose's favorite section in the Palmengarten was the semi-desert, with loads of beautiful cacti on display, among other things.

It was surprisingly cool in there. I know that contrary to popular conceptions, some deserts are actually very cold, but many of those plants were native to Mexico, so I figured they could use some warmer temperatures. Or maybe we just exited an even warmer section, so it only felt cold to us.

I do like the differences in temperature and humidity in that "tropicarium", it really feels like short trip around the world.

The German name of the cactus below translates to "mother-in-law's seat"... make of that what you will.

I was excited to see the entrance to the fog desert section with no visible signs of it being closed... but this door was as far as we got, it was locked yet again. I don't know what's supposed to be so taboo about this section, it is very rarely accessible to the public.

It would be tough for me to pick a favorite... but I always tend to enjoy the separate "palm house", because it seems more like a completed garden rather than isolated plants on display.

The little underground section with the aquariums that we saw last time was unfortunately not accessible this time.

As nice as the dry section of the tropicarium is, the humid rainforest sections are impressive too.

Many different sections in there, separated by climate zones. I don't even know if we managed to visit all of them last time.

Here's a cinnamon tree - the spice we use is made from its bark.

Some vanilla plants can be found here... but to be honest, I'm not completely sure which one it is.

More spices on display here. Anise, clove, cardamom... we're gladly using them in the kitchen, so it's interesting to see where they are all coming from.

Another swampy area contained some rice plants. You gotta love rice, literally the perfect side dish.

But modern life as we know it would hardly be imaginable without this plant right here:

It's a coffee shrub. This is the plant that gets millions upon millions of people across the whole world out of bed every morning. What would we do without it...

Here are its precious fruits:

The subantarctic house is very small compared to most of the other sections, but it's cool that it exists. It might be a lot greener in there than you may imagine if you hear the word "subantarctic".

And this outside section, featuring raised flower beds and an "insect hotel" even gave Prim some ideas for her own garden. She does keep an insect hotel at home already, but it's not quite the "Hyatt" that this one is.

Also, if you're wondering about what goes into growing all these plants here - something that definitely crossed our minds a few times - we had a look from behind the glass into some "employees only" sections to see the plants that are growing there. Eventually, some of those plants should find their way into an exhibit here too.

This is a tree that may have called for some safety distance... it's a fish poison tree.

Speaking of which, there were plenty of fishies once again too. I think I have heard Primrose exclaim "Wow, what a big fish!" about as often as when I'm railing her SNG sessions.

But there were other animals around too, like this family of... wild geese, maybe?

And this duck just decided to have a good sleep in the middle of a footpath. It didn't mind the Trolls passing by, I assume it's either a deep sleeper, or it was just very tired.

Lastly, we also visited the insect exhibition again. To our delight, the smell samples were back, allowing visitors to smell the scents that certain insects like.

We had different favorites. I liked the sweet nectar scents that bees like the most, while Primrose preferred the more flowery smells that night moths love.

And of course, there were the butterflies once again.

It's difficult to get good pictures of those beauties, but Prim managed to snap a few great ones.

The one munching on an orange slice up here was so big that I wasn't even sure if it was real rather than just a sculpture or something. It seems to be one of those "Great Owl" butterflies, we learned about it during our last visit.

My favorite of them all is still this Blue Morpho butterfly, I think it's gorgeous. Prim has some amazing pictures of it.

This could be a Tiger-Striped Longwing, according to that chart above? It looks nice too.

Maybe we will see Primrose's pictures tomorrow - she even has a funny story about one of those butterflies.

The troll butterfly

The butterfly house was really awesome! And yes, I have a funny story to tell about it. After visiting the butterfly house and taking a lot of nice pics of the butterflies, I told Harrier that I have to go to the bathroom. So, I went there, took my backpack off and discovered a little stowaway on my backpack.

Guess this little guy wanted to sneak out of the butterfly house and travel a bit with us? :f_biggrin::f_ugly: So, I quickly finished "my business", carefully carried my backpack and told Harrier that we must bring this little troll hier back "home". We carefully carried my backpack, went back to the butterfly house and eventually Harrier carefully chased this little troll away from my backback. :f_biggrin::f_ugly: Would have loved to invite this little troll to come home with me, but the butterfly house is a better place for it. So, off it went, that little troll.