My aunt lived for a time in a desert location near Palm Springs California.
Unable to afford the water to keep a conventional garden, she grew exotic cacti.
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Looks like they are called Egyptian geese in English. Good to know, thanks for the info.
The ones we met didn't seem all that aggressive to us, as we were pretty close to their kids and all. Of course, we didn't mean any harm and stayed on the footpath.
Originally posted by Primrose6789
The troll butterflyThe 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.
Of course that little butterfly wanted to come home with the grindette.Many of us would act the same way if we were butterflies.
Not sure which one this is, according to the chart they had in the butterfly house, which I posted above. The "variable cracker" seems to be the best fit. It says it can be found in the wild in Texas, Mexico, Central America and parts of South America.
It really didn't want to leave your backpack either. I expected that a little shake would be enough, but it didn't move one bit until I carefully touched its feet (are they even called feet?). I'm aware that you're normally not supposed to touch the butterflies in there, but I'm sure it was acceptable in this case.
The people who are maintaining the butterfly house are surely glad to have the little guy back, even though it proved that it fits right in with the Trolls too.
More pictures from our trip and news about Prim's new seeds can be found on her personal blog.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
My aunt lived for a time in a desert location near Palm Springs California.
Unable to afford the water to keep a conventional garden, she grew exotic cacti.
Cacti and other desert plants have their own unique beauty.
One of the lessons from yesterday's trip was that life springs up in all kinds of places. Check out this small outside section, I think it was near the butterfly house:
All kinds of different plants, all of them identified and labeled, in a small rocky section. If we were to pass by something like that outside, we would likely not pay much attention to it.
I once considered starting a zen garden section at home, with sand and some rocks. I quickly dismissed the idea and instead intended to do a miniature one in the living room or so. That project ended up being on a long hiatus as well, even though I should have everything I need by now... maybe I will eventually get back to it.
Troll Trivia of the Week
Despite the lack of Live Challenges, the Trolls enjoyed their trip to the Palmengarten very much. There were, however, some complications along the way, during...
1) Primrose's bus ride to Frankfurt
2) our subway ride in the city
3) our walk to the botanical garden itself
Speaking of long trips, the Trolls will stop by in Mongolia next on their Burgers Around The World tour.
You can hardly see it, but the beef patties are marinated, with soy sauce, rice vinegar and a little cornstarch.
I also prepared some sauce in advance. It is mostly based on soy sauce too, with added water, brown sugar, corn starch, pepper and chili flakes.
I added some chopped onions to the pan during the cooking process.
Also some carrots, green onions, and bean sprouts later on.
That's it, we're ready. We start with a patty, as usual...
...then add the veggies...
...and then the prepared soy sauce.
That's our Mongolian burger.
The taste was not as strong as I expected, but the burgers were still very good. 
Primrose has some doubts, like with the Korean burgers we had before. She normally loves Far Eastern cuisine, but seems to have some serious reservations about whether it is a good fit for a hamburger sandwich.
Still, as far as I am concerned, those are great. So good, in fact, that they narrowly miss a Top 3 spot, I will put them just slightly below the Eastern Mediterranean ones.
1st Switzerland
2nd Cyprus
3rd Greece
4th Mongolia
5th Denmark
6th Korea
7th Spain
8th Germany
9th Alsace
10th Italy
11th Texas
12th California
13th Mexico
14th Turkey
15th England
16th France
17th Cuba
18th Canada
19th Hungary
20th The Netherlands
Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the WeekDespite the lack of Live Challenges, the Trolls enjoyed their trip to the Palmengarten very much. There were, however, some complications along the way, during...
1) Primrose's bus ride to Frankfurt
2) our subway ride in the city
3) our walk to the botanical garden itself
2) our subway ride in the city
In our area the is (or was) a restaurant called the Mongolie Grill.
Theoretically they served Mongolian food, cooked in a Mongolian style. I have no personal experience with Mongolian food in general, the their food is fantastic.
Just for fun, here is some Inuit throat singing for comparison.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
In our area the is (or was) a restaurant called the Mongolie Grill.
Theoretically they served Mongolian food, cooked in a Mongolian style. I have no personal experience with Mongolian food in general, the their food is fantastic.
Several Chinese restaurants in the area offer Mongolian barbecue at certain times, usually in the evening. You would pick your raw meat (or seafood or even veggies) from a buffet and bring it to some guy at the grill who will cook it for you. it is usually superb, but I rarely visit at those hours.
Originally posted by Harrier88
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
In our area the is (or was) a restaurant called the Mongolie Grill.
Theoretically they served Mongolian food, cooked in a Mongolian style. I have no personal experience with Mongolian food in general, the their food is fantastic.Several Chinese restaurants in the area offer Mongolian barbecue at certain times, usually in the evening. You would pick your raw meat (or seafood or even veggies) from a buffet and bring it to some guy at the grill who will cook it for you. it is usually superb, but I rarely visit at those hours.
Yup, that's exactly how it worked
HORSE Race? To tell you the truth, I kind of forgot about it, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway, as Primrose was away for dinner with her tennis colleagues. There will be other times... but I do hope that we can get back to more challenges soon.
Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the WeekDespite the lack of Live Challenges, the Trolls enjoyed their trip to the Palmengarten very much. There were, however, some complications along the way, during...
1) Primrose's bus ride to Frankfurt
2) our subway ride in the city
3) our walk to the botanical garden itself
Spoiler
3) our walk to the botanical garden itself
Vorpal was not wrong when he mentioned that long bus rides can be a pain. However, Primrose has switched to a certain private company some time ago for her trips to our meetups, and they tend to do much better than the regular bus service. There were a few minutes of delay on her ride due to traffic, but it was still perfectly acceptable.
No problems during the subway ride either, except that we needed some time to locate our platform – which brings us to the real problem on our way to the Palmengarten. Primrose and I have a just about equally terrible sense of direction. 
We have been to the Palmengarten before, and... kind of knew where we needed to go? We knew that the route from our subway stop was not complicated, at least. Just turn right at one point, and eventually, we should arrive. The only question was: Turn right where? 
We decided to just trust our guts – which may have been our first mistake. As I said, both Prim and I are really bad at finding our way, but the grindette may at least be a little more confident than I am, so she continued to march on in the directions that seemed right to us when I was already looking around for people to ask. After all, we passed a bakery, and there were bakeries on our way during our last visit too, so that's a good sign, right?
After a few minutes of fruitless marching, I decided to ask some guy running an asparagus and strawberries stand – and could just barely keep the grindette from purchasing fresh asparagus there. Unfortunately, the owner of the stand admitted that he was not from Frankfurt and had no idea either.
I went into a small shop and asked the Indian lady at the counter, and luckily, she not only allowed me to use her store's toilet for free, but also knew where the Palmengarten was located... pointing out that we were pretty much going in the opposite direction. When I told Prim about it, she mentioned that we were “almost correct”... 
So we knew the general direction, and on our way, I asked some people who were leaving a pharmacy, who further helped us out. And eventually, there were clear street signs, which allowed even us to reach our destination.
Well... better luck next time for the Trolls, I suppose. And for you guys too.
Troll Trivia of the Week
Back in grade school, young Harrier once wrote a mother's day poem that contained a line praising his mom for something that may be considered a little controversial now, which was...
1) being good at cleaning
2) bringing her husband beer
3) having lost a lot of weight lately
I'm going to go with 1) being good at cleaning
I'm sure she was.
The European ladies in our town all had spotless houses.
It's a slow trolling week... so let's at least do another trip on our burger world tour. We are going to Arabia today.
The patties are all beef, of course, and partially inspired by this recipe for Jordanian beef kopta kebab. The seasoning includes some fresh parsley from the front yard, maybe around four tablespoons of it, close to a tablespoon of dried coriander, about a tablespoon each of onion powder and garlic powder (a bit more of the garlic), about half a teaspoon each of cumin, allspice and cinnamon, and some standard pepper and salt.
I followed another recipe from that site for an Arabic style salad, with cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, parsley, olive oil and some sumac, which is a new spice I got just the other day. I had to completely eyeball the amounts, though. Just whatever felt right.
The sauce was mostly yogurt, with some mayonnaise and lemon juice added, as well as some leftover parsley.
And that's pretty much it, now we just need to put those things into order. Patty:
Salad and sauce:
...and our Arabic (or is it Arabian?) burger is ready.
Allspice and cinnamon in a burger patty? Primrose does not approve. Maybe she would have liked this burger without those spices, but as it is, she calls banhauser on it.
Personally, I liked it. Like with last week's version, I expected a stronger taste, but it was pretty good all around. My second one had a little more sauce on it, which was a change for the better. Not much else I can say - seasoning, sauce and salad were all in the "pretty good" range. Not bad, not amazing.
I will put it... maybe right below the Mexican one.
1st Switzerland
2nd Cyprus
3rd Greece
4th Mongolia
5th Denmark
6th Korea
7th Spain
8th Germany
9th Alsace
10th Italy
11th Texas
12th California
13th Mexico
14th Arabia
15th Turkey
16th England
17th France
18th Cuba
19th Canada
20th Hungary
21st The Netherlands
Oh, and it looks like there are some problems with imgur... many old pictures here are gone... 
Maybe it is only temporary, maybe it is not. I will try to deal with it in the next few days. In the meantime, can anyone recommend any good alternative image hosting sites?
Okay, weird stuff... the pics may or may not be gone...
This is what the first page of this thread looks like for me, for example. Note that the logo, which was another imgur upload, is gone.
Many of my imgur pictures won't show for me, whether it is here on the forum or on imgur itself.
However... I just told Prim about it, and she told me that she can see the pics just fine.
So, if you guys could do me a favor, can you please check the first page of this thread and see if the pictures will show up for you? I have really no idea what is going on right now.
Thank you.
Okay, very weird... Looks like it's only me then, whatever it is that is going on.
At least that means that I won't have to go through my threads and re-upload all those pictures one by one.
We hope everything is all right, Saffo. 
Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the WeekBack in grade school, young Harrier once wrote a mother's day poem that contained a line praising his mom for something that may be considered a little controversial now, which was...
1) being good at cleaning
2) bringing her husband beer
3) having lost a lot of weight lately
Solution:
Spoiler
2) bringing her husband beer
This poem was most likely written in 1997, or possibly 1998, partially as a school assignment, and partially as a Mother's Day gift. And at one point, desperately looking for a rhyme, I added in a reference to her bringing beer to my father - despite the fact that she never actually did it, I believe.
Translation, ignoring rhymes:
Dear Mum,
Happy Mother's Day!
I'm writing to you because I like you.
Most of the time, you're very nice to me,
You often bring my Dad his beer,
Every month, you give me my allowance,
You are the best in the world!
I hatched something out for you too:
I'm giving you a bottle of sparkling wine!
I hope that you will stay healthy for a long time,
I need you, and that is the reason.
Gotta love the "most of the time, you're very nice" too.
As you can see, my teacher made some corrections, though she often simply added exclamation points, resulting in different capitalization. She was quite pleased with the poem, though. She mentioned that my mother will surely be happy with it.
And indeed, she was. And she also had a laugh at the beer line, because she knew that I was just looking for a rhyme, that it had no basis in reality... and that it was amusingly awkward.
My Dad was frowning a little, though. "When did that ever happen?"
Better luck next time, trolls. I hope the pictures are working, at least.