I guess number 3. That would be the worst 1 to have I think.
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We will still have to wait for those other African-style burgers based on recipes from that book I have, but in the meantime, I had another idea:
Is Steak Madagascar even from the eponymous island? I don't know, but I will use a similar sauce here. We start by melting a piece of butter...
Add a tiny bit of tomato paste and mustard, as well as about a tablespoon of green peppercorns...
Then add 25 ml of brandy...
And finally 65 ml of cream.
That will do. For the burger itself, we start with some cooked spinach...
Then the beef patty:
And then the Madagascar sauce. Oh dear, it's a bit runny... this could be a little messy too eat.
Our Madagascar burger is ready.
It wasn't even that runny... and it was better than expected. 
Quite passable, the pepper is a good fit. Primrose would like to try it too, this burger has earned her full approval. 
I think I will put it just below our latest one in the list, solid middle position.
1st Switzerland
2nd Cyprus
3rd Israel
4th Greece
5th Mongolia
6th Denmark
7th Korea
8th Spain
9th Germany
10th Russia
11th Madagascar
12th Alsace
13th Italy
14th Texas
15th California
16th Mexico
17th Morocco
18th Brazil
19th Arabia
20th Turkey
21st England
22nd France
23rd Colombia
24th Cuba
25th Canada
26th Hungary
27th The Netherlands
Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the WeekIn early 2005, Harrier was an intern in the department of environmental affairs at his city's town hall. It went well for the most part, except for that one time when...
1) he was caught littering during a media interview
2) he wiped dog poop on the mayor's carpet
3) he activated a virus on his office computer
Solution:
Spoiler
2) he wiped dog poop on the mayor's carpet
It was mostly office work during that internship, but every once in a while, we went outside for some field work. One day, when we returned from one of those trips - I don't even remember what we were doing outside - the environmental officer noticed a strange odor of poop in our office. He had the sneaking suspicion that he stepped into something. I didn't notice, and he then tried to ignore it for a while too, but eventually, he had to get back to it.
He even took his shoes off to give them a good sniff, and then he had a closer look at mine. Turns out that I was the one who stepped into doggy doo when we were outside. Whoopsie... 
Now I noticed the smell too. Naturally, I was told to remove the mess on my feet.
I was on my way outside, but then I noticed this convenient doormat right in front of the mayor's office - perfect! It looked just about like this:
I scraped the poop off on it, and then returned to the office. Maybe the environmental officer was a little suspicious about me returning so quickly, because he wanted to know where I went to clean my shoe soles. I told him about that doormat, and he was like "wait, you mean right here in the town hall?". Obviously, that wasn't such a good idea in the first place, but it got better: As it turned out, that thing on the ground wasn't a doormat at all... it was supposed to be a decorative carpet... 
We're a small town, but still, you would think that the mayor would have something better to decorate the entrance to his office with than something like this which really does look like a doormat... but either way, the environmental officer wasn't happy, of course. I was sent to the basement to clean this carpet - and with these administrative places being both environmentally conscious and a little cheap, the only wipes they had for me were made from recycled paper that seemed almost thin enough to see through. It was a thankless task, but I guess I deserved it...
It took until the end of my shift that day, then I was told to go home and return the next day - with some new shoes! Other than that, though, no hard feelings. The rest of my internship went well.
Troll of the Day
This is a new series I would like to introduce. We have our traditional Troll of the Year on Primrose's blog, which I'm not even sure if we're going to do this year, because there is not really a lot of "trolling" going on here anymore. In addition to that, however, I would also like to honor those everyday Trolls that troll us at work, at home, online, in traffic or anywhere else in our day to day life.
Anyone and anything is eligible: People, animals, corporations, objects, fictional characters, websites, countries, laws of nature, abstract entities... anything goes. Self-nominations are definitely possible too. 
And certain Trolls may deserve more than one nomination...
My first Troll of the Day will be someone I encountered a few days ago, so it will be a retroactive nomination. And the winner is...
The guy in front of me at the Rewe checkout
My work hours have increased a bit lately, which also brings advantages when I am going grocery shopping after my shift. Previously, the kids at the nearby school would also be on their break when I would arrive, so the store would be pretty crowded and there would be long lines at the counter. Not so much anymore, with me arriving half an hour later, and there are also summer holidays right now, which is convenient. So I encountered an almost empty line with only one guy checking out in front of, with only a small purchase too, I think he bought a few bottles of some cleaner.
And what does he do? He pays for his roughly €7 purchase with a €200 bill... 
The lady at the counter (that's neither the store clerk nor the customer in the photo above, it's just a sample pic) first checked the banknote, which is a good idea, and then tried to reach for the change... which she didn't even have, because you are rarely required to give out that much at the counter. So she first had to call another employee to bring a few hundred Euros more, which takes its sweet time. Meanwhile, I'm stuck waiting... and marveling at the fact that this may have been the first time that I ever even encountered a €200 bill in the wild. I didn't even know what color it was (it's yellow).
It is a little strange that Euro banknotes even go up that high, isn't it? The US dollar, which is not too far apart in value, only goes up to $100, the Ben Franklin. The British Pound only goes up to £50, I believe. The Euro even has €500 bills, and I'm not sure either how common it is to have all the banknotes colored differently. The Americans, for example, like their "green stuff" instead.
It was similar with the old DM banknotes, which went up to 1K and also had different colors for each denomination. I remember that the DM1,000 one was brown and had the Brothers Grimm on it - I never encountered that one in the wild either. With Euros, I think €100 is the highest I ever saw before, and I don't typically carry anything higher than €50, I prefer credit for everything else. I mostly carry cash for restaurant visits anyway, I otherwise prefer the convenience of credit, especially at the grocery counter.
The guy in front of me clearly didn't - and for this creatively trolling way of causing a delay at an otherwise empty checkout counter, he is my personal Troll of the Day.
Troll Trivia of the Week
Nature-loving Primrose has a certain habit when she is around plants, which is...
1) sniffing blossoms
2) picking daisies
3) blowing dandelion seeds
Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the WeekNature-loving Primrose has a certain habit when she is around plants, which is...
1) sniffing blossoms
2) picking daisies
3) blowing dandelion seeds
I will go for option 2, but this is a tough 1 this week.
It is time for Recipe Raiders. I didn't even really plan it, but I found this can of kimchi in one of my kitchen drawers the other day when I was looking for something else.
Better put it to use - and I also just happen to have a recipe saved up on my PC for almost 10 years now, which I never got to try out because I never had all the ingredients on hand. This has changed now, so what are we waiting for?
Today's Dish: Kimchi-bokkeumbap
Cuisine: Korean
Recipe: https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/kimchi-bokkeumbap
This one requires some rice to be ready before we can start stir frying. If you have a rice cooker at home, this is easy to do.
We then heat some oil in a pan and add a can of kimchi. You are normally supposed to add the juice later, but I wasn't that skilled while getting the kimchi out of the can.
After cooking the kimchi for about a minute, we add the rice, 70 ml of water, and 2-3 tablespoons of gochujang. Remember that one? I got it for my Korean burgers a few months ago.
We will then stir it all together, ideally add a tablespoon of sesame oil, and after seven minutes, we will remove the pan from the heat and add some chopped green onions, some ripped nori, and sprinkle a tablespoon of roasted sesame seeds on top.
Now, serve it up.
This is a recipe I will surely keep around. It was quick and easy to make, and it's even all veggie, which was convenient, because today was my weekly vegetarian day. This dish would also work quite well with some added meat, though, I might try that version in the future.
Good meal, good way to use up some mussgoes that you may otherwise have trouble getting rid of, and quick preparation for us busy folks. This one is a keeper.
We stick with the Far Eastern theme on our next stop in the burger world tour.
There are many ways to base a burger on Chinese cuisine, it's a very rich subject matter, and I probably could have come up with several of them for different regions if I had researched it a little.
Instead, I'm going to keep it very simple, with a frozen veggie mix from the store and a commercially available prepared seasoning.
We don't need a lot of that wok veggie mix. I fried it in a pan, and also later added some additional bean sprouts that I had left over.
That's pretty much all the prep we need. Let's start with the patty, which is made from a beef and pork mixture that has been seasoned with about half a tablespoon of that seasoning mix shown above. Unfortunately, their shape didn't turn out so great this time.
We then add some of that veggie mix and some bottled hoisin sauce.
And that's it, our Chinese-inspired burger is ready.
We may have taken the easy route when it comes to preparing this burger, but sometimes the simple things work - this one was very good. As with most of those Asian-inspired burgers, Prim isn't sure. She says she would have to try it, it could be good or it could be banhauser. Fair enough, while she does like Chinese food and burgers, you rarely get to try a combination of the two, I suppose.
Now, once again, I will have to come up with a ranking. Hmmmm... upper third. I would put it above the Central European ones, but I don't know how it would stack up against the other Far Eastern versions we had so far, it has been a while. Let's put it right below Mongolia, just like in geography.
1st Switzerland
2nd Cyprus
3rd Israel
4th Greece
5th Mongolia
6th China
7th Denmark
8th Korea
9th Spain
10th Germany
11th Russia
12th Madagascar
13th Alsace
14th Italy
15th Texas
16th California
17th Mexico
18th Morocco
19th Brazil
20th Arabia
21st Turkey
22nd England
23rd France
24th Colombia
25th Cuba
26th Canada
27th Hungary
28th The Netherlands
Originally posted by Primrose6789
Not so sure about that one. Somehow looks delicious and somehow Banhauser.
Could be Schrödinger's sandwich... simultaneously delicious and banhauser at the same time.Mind you, many things I like are delicious and banhauser at the same time.
More Korean cooking. In fact, this is the dish I originally wanted to make before I stumbled upon my old Kimchi Bokkeumbap recipe last weekend.
This one right here is actually the dish that inspired my Korean-style burgers earlier this year. We will be making the real thing now.
Today's Dish: Beef Bulgogi
Cuisine: Korean
Recipe: https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/100606/beef-bulgogi/
We start one night ahead with this beef steak:
We are then going to cut it up into thin little strips...
...and marinade them over night with about 5 tablespoons of soy sauce, a minced clove of garlic, two tablespoons of roasted sesame seeds, 1-2 tablespoons of sugar (I used erythritol), two tablespoons of sesame oil, a chopped green onion, and some pepper.
Normally, you would put it on the grill. I simply fried it in a pan.
That's all - I served it with rice, and also added some gochujang paste once again.
Not bad, it was a fine dish. And I now finally had the meal that served as the inspiration for my Korea burger.
A lot of cooking this week, but where are the challenges? We may get our answer tomorrow, because Prim and I will take another trip. 
Familiar stuff, but sometimes the old things are worth re-visiting.
This time, we should be able to include at least one challenge unless something unexpected happens, so stay tuned until tomorrow evening.
The Trolls have met up again to visit what is currently their favorite outside location. We were going to the Palmengarten in Frankfurt once again - during excellent weather.
A bit too sunny for our liking, perhaps, especially for Prim who has to be extra careful with that sunlight. But it is late summer, so the heat was not all that brutal anymore.
There will be pictures once again, of course, but this time, we could also finally do a Troll Challenge again. We already wanted to do it last time, but couldn't, due to the weather. Today, it was finally time for our big rematch:
Live Challenge (Frankfurt Edition): Palmen-Golf Round 2 - Handicap Game
Yes, remember our round of miniature golf at the Palmengarten last year? I won back then, finishing the course in 78 strokes vs Prim's 101. This time, we will do the same thing again, except we add the 23 strokes difference on top of my score as a handicap, so I have to complete the course with 23 strokes less than the grindette. Sound tough? Maybe... but on the plus side, Prim's cute little hockey maneuvers that I decided to let slide last year may now end up working against her.
We got started, and Primrose, being the Troll she is, immediately scored a hole-in-one on the first track... I needed a second stroke myself, but caught up on the later tracks. So we went on to play the standard 18 hole course, navigating our way against classic obstacles like this one:
...or this one:
As it is often the case, there are also those tracks where you are not aiming for a hole, but for something different. This one, for example, is the dish where you are supposed to land your ball after a series of ramps to beat the track:
...and this is where we went looking for Primrose's ball after she gave it a nice and forceful shot off those ramps:
Then there is the slightly infamous track where you need to hit a net after another forceful shot. Last year, I barely managed to pull it off. This year, neither of us made it, though I got close a few times, and Primrose even managed to hit the rim one time. Another very good shot from her had me wondering if there was a hole in the net, because it looked like it went in, but didn't.
With this one, I'm just glad that there is still only one hole remaining in that wall after Primrose had her way with it:
Another track I didn't finish last time was that nasty "maze" track, where Prim got out her hockey moves again. 
I was about to be stricter with her this time... and then she just scores a perfect hole-in-one on it. 
Such a Troll...
And you know what I did right after that? I just went and did the same thing.
That's one infamous track being conquered, but we had some other hole-in-ones, for example on this classic looping track:
But okay, enough of that. What was the final score?
Prim 73, Harrier 55. A vast improvement for both of us, with Primrose even beating my old score of 78. We were now playing under slightly different rules where failing to complete a track after 10 tries only scored you a 10 instead of a 12, which only happened once for both of us on that net track, but even after that adjustment, Primrose would be ahead of my score from last year.
As for today's challenge, the adjusted score after adding my +23 strokes handicap would be Prim 73 (or 75), Harrier 78 (or 80) - so Primrose is our winner today! 
Congratulations, Prim! 
More pictures from our trip coming soon.
Hockey move or not: It worked! :f_tongue::f_wink: Sometimes raw violence helps ... :f_wink::mdr:
Originally posted by Primrose6789
Hockey move or not: It worked! :f_tongue::f_wink: Sometimes raw violence helps ... :f_wink::mdr:
Yeah, well, you're still not suppose to "dribble" with the ball (or whatever it is called in field hockey). Not that you did it this time... well, except for some borderline cases. But either way, you found plenty of other ways to troll... and so did I.
Originally posted by Harrier88
Originally posted by Primrose6789
Hockey move or not: It worked! :f_tongue::f_wink: Sometimes raw violence helps ... :f_wink::mdr:Yeah, well, you're still not suppose to "dribble" with the ball (or whatever it is called in field hockey).
Wow, surprise, surprise! We´re trolls, aren´t we? :f_wink::f_biggrin:
Some more impressions from today's visit to the Palmengarten. The palm house looks as beautiful as always:
Primrose took special interest in these spathiphyllum plants, I think she had some personal experience with them:
Unlike last time, the underground section with the fish tanks was open for visitors again.
I love the design of those fish tanks. It's like a small underwater jungle for those fishies.
We also made it a point to visit the flower gardens, not just the palm trees and similar plants. I think Primrose has a bunch more pictures of those flowers.
The butterfly house was on a bit of a break. It was still open, and there were still butterflies around, just not as many as usual, and not as much of a variety. I still managed to get close to one of the butterflies that was still there and could take a good picture.
Here's the place where the offspring of some of those butterflies is expected, starting in October:
And speaking of which, here is some info on how the stages of this metamorphosis thing work:
As I said before, the weather was excellent, and some of the plants look even more majestic in this bright sunlight.
Oh, and we went to the boat hire again:
I first wanted to try the rowboats for a challenge, but we settled for the more popular paddle boats again.
That way, we managed to get close to the swans and some other water fowl on that pond too, and I could take some good pics.
We were very careful around them, though, we didn't want to cause them any stress. Besides, swans are a lot like Primrose, in a way. Beautiful and elegant creatures, but not to be messed with.
Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the WeekNature-loving Primrose has a certain habit when she is around plants, which is...
1) sniffing blossoms
2) picking daisies
3) blowing dandelion seeds
Solution
Spoiler
1) sniffing blossoms
It's an adorable habit of hers, even if it means taking a few more stops when you are walking past flowers: Primrose loves the smell of flowers, so she loves to stick her nose into those blossoms.
Obviously, she had plenty of opportunities to do that in the Palmengarten today, but she also sometimes does it when we arrive at my house and we are going through my front yard, or when we are passing through other places that may feature flowers near us.
Well, I'd say she is doing something right. Today's world can be hectic and crazy, I suppose it really is wise to stop and smell the roses every once in a while - figuratively, and perhaps even literally. There are so many beautiful things around us that we may take for granted. Primrose has learned to appreciate them, at least the ones that are blossoming near her.
