Primrose vs Harrier - Troll Challenges

Same motto for me, Italian and something involving eggs. I was floating the idea of spaghetti carbonara around when we first rolled it. I decided to stick to it... except that I'm using penne rigate.

So here is the creamy, eggie, seasoned carbonara sauce before it is mixed - I just wanted a photo were the egg was clearly visible.

That looks better:

I believe ham is commonly used in carbonara. I upgraded it to diced bacon.

Mix it in with the sauce and cook it...

And then I decided to just add the finished pasta to the pan.

Mix it around...

And serve.

Lots of pictures for such a basic dish, I guess. Well, that's the name of the game.

Not the worst ever attempt at carbonara, I assume. Sometimes the simple things work just fine.

Harrier, yes, I´m playing, because this I don´t know. You haven´t told me that story yet.

And your dish looks good! I know Carbonara only with classical spaghetti, but could be yummy with penne too.

Originally posted by Primrose6789
Harrier, yes, I´m playing, because this I don´t know. You haven´t told me that story yet.

And your dish looks good! I know Carbonara only with classical spaghetti, but could be yummy with penne too.

Honestly, now that I had it, I think spaghetti would have been a better fit after all. Still good.

Primrose may be hesitant about learning the language... but we are taking a culinary trip to Japan right now already.

It's a chicken burger - get out the blender.

What do we season the patties with? Actually, nothing at all - I put them in the pan just as they were. In fact, I didn't even add the egg and breadcrumbs that I would normally use. In this case, I simply forgot, but as it turns out, you don't even need them.

Here's where the magic comes in: I prepared this mixture, based on a recipe for chicken teriyaki that I found here, containing soy sauce, mirin, sugar, oil and ginger.

Just put it in the pan when the chicken is almost done, and cook the meat in it.

In addition, I cooked some sliced shiitake mushrooms and broccoli in another pan.

Ganbarimasu! Let's start building that burger, starting with the patty.

Then the mushrooms and broccoli - and, as a little experiment, some tiny shreds of a nori sheet.

That's it, our Japan-inspired burger is ready.

Those were "gureito"! I expected them to have a bit more sauce to them, but I assume that's because I cooked them a little too long - the teriyaki sauce is normally still supposed to be a little syrupy, I believe. Other than that, though, great flavor, and surprisingly, the other toppings didn't even drown out anything, they blended in quite nicely - even the nori, which I expected to be as dominant as the experimental oranges on that Brazilian burger.

Primrose sticks with her opinion: Tasty ingredients - but not on a burger! I agreed with her last time, but I believe this one worked. Still, I should make some "regular" chicken teriyaki some time, I think, with rice and all that.

Will this beat the other East Asian burgers? I think so. Just barely, and it is really hard to tell without a direct comparison, but I think I will put it just above China and Mongolia.

1st Switzerland
2nd Cyprus
3rd Israel
4th Greece
5th Japan
6th Mongolia
7th China
8th Denmark
9th Korea
10th Spain
11th Germany
12th Russia
13th Madagascar
14th Alsace
15th Italy
16th Texas
17th California
18th Mexico
19th Morocco
20th Brazil
21st Namibia
22nd Arabia
23rd Turkey
24th Australia
25th England
26th France
27th Colombia
28th Cuba
29th Canada
30th Hungary
31st The Netherlands
32nd Thailand
33rd South Africa

This is Banhauser! But I´m sure Vorpal would eat it.

Well... I thought I would like the flexibility of tennis practice when I picked up the sport earlier this year. But when I'm struggling to combine a personal workout plan and my regular schedule with those meetups while keeping a close eye on the weather, only to receive a message about half an hour before we are supposed to meet that says "can we do this tomorrow or the day after that?", I'm starting to long for my standard scheduled practice sessions in the team sports I did before.

I still found a way to reconcile a rescheduled tennis practice with my running plan:

Not sure about Saturday either... I'm supposed to do some work at the tennis court to help getting it ready for the winter. I will try to somehow cram a run in, but it will depend on how it goes.

After that, the plan may be in even greater jeopardy, with the daylight savings time switch happening this weekend. The sun will then set a lot sooner, and my current jogging track is not really suitable for running in the dark, I believe.

I may have to come up with something, but until then, I will stick to the plan. So far, everything is still going swimmingly.

Originally posted by Primrose6789
This is Banhauser! But I´m sure Vorpal would eat it.
I'm surprisingly picky about what goes on something called a "burger"
I'll try things once, but often that is as far as I go.

For example, burger places here started advertising "beyond meat" burgers a few years ago.
Beyond Meat is some sort of vegan meat substitute.
It may be tasty as all-get-out, but I don't see the point, and just never tried them.

You can read about it here:
https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-CA/

If there were Banhauser awards, I'd nominate them

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I'm surprisingly picky about what goes on something called a "burger"
I'll try things once, but often that is as far as I go.

For example, burger places here started advertising "beyond meat" burgers a few years ago.
Beyond Meat is some sort of vegan meat substitute.
It may be tasty as all-get-out, but I don't see the point, and just never tried them.

You can read about it here:
https://www.beyondmeat.com/en-CA/

If there were Banhauser awards, I'd nominate them

I usually consider being a banhauser something along the lines of being a culinary maverick, something to be proud of. Though I myself have occasionally used the term to describe thing I find genuinely disgusting. Note that Prim also sometimes uses it for some more commonly popular tasty food, like Jägerschnitzel.

We both did our weekly vegetarian days for a few years, which we now discontinued in favor of our new "Surprise Menu". I did check out some vegan meat substitutes during that time, and I seem to remember some "Beyond Meat" thing. Most of those substitutes were just all right, the aftertaste was often the worst part. The only one I thought was genuinely good was the fake crispy chicken by Viv Era. I also didn't mind fake chicken nuggets, because I figured that they tasted a lot more like the nuggets at McDonald's than any real chicken nuggets - make of that what you will.

What really baffled me was when Burger King started introducing plant-based alternatives to their meat patties as the new standard - when you would order a burger, I believe you would be asked something along the lines of "normal or meat-based?". Then again, I rarely visit these kinds of places anymore either way.

In general, Prim and I are now very quick to drop any corporation if we feel they are getting too preachy for our tastes.

Ah, that reminds me. I haven't posted yet about the new motto we drew for next week's Surprise Menu.

Will we finally get out of the Mediterranean?

Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the Week

Before playing poker with a strategy, Harrier may have had some real gambling problems. At one point, this even led to him...

1) deliberately taking a fail in a university course
2) stealing a kebab sandwich
3) selling his microwave oven

We really made a splash at the Westbad today, because this week, it was time for the jumps.

There may not be a lot to it when it comes to just getting your butt in the water, but when you are out there for your lifeguarding-related activities, you may have a specific purpose in mind when you jump in. We were therefore shown several different techniques:

Starting jump: Make as much distance as you can and enter the water flat. Useful when speed is of the essence.
Head-first dive: Jump up high and dive straight down with your head first. Useful when you need to get deep fast.
Feet-first dive: Same purpose as above, but sometimes, you may want to get deep with your feet instead.
Package jump: Enter the water with as little a jump as possible, grabbing your lower legs in a similar position to the standard cannonball dive, then opening up immediately in the water. Useful when you want to get as little depth as possible, for example when diving into unknown and mostly opaque waters.
Step jump: Spread out your arms to the side and spread apart your legs, either back and forth or also to the side, then make a swimming motion to get back to the surface when you enter the water. Same purpose as above, devised later on as an alternative, arguably more effective technique.

We did mostly okay, certainly good enough to pass that part of the exam. Our instructor then showed us some additional jumps, I guess just to show off and splash some water into our faces. Just for fun, you can check out some further ideas over here.

After that, we just practiced our standard escape techniques from embraces and chokeholds and such. This time, we were also practicing with our instructor, who made sure to make things difficult for us, to get us acquainted with some of the challenges we may face. For example, if we loosened our grip for a seconds, he would simply pull his arm away, or possibly even get away from us altogether and pretend to drown. I avoided some of those pitfalls, but he strongly advised me to keep practicing - I'm still flailing around too much while trying to figure out which hand to grab when.

We're getting closer - not too many things left to knock off our list.

Theoretical part

[ ] Passing a nationally standardized quiz about the following subjects: Respiration and blood circulation, hazards in and around water, assistance in case of bathing-, boating-, and ice-related accidents, avoiding strangleholds, assistance in case of injuries and drowning as well as heat exhaustion and cold injuries, and the tasks and activities of the DLRG.

Practical part

[DONE] Swimming 200 meters in less than 10 minutes, including 100 meters of leg whip kick back swimming without using the arms

[DONE] Swimming 100 meters in full clothing in less than 4 minutes, with subsequent unclothing inside the water

[DONE] Performing three different jumps from a height of 1 meter

[DONE] 15 meters of distance diving

[DONE] 50 meters of transport swimming - pushing or pulling

[DONE] Diving from the surface of the water twice - once heads first and once feet first - retrieving two 5 kg diving rings from the bottom of a 2-3 meters deep pool within 3 minutes

[practised] Displaying abilities to avoid strangleholds and escaping neck chokeholds from behind

[DONE] 50 meters of transport swimming with an embracing technique (for people who may try to resist the rescuing)

[ ] Demonstrating the ability to bring people ashore

[ ] Displaying the ability to perform CPR (Cardiopulmonary resuscitation) for 3 minutes

[ ] A combined exercise involving the following steps without any breaks in this order: A 20 meter swimming approach, diving to retrieve a 5 kg diving ring halfway through, then dropping the ring and continuing the approach, followed by carrying a partner for 20 meters

Troll Trivia of the Week

In Fall 2011, Harrier had to do a presentation on Bram Stoker's Dracula at university. For the most part, it went well, except...

1) Harrier almost accidentally once said the name of an ex-girlfriend instead of Dracula
2) Harrier kept calling Van Helsing "Van Halen" instead
3) Harrier misspelled "stake" as "steak" on a PowerPoint slide

Tough challenge.
I so want it to be #1, but #3 seems the most likely.

#3 then

Originally posted by Harrier88
Troll Trivia of the Week

In Fall 2011, Harrier had to do a presentation on Bram Stoker's Dracula at university. For the most part, it went well, except...

1) Harrier almost accidentally once said the name of an ex-girlfriend instead of Dracula
2) Harrier kept calling Van Helsing "Van Halen" instead
3) Harrier misspelled "stake" as "steak" on a PowerPoint slide

I instead take a risk and say 1
I laughed out loud, I couldn't help but choose it

Originally posted by Saffo7
what did you put in the "carnonara sauce"?
the egg is not cooked in the carbonara.
drain the pasta and immediately add the egg beaten with pecorino
Carbonara seems like a simple dish but it's not...
It's easy to make mistakes, especially the cooking.

Great to see you back, Saffo. I hope work is treating you well.

For the carbonara sauce, I was actually copying a recipe that my mother tends to use - pasta is a common dish whenever I am visiting her. Most of the time, we are using bolognese sauce, sometimes carbonara, rarely anything else.

The ingredients are 1 egg, 150 ml of cream, 1 tablespoon of vegetable stock powder, 3-4 dashes of Worcestershire sauce, 100 g of diced cooked ham (I used bacon), 2 tablespoons of butter (I used vegetable oil, not sure how much) and 50 g of shredded parmesan cheese.

I am aware that this may not be an authentic version - and I am pretty sure that the version of bolognese sauce that we usually make is not authentic either. In fact, I remember briefly discussing it in the IDC-thread a few years ago, where I mentioned that the "bolognese sauce" that people make over here is usually just a very basic tomato and minced meat sauce that may have little to do with the authentic ragù used in real bolognese... but that it still works for me.

Speaking of which, let me mention right now that I am really struggling to come up with ideas for this week's Eastern European menu. I looked up a few things, but nothing really called out to me. As much as I appreciate Eastern European culture, I am starting to think that this may just not be my kind of cuisine...

Nevertheless, I have a vague idea for what I may be cooking, probably on Thursday. And if all else fails, I guess I can just make a sandwich with Polish sausage or something.

Live Challenge: It's Halloween!

The Trolls met up in person on Halloween, and while we are not really celebrating it, we do have some special activities on that day that we like to do, much like last year. Once again, we got out the game Overcooked 2, one of the Trolls' favorites. Long-time readers may have heard us talk about it before, it is a cooperative cooking game where you combine ingredients in often hostile environments to prepare and serve dishes against a time limit. In the Halloween edition, there are special "Horde" levels where you are facing hordes of the "Unbread" - expired, hungry zombie breads who need to be fed before they break down your barricades and demolish your kitchen.

They were back this year too... but before we got to them, we once again wanted to make a real life version for lunch. We made some burgers, but not any of those exotic creations I usually like to present over here - just some basic bacon cheeseburgers.

Some pickles and onions, later some barbecue sauce too, as well as some extra spicy sauce for Prim...

...and then, of course, our "unbread" buns, which we decorated with some food coloring.

Once again, simple but good stuff. Primrose liked them very much too. But how did we fare against them in the game this year? The rules for our challenge were the same as before, we need to play through all eight "Horde" levels in one go, one loss means that we fail the challenge. And here they are already, craving some burgers too:

We practiced online the day before, and we knew that the only really difficult levels are the last two, especially the final one, where the "Unbread" are craving pizza, attacking from five sides simultaneously, and they often need a second serving, while you have to work in a very restrictive kitchen environment with narrow corridors. Last year, we just barely made it out alive, with me having almost capitulated near the end. This year, it went a lot better:

Our kitchen was still 65% intact in the end... and this despite the fact that I burned a Margherita in the oven while I was scrambling to repair the barricades that were broken down by a ravenous Unbread. Primrose burned some seafood in one of the pasta levels before too, so... I guess it was a good performance, considering that we set our kitchen on fire twice.

This takes care of our cooperative Halloween gaming challenge, but there are more things to tell about our meetup, including some epic fails. Stay tuned...

Choose Your Words Wisely...

There were many other things on our schedule this day, including another go at my "Finno-Ugric Challenge", where I am tasked to learn this old Hungarian war song by heart:

During our last meetup, I got through the first verse and chorus, and I was determined to tackle the second verse today. As usual, I have no prior experience with the notoriously difficult Hungarian language, aside from a few lessons that I now took on Duolingo, so I have to learn most of the lyrics phonetically, just playing it by ear and often coming up with some weird mnemonics. For example, I tried to remember "hegyről, völgyről" ("from mountain to valley"?) in the beginning of the 2nd verse with "hedgehog in the Geröll, wolf in the Geröll".

For the next line, I had no mnemonics. I was looking for the word "ország" (country), and couldn't remember it after listening to the rest of the verse a few times, so I started guessing: "orfak? orkas? okad?"... and suddenly, Primrose started having a loud laughing fit. I asked her "that was something naughty, wasn't it?". She nodded, but had trouble telling it to me because she was laughing so hard. As it turned out, "okád" is an extremely rude way to say "he/she pukes", one that is so vulgar that it doesn't really have a direct equivalent in English or German - and I just blurted it out of nowhere while looking for a completely innocent word.

At least it allowed me to come up with some new mnemonics: "Ország as in ursus, under no circumstances okád as in Akkad - Meet the Roman bear, but stay out of Akkad." In the end, I got through the verse - not really in the tempo of the song once again, but that is something I can work on at home.

The whole thing reminded me of a situation from roughly 20 years ago, when British pop singer Robbie Williams appeared as a guest on a German entertainment show on TV and was challenged to read through that week's Bundesliga soccer scores in German:

Well, that was fun, but even the grindette had her fails to present... like that time when we played Mario Kart together and she was putting her controller to the side after crossing the finish line and mulling over her performance in the race... until I pointed out to her that this was only the second round, the race was still going.

As for her performance in our Super Mario Land drinking game, which she has yet to beat on her own... I had my serious doubts when she stumbled through that first level (having had a few drinks before too), but then got more optimistic after she improved a lot later on. Until she got to that submarine level, which was the end of her run again, despite having plenty of lives to spare that time. You're getting there, Prim - you just need to learn to keep your cool in those pressure situations... and please stop with the kamikaze attacks, that submarine is not built for it.

Yes, Harrier, while trying to sing along and practicing the pronounciation of the Hungarian words, accidentally said a VERY rude and indecent word for "being sick on the stomach"

That was so funny! Of course I had a huge laughing fit! "Okádni" is a slang word and a very disparaging verb to describe the act of "being sick on the stomach".

But that didn´t keep Harrier from learning it, using it, building sentences with it and even conjugating it. :sifflote::f_ugly:

Originally posted by Primrose6789
But that didn´t keep Harrier from learning it, using it, building sentences with it and even conjugating it. :sifflote::f_ugly:

Well, I'm a quick learner. And a Troll.

I may not be quite as quick on the jogging trail, but my Road to 5K program is still progressing well. It is the final day of my short vacation, and I made good use of it to go for another jog before lunch. There are not too many scheduled runs left now.

I'm really pleased with my progress so far. All of the scheduled exercises worked great without having to cut any corners, and I am already feeling a lot fitter by now. If anyone else reading this feels like they need to do something for their health and/or stamina and they would like to explore running as a beginner, I can recommend this program - click here to get to the original version of the plan, or here to get directly to the schedule table that I am using, without the changes I made to fit my own daily schedule.

To wrap up the program, I plan to do both a standard timed 5K meter race as well as my Quest for Arnsburg Abbey, if possible. Ideally, I would attempt one of those at the end of next week already, but otherwise, I would just like to get both done by the end of the year. I believe the lifeguard course also only has three more scheduled sessions left. I'm looking forward to wrap this one up too.

The Trolls have had some great sporting success this year, let's not choke on the final stretch.

Originally posted by Harrier88

Great to see you back🙂🍀, Saffo. I hope work is treating you well.

better now, after a discussion we managed to find a balance. it's not the idea of ​​working to live, work must be a means to be able to live.
they are not my job and therefore should not take up much of my time.
when it happens it destabilizes me and I become gloomy, dissatisfied.

There are many variations of carbonara, there is also the vegetarian one made with courgettes.
in some regions of Italy you can find a carbonara the way you cooked it and in some restaurants, it happened to me, they make it with cream.
the Bolognese ragù has sautéed celery, carrots, onions, minced beef and tomato sauce.
At home I prepare a ragù with only sautéed onions, ground whatever I have and tomato sauce, I adjust the acidity of the sauce only after a couple of hours of slow cooking.
home cooking is always good.