Fiesta Friday #5

Tags

Asian food, bibimbap, dinner, Fiesta Friday, Fiesta Friday #5, Fiesta Friday Features, Korean food, link party, recipe

This party is getting rowdier every week, and I LOVE it! Hmm…what does that say about me, I wonder? Lest you think I’m like one of those girls gone wild on spring break, let me assure you I’m so not. I’m a responsible and upstanding citizen, always doing the right thing, including my civic duty of voting.

In fact, that’s probably why I’m always summoned for jury duty, because every time you vote, I think your name gets automatically entered for random selection. I’m not sure if that’s how it works, but I seem to get a good share of these summons. Strangely, though, they’ve never selected me to be a juror. Is that lucky or unlucky?

It doesn’t matter, I’m feeling lucky today. Lucky to have you come to my party. Lucky to have you count me as your buddy. Lucky to be a part of this FF (Fiesta Friday) community. I think I just shed a tear.

And you’re lucky, too! Lucky to have the following cool people to party with:
— (Ignore that Angie person in the #1 slot. She’s only here to chaperone.)

Angie

Patty

Mr Fitz

Juju

Dimple@Shivaay Delights

Sadia

Laura

Indira

Elaine

Nancy

Ngan

Lauzan

Jillian

Anna

Alex

Julianna

Selma

Weebirdie

Seana

thebrookcook

Saucy Gander

Jess

Justine

Laila

Jess

Linda

timethief

Polianthus

Sofia

Sue

Prudy

Fae

Hilda

Sonal

Indu

Johnny

Jenna

NancyCreative

Margot

Petra

Sylvia

Paul

Janine

Nell

Margherita

Diana

Mila

Rakhi

Nick

Aditi & Nikhil

Gerard

Jun & Priscilla

Juju

Miyuki

Katie

You’re next!

You’re next!

If you’re new to Fiesta Friday, please read the blah blah blah (guidelines) here.

***

Quayles and Potatoe

Tags

dinner, humor, opinion, potatoes, quails, recipe, riddles, soy sauce

(Trust me, there are two excellent recipes at the end of the post.)

I sent a quick e-mail to hubby at work asking him to stop by the market on the way home and see if they had quails and if they did to please buy them. So I could make him quails, like Tita made for Pedro in “Like Water for Chocolate.”

The intoxicating imagery of personifying Tita in the kitchen cooking quails in rose petal sauce for her lover must have befuddled my intellectual capabilities. Or it could have been the wine, sipped between the flipping of the pages, actually, that caused the inebriation.

Whatever it was, I saw that I had misspelled “quails” when hubby’s reply came. His standard one-word “ok” was this time replaced with “You mean the birds? How many?” In my haste, I had spelled the word as “quayles”. I was quite beside myself when I saw that. I studied journalism. Misspelling words was a big no-no, a cardinal sin, so said Professor Frederickson.

He used to put big Xs on my paper. “I HAVE FAITH THAT ONE DAY YOU WILL LEARN TO USE YOUR DICTIONARY.” Yup, he wrote that on one of my papers. Geez, how wrong was he? There is now what’s called auto-correct. There is no need for a dictionary.

But, so what if you misspell, anyway? My injured amour-propre predictably turns into indignation. What’s the harm? Does it even matter as long as your readers understand what you mean?

Case in point, I used to work with this guy who constantly spelled “speek” when he meant “speak’. He was only the General Manager of the company. And who can forget Dan Quayle spelling “potato” with an added “e” at the end. He was the Vice President of the greatest nation on earth. I’m speaking as a proud American, of course.

So you see, these people at the top? They can’t spell. Didn’t seem to put them at a disadvantage one bit. Me? I agonize constantly about the possibility of making errors, and I’m writing a blog. There is nothing wrong with being a blogger, I assure you, fellow bloggers. I was just trying to make a comparison. Forgive me.

Maybe I should be less inhibited about spelling. Maybe it doesn’t matter all that much. If I had given you a recipe, and it reads like this:

Can you read this?

Would you be able to make it out? I have reasons to believe that you would. Your brain can do much more than you think. Unless of course you are sipping too much of that wine like I was. In which case you might have read “gralic” as “gaelic”. And you certainly wouldn’t want to peel the gaelic. Or maybe you would.

He is gralic (source)

‘Nuf said. I’m making you Quayles and Potatoe.

Lamb Shank Curry Quest

Tags

curry, dinner, food, lamb shank, lamb shanks, recipe

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (my kitchen), there lived a hungry girl (me) who yearned for a platter of saffron rice on which a stewed lamb shank was perched in its juicy drippiness. Like the one she once devoured in the outdoor kitchen of her grandmamma’s, where just right outside palm tress swayed gently in the breeze and the sound of a phoenix singing could be heard from a distance. (Actually it was a Persian restaurant in Washington DC, my grandmother was vegan and would have never cooked lamb, and phoenixes are not even real, let alone sing.)

In this state of yearning, the girl wandered aimlessly so and was soon transported into a magical place, where anything and everything you could ever want, you can have with just a snap of your fingers (in real life, this place is called the internet, and you click your mouse to command things to come forward.)

She came across a tavern, where outside there was an enticing display of le plat du jour, featuring lamb shank curry, the very thing she was yearning for. Alas, the tavern was abandoned, and there was not a single soul around to help her procure the curry. (I follow Lucy on her blog, Feast Without Regret, where I found her excellent lamb shank curry recipe. Unfortunately, it seems she’s no longer active on that blog. She does, however, have another blog.)

This is Lucy’s curry

It soon dawned on the girl that the idea of a magical land seemed to be but a big, cruel joke. (No matter how hard I clicked my mouse, I could not command that curry to come forward. This internet thing is the biggest tease there is.)

So the girl swore right there and then, a la Scarlett O’Hara,”As God is my witness, they’re not going to beat me. I’m going to live through this and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my folk, if I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill. As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again, for lamb shank curry!”

100th post, Fiesta Friday, and Pie

Tags

100th post, dinner, mini shepherd's pie, recipe, shepherd's pie, Zero to Hero challenge, zerotohero

They say you should mark your 100th post with something special. They say that. Who are they? I don’t know, they are them, the people who say you should mark the 100th post special.

I could, for instance, post a GIF like this one, from passion & possibility:

Or create food art, a la Growing Up in the Garden:

Even do a 100th post giveaway, just as Mia Loves Pretty did:

(Hey, I just did Zero to Hero #23, with that roundup!)

To mark my 100th post, however, I decided to do something else. If you’re participating in the Zero to Hero Challenge, then you’d know that challenge #22 was to create a post and submit it to a blog event. I’ve done this many times already, and I can tell you first hand that my viewership always spikes each time I do it, even more so if my post becomes a featured post.

Obviously, this is an important task that you should not skip if you want to grow your views. But since I’ve already done this, multiple times, and since this is my 100th post, how about I kick it up a notch, Zero to Hero? How about I create the blog event? And have people submit their posts to me, instead?

That’s an idea, anyway. Before I make it official, I would like to know first if any of my blogger buddies will be interested in joining the event or challenge or party, as I prefer to call it. ‘Cause what’s the point of having a party if nobody comes. 

I will call this blog party “Fiesta Friday.” Remember my Fondue Fiesta Friday post? Where I talked about finding ways to kick it up a notch to make thank-God-it’s-Friday days special? It’s the same idea. I would like for you to link up what you make or eat or do to mark the day special.

It could be a recipe or an activity or an idea. If you see an interesting movie or read a compelling book, talk about it and link that. If you decide to wear a particularly daring outfit to start your weekend on an upbeat mood, share a photo. Or maybe you would prefer to just tell us about the reactions you get from friends and co-workers. Maybe you have a joke or an uplifting quote to share, please do.

As you can see, there is plenty of ways for you to join the party. Even though The Novice Gardener is mainly a “fooden” blog (food + garden, a portmanteau I created for my blog), my interests are varied and I appreciate all kinds of pretty and fun things and many forms of entertainment.

So, what do you think, peeps? Are you interested? It’ll only happen if I get you on board. I’ll have to work out the details as to how and when links should be submitted, but first let me know what you think.

Now, onto that pie. Did you know Thursday was the National Pie Day? To mark the special day, I made shepherd’s pie, using my trusty old recipe, the one with tomato paste and Worcestershire sauce. It was very good, and the family devoured it.

But since I’m doing a Fiesta Friday post and this being the 100th post and all that, and after talking it over with Johnny, I am presenting to you the kick-it-up-a-notch version. Now, tell me this wouldn’t have gotten your weekend started on a tasty note?