Weekend Trivia - Saturday

14 years ago

Good morning and happy weekend, dear cottagers. We got maybe a foot of snow here in the last 36 hours or so, and I think I might actually have to blow out the driveway today. The first substantial snow of the season always makes for a tough call on whether to blow it out or just drive through the stuff. Sometimes if we wait it out, the weather warms up and it all melts on its own. Also, it hasnÂt been cold enough to freeze our gravel driveway so the blower picks up lots of stones and throws them willy-nilly all over the surroundings. Does this sound like the rationalization of a lazy paerson? Are you getting tired of this monolog yet? Probably yes to both, huh? (No hints are in this paragraph. I was just blabbing.) On to trivia.

I know it will be a shocker, but how about if we make todayÂs trivia about gardening? I will give you three Latin names for some common garden plants and you guess what their common names are. Just to make it more interesting, none of them will be flowers. That would be too easy for cottage gardeners.

So here we go:

1. Phaseolus vulgaris

2. Zea mays

3. Pisum sativum

ThinMan

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Comments (10)

solana
14 years ago
Happy weekend to you, too, TM! That snow will be here tonight. I'm back with a new 'puter, still have to to update the 'hosts' file (if such a thing exists in Windows 7) to get rid of the pesky ads.

Mom's 2nd language was English, she used Latin names to communicate with nurserymen. I think Vulgaris means common and sativum means native? Confirmed veg gardener, I get the corny reference.
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aftermidnight Zone7b B.C. Canada
14 years ago
Good morning all, well it has turned bitter cold here, no snow yet but I think it is just around the corner.

As to today's quiz...I've become rather obsessed by the first one of late, trying to match up one I've got with...

The second one we always have with sausages.

The third, frozen are OK but fresh from the garden YUMMY.

Later
Annette
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Well, I believe you have all figured it out - it was to allow the knight/warrior to easily mount his steed. I got the info from a web site called The Straight Dope, which is very cleverly written. I will copy right from them, as I like the way it is written. The fact is that most people don't mount a horse from the left side. Most people call a cab. Those having some acquaintance with horsemanship, however, know that the left side is the horse's "near" side while the right side is the "off" side. This is often explained in terms of swords, but we're then obliged to acknowledge obvious fact #2: While a fair number of people still ride horses, you're living in one tough neighborhood if you need to do so while wearing a sword. About those swords. I'm afraid you've gotten the explanation a little scrambled. As you've observed, swords are traditionally worn on the left, since that makes it easier for a right-handed swordsman to pull the sword from its scabbard. If you're wearing a sword on the left, you'll want to mount your horse on its left, since otherwise the sword will get in the way. The practice goes way back before the medieval heyday of knights. In fact, it most likely originated when sword-toting warriors first began riding horses into battle. Let's start with a fundamental fact, essential to understanding equines: The horse isn't a predator--it's prey. Even after millennia of domestication, the horse is physically and mentally hardwired to detect and elude attackers. Its eyes are set on the sides of its head, giving it almost 360 degrees of vision. It sees two monocular fields at once, one through each eye. The binocular vision we human predators take for granted, the horse has in only a small area directly ahead of it. So what it "knows" on one side, it doesn't "know" on the other, until it's been shown. The horse's instincts dispose it to be suspicious of anything new in its environment. The thing behind that rock that wasn't there yesterday could be a lion! What does this have to do with mounting from the left? It means that a horse who's been taught to accept being mounted only from one side may be perfectly docile when the rider clambers aboard on that side, yet spook and refuse to stand still if approached from the unfamiliar direction. That's why authorities on horse training (including our old friend Xenophon) recommend teaching horses to be mounted from the off side, so that they'll stand still for it if circumstances demand that the rider get on from that side But why prefer the left side when swords are no longer a problem? Partly it's the inertia of tradition--horses and humans are both creatures of habit. But it's also common sense to have a standard approach. If you didn't know which side a particular horse had learned to be mounted from, you could get a nasty surprise if you tried to get on from the "wrong" side. There you have it - tradition again, with a little common sense thrown in. I believe everyone got, though perhaps not the monocular bit - lol, I'll let that pass!! So, for everyone: Thanks for playing, and see you all next week! Nancy.
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lol,well, as you have demonstrated the most common are not that hard to guess, or too terribly creative!! It is also noted where they ranked the year before. 1. 123456 (Unchanged from 2013) 2. password (Unchanged) 3. 12345 (Up 17) 4. 12345678 (Down 1) 5. qwerty (Down 1) I was told by a millenial that patterns were the new thing, and he set a password up for me - q1w2e3r4 - which as it turns out is not that original, or that easy to type into a tablet. I abandoned that for my own form of original. I don't have anything to hacked or data-mined for, so I seem safe. I believe everyone had a good idea of the top at the end, so for everyone: Hope you had fun with the guessing game. See you all next week. I am back on my diet for the next 2 weeks. The 12 lbs. I lost stayed off nicely over the holiday season, so I am keen to get more off for Spring!! Thanks for playing. Nancy. Here is a link that might be useful: Here's the article
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Well, by golly, looks like an early end!! The cashew tree (Anacardium occidentale) is a tropical evergreen that produces the cashew nut and the cashew apple. It can grow as high as 14 metres (46 ft), but the dwarf cashew, growing up to 6 metres (20 ft), has proved more profitable, with earlier maturity and higher yields. The cashew nut is served as a snack or used in recipes, like other nuts, although it is actually a seed. The cashew apple is a fruit, whose pulp can be processed into a sweet, astringent fruit drink or distilled into liqueur. The shell of the cashew nut yields derivatives that can be used in many applications from lubricants to paints, and other parts of the tree have traditionally been used for snake-bites and other folk remedies. Originally native to northeastern Brazil, the tree is now widely grown in tropical regions, India and Nigeria being major producers, in addition to Vietnam, the Ivory Coast, and Indonesia. The true fruit of the cashew tree is a kidney or boxing-glove shaped drupe that grows at the end of the cashew apple. The drupe develops first on the tree, and then the pedicel expands to become the cashew apple. Within the true fruit is a single seed, the cashew nut. Although a nut in the culinary sense, in the botanical sense the nut of the cashew is a seed. The seed is surrounded by a double shell containing an allergenic phenolic resin, anacardic acid, a potent skin irritant chemically related to the better-known allergenic oil urushiol which is also a toxin found in the related poison ivy. Properly roasting cashews destroys the toxin, but it must be done outdoors as the smoke (not unlike that from burning poison ivy) contains urushiol droplets which can cause severe, sometimes life-threatening, reactions by irritating the lungs. People who are allergic to cashew urushiols may also react to mango or pistachio which are also in the Anacardiaceae family. Some people are allergic to cashew nuts, but cashews are a less frequent allergen than other nuts or peanuts. So, for everyone: And now, we will wait for Cynthia's trivia tomorrow. Sorry that was so easy, but I figured I'd give it a try. Nancy.
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Ah, we do love to eat, don't we? Welcome Dave, to our little game - Cynthia has another question today, and you got all 5!! Sauces in French cuisine date back to the Middle Ages. There were many hundreds of sauces in the culinary repertoire. In 'classical' French cooking (19th and 20th century until nouvelle cuisine), sauces were a major defining characteristic of French cuisine. In the early 19th century, the chef Marie-Antoine CarÃÂªme created an extensive list of sauces, many of which were original recipes. It is unknown how many sauces CarÃÂªme is responsible for, but it is estimated to be in the hundreds. The cream sauce, in its most popular form around the world, was concurrently created by another chef, Dennis Leblanc, working in the same kitchen as CarÃÂªme. He considered the four grande sauces to be espagnole, veloutÃÂ©, allemande, and bÃÂ©chamel, from which a large variety of petites sauces could be composed. In the early 20th century, the chef Auguste Escoffier refined CarÃÂªme's list of basic sauces in the four editions of his classic Le Guide Culinaire and its abridged English translation A Guide to Modern Cookery. He dropped allemande as he considered it a variation of veloutÃÂ©, and added hollandaise and sauce tomate, defining the five fundamental "mother sauces" still used today: Sauce BÃÂ©chamel, milk-based sauce, thickened with a white roux. Sauce Espagnole, a fortified brown veal stock sauce, thickened with a brown roux. Sauce VeloutÃÂ©, light stock-based sauce, thickened with a roux or a liaison, a mixture of egg yolks and cream. Sauce Hollandaise, an emulsion of egg yolk, butter and lemon or vinegar. Sauce Tomate, tomato-based A sauce which is derived from one of the mother sauces by augmenting with additional ingredients is sometimes called a "daughter sauce" or "secondary sauce." Most sauces commonly used in classical cuisine are daughter sauces. For example, BÃÂ©chamel can be made into Mornay by the addition of grated cheese, and Espagnole becomes Bordelaise with the addition of reduction of red wine, shallots, and poached beef marrow. And yes, we did have Eggs Benedict for brunch on Boxing Day. And I did ruin it, so ran over to the grocery store to get packets of mix, which they were out of, so I borrowed from my cousins DH and made Bearnaise - yum!! Which, as always, got me thinking. Bearnaise, btw, is a daughter sauce. Hollandaise is interesting: It is so named because it was believed to have mimicked a Dutch sauce for the King of the Netherlands' state visit to France. So, there you all go - more sauces, to go with our gravies and our pudding sauce!! Well 3 of you were darn near perfect - TM, Annette were almost there - did you get there? For everyone: Glad we all had a nice Christmas - see you next year!! Nancy.
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midnightsmum (Z4, ON)
14 years ago
Good morning all. Cold here, but no snow. They say we'll get some on Monday.

I get the 2nd name of all three, but the 1st I am stuck on....sadly, I don't recognize any of them as being medical. I think I am skunked!!

Nancy.
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cyn427 (z. 7, N. VA)
14 years ago
Yippee-we are getting snow! I know those of you way up north probably can't understand my elation (DH can't either), but I love it! Of course, it has been snowing since 11 am (4 hours) now and the grass isn't covered and there is nothing sticking on the roads yet, so no matter what it won't be quite like yours TM. The bare trees out back look spectacular nonetheless and it is so pretty as it falls.

Now as to the trivia-haven't a clue this time and I had Latin all through high school. Ms. Josten would be appalled. Oh well. Can't wait to see the answer.
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solana
14 years ago
Hey Cyn, I'm up north and share your elation! Snow's falling here for the first time this season and it's so pretty! To me, it signals end of clean-up and beginning to dream of next year's garden.

Which brings to mind some old song about "peas, green beans and barley grow" Can't remember the Latin for barley, though Will Barley was my favorite high school teacher. (math -- once he knew we'd gotten the day's lesson, we could ask to go to the water fountain and he'd say "See you tomorrow")
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aftermidnight Zone7b B.C. Canada
14 years ago
In case I don't get back here later I believe the answers are
1. Beans
2. Corn
3. Peas

Annette
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stage_rat
14 years ago
I'm in agreement with aftermidnight. I was pretty sure of 1 and 2 on my own, and got 3 with the hint about them being best when fresh from the garden.

Speaking of peas, I grew sweet peas for the first time this year,expecting them to die off when the summer got hot. We did get some warm weather, but perhaps because this summer was so cool, they lasted until we got weather in the 20s. I'm definitely growing them again, but I'll plant them in a better spot for enjoying them.
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blueberryhills
14 years ago
sigh..... a FOOT of snow! We would have been elated to see a flake.

I guess it's a good thing I don't have to know the Latin names to get seed... we'd starve!
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little_dani
14 years ago
Just a weather update here, as I never did learn to speak latin-yet.
We got 4" of snow on Friday morning. It came in great big fluffy white flakes, beginning at 8:00am, and continuing off and on until about 4:00pm. I was not elated, I HATE snow!

I just think it is weird. It isn't that it never snows, I remember several times it snowed, once on my birthday when I was a sophmore in high school. But this is ridiculous. Twice in 5 years is too much.

We are about 100 miles south of Houston, Texas.
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thinman
Original Author
14 years ago
Still snowing here. It really is beautiful, and it's definitely beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Janie - you hate snow? I'll be right there with you by March. Twice in five years? My heart bleeds for you. :-)

I'm glad some of you are sharing the joy (?) of new December snow.

Annette has it right: beans, corn, and peas. for her and Stagerat. Tibi ob rem bene gestam gratulor!

TM
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Weekend Trivia - Saturday

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aftermidnight Zone7b B.C. Canada

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