hoverfly

Nice one, jobleau. Of course, you're from Montreal, I had to have a quick look at your location when I read the part about being French speaking. No, let me congratulate you on your excellent English, definitely nothing to be ashamed of. I myself am not British either, yet, though I am working on it. My native tongue is German.

Computers and high tech, same here, I've always been fascinated and interested, though not always been able to keep that up since work sometimes prevented me from keeping up with developments. The machine I am using to access this is still running Windows 2000 but hey, apart from its rubbish start-up performance, it has not crashed EVER.

You are a hobby cook? Great, let’s get together and exchange recipes. My areas are trad. German cooking, East African, living in the UK now has been a blessing in that respect, you wouldn’t believe the availability of African foodstuffs, Indian, one of my favourites and basically anything that is different. I don’t think I have ever turned down anything, at least not before trying. My wife is a crack shot at the Chinese food.

If you like game and should you ever travel to Kenya, make sure you go to the Carnivore Restaurant on the outskirts of Nairobi. You must try some Eland Antelope, probably one of the finest meats I have ever tasted, apart from reindeer which I got to love when working in Sweden. They dry cure it for month and then serve it sliced thinly… makes my mouth water even now.

The gun thing, this is probably due to having been raised by German/British parents with the German part dominating, I have always had some problems with. Guns can, not necessarily will, cause problems and I guess it does take a stable mind and a settled person to be in charge of them.

I have had some brushes with guns, shotguns, the only hunting permitted where I grew up in Africa was hunting of wildfowl, never any big game. Since there was little need for gun I never became much of a shot anyway but was good enough to bag the odd evening meal or two.

Hunting for food I think is definitely something that puts guns in my part of the good book, apart from that, at least for me it has never been an attraction but as I said, that obviously has historical reasons. Plus at my age I am still something of a hippy, not that anybody would believe it when they saw me (suit and tie wearing, straight). Good thing that looks can deceive. LOL

I still have my joint or two in the evening, something I started some, now here’s a dead giveaway, +40 years ago and I don’t have any reason to doubt that the last thing I’ll smoke before I die at some point, will be a spliff.

Have you ever tried Samosas? Little triangular pockets of dough filled with either spicy vegetables or, our favourite, minced lamb? I could write it down for you. They are a little time consuming to make but believe me, well worth the effort.

Add-on:

If you are interested in swapping any recipes, guess we best do that via PM's, so feel free to contact me.

jobleau

Thanks for your answer Hoverfly.

My written English is fair. It's just that I don't think in English when I write and sometimes that shows in the structure of the text and can also change the meaning without me realizing it. It's happened before. And for sure you don't want to hear my spoken English with my huge fat French accent! It sounds horrible.

What I cook is mostly inspired from revisited traditional French Canadian cooking sprinkled with traditional French and Italian ideas. I'm pretty good with meat and I made sauces that have made people wet their underwear.

I'd love to expand on that and include more Asian ideas and components like Japanese, Chinese and Thai for example. But sadly, the supplies for these are scarce in my area and I don't get to go to the Greater Montreal very often.

Carnivore Restaurant! I love the name! We have plenty of wild meat here and I regularly enjoy them. So much more interesting than just beef and chicken.

Dry curing, as well as smoking, are 2 often used techniques here and indeed they produce excellent results on game meat. I'm particularly fond of smoked duck breast, preferably magret, for one.

Guns, like cars, are inanimate piece of mechanics. They can only do what they can do when being used by people. And like you say: it does take a stable mind and a settled person to be in charge of them. I don't want to start an argument here, but in my book, cars are a lot more widespread than guns and far more people don't use them properly or securely. So, in the end, I think the possible problem is not the object but the individual and how the object is used.

I don't believe in accidents. They are all due to human errors and should be so called. We all do some. But there are some errors that just should not happen.

Then you have the subject of willingness and intent. Someone who intends to harm somebody can do it with many objects or just hands. But then again, there is an individual behind it.

Hippy in a suit! That sure looks like me. I was born at the end of the hippy and baby boomers era. The hippy philosophy was still pretty strong back then. And I sure inherited part of it. The facts that I'm a nudist, love nature, prefer peace and quiet over conflicts of any sort all kinda go with that. But I did had to integrate into the so called normal society at some point in order to make a decent living.

Marijuana and hashish were popular too and I had my fair share back then. I still have some sometimes, but nowhere near regularly.

Samosas... Never heard of that. But anything with lamb, I'm willing to try! Problem is my weak cook spot is precisely dough. I don't know why but most of the times I try to make some it just does not work as expected. But I sure would like to see that recipe. If I can use commercially made dough I'd give it a try.