Abdication, A to Z Challenge, Blackberry

Interesting, to me anyway, that Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands has abdicated in favour of her son Crown-Prince Willem-Alexander after 33 years on the throne. Her mother, the previous queen, also abdicated, I didn’t remember that. The queen before that also abdicated. They are a much more relaxed family than the British royals, going amongst the people and living fairly ordinary lives I understand. This will be the first king on the Dutch throne for over 100 years. I am often asked why Queen Elizabeth doesn’t abdicate, I have been told its because the royal family consider the abdication of her Uncle was a disgrace which they don’t wish to repeat. This may be a load of ballyhoo, who knows.

As I said before, I have signed on for the 2013 A to Z Challenge which I took part in last year. There are a number of places where you can sign up, this is one of them. There are several hosts as described in their blogs and they are each carrying the Linky Link for someone to sign up. The A to Z Hosts are founder Arlee Bird at Tossing It Out, Damyanti Biswas at Amlokiblogs, Alex J. Cavanaugh, Tina Downey at Life is Good, D.L Hammons at Cruising Altitude 2.0, Jeremy Hawkins at Retro-Zombie, Shannon Lawrence at The Warrior Muse, Matthew MacNish at The QQQE, Konstanz Silverbow at No Thought 2 Small, Stephen Tremp at Breakthrough Blogs, Livia Peterson at Leave it to Livia, L. Diane Wolfe at Spunk on a Stick,and Nicole at The Madlab Post. Only trouble is, even though the blogfest doesn’t start til April 1, I am already lying in bed at night trying to think of recipes to use. It’s 2 months yet for goodness sake.

Also in the news was RIM’s introduction of the Blackberry 10 and that they are changing their name from RIM to Blackberry. They are hoping this new one will save their bacon. The company has been suffering badly from the competition recently and think this new Blackberry 10 may achieve a comeback. I hope so as they are a locally company and if they thrive it will be good for the area. I see my ISP is already offering it to their customers, not that I will be having one. We have one very basic cell phone as really that’s all we need, hardly ever use it anyway.

This recipe was posted on Facebook by a Portuguese friend of mine, in Portuguese. I asked for, and got, a translation and now am sharing it with you. The Portuguese catch and eat a lot of fish. Not sure about 2 1/2 people though.

Bacalhau à moda da Sogra (Mom’s Cod Recipe)

Ingredients (for 2 1/2 people)

2 cod loins

2 onions

3 cloves garlic

1 bay leaf

1 tsp paprika

½ cup white wine or to taste

Olive oil

Potato to accompany (while baking cod)

In a baking dish place the sliced ​​onion and garlic and bay leaf (reserve a clove of chopped garlic to sprinkle cod). Arrange the cod over the onions and place the potatoes (seasoned with salt) around it. Sprinkle with paprika. Perfume with wine and drizzle with olive oil. Bake at 200ºC for 50 minutes or until the potatoes are cooked.

Have a great day