Cookies And Small Town Political Corruption. Plus Voting For PFB Challenge #2.

   I don't know if any of you do Foursquare, the ubiquitious  iPhone app that demands that one "check in" wherever one goes, thereby gaining points, sometimes "goodies" and becoming "Mayor" of certain establishments. Well, I do. The way I do everything else, obsessively.
  So I live in this very small town of Sonoma, and there are certain places that I go regularly. One of these places is the Basque Boulangerie. I'm there almost every morning for my caffeine fix before I start my writing day. I am "The Mayor" of the Basque, or at least I was until just two days ago. That's when my pal, let's call him "Chip," decided to take it away from me.

Sneaky Fake Mayor Chip "Rod Blagojevitch" Roberson on the right

   He plotted and planned it, knowing that I was busy with the Project Food Blog Competition and the script I'm writing. He snuck out for extra stuff in the afternoon and then one day while in the middle of work, my iPhone lit up with the announcement that I'd been bumped as mayor. This made me crazy.

Getting the News

   I don't like to admit this, but I can be very competitive. Most of the time I manage to control this trait. I politely decline to participate in Cards and Board Games and walk away. I had a bad Mafia habit on Facebook for a while, so I steered clear of Farmville because I knew once I started planting, and swapping dairy cows, I'd never come back.
    So I asked this "friend" of mine what I had to do to get my title back. Turns out the reason he was paying all those "extra" visits to the bakery was an oatmeal raisin cookie fix. It also turns out that this paragon can also be bought. He told me oatmeal raisin cookies would be the price of getting back my mayorship.

Okay, Dude, you're on. Mr. X on the right wishing he had cookies too.

    Since I mainly cook Indian recipes, I don't have too many cookies up my sleeve, let alone oatmeal raisins worthy of winning my title back. So I did what any self respecting, desperate groveler would do. I turned to Food Blogs' Homemade By Holman to be exact! I baked some this afternoon and they turned out perfectly. I stuffed them in an old Danish Sugar Cookie tin and dumped them on his porch. But not before Alan sampled them. Now he is threatening to take some of my other Mayorships from me so that he can get cookies too. Will this never end??!! So I totally recommend this recipe.
It's absolutely Golden as far as Bribery is concerned. If there is someone who needs to be bought off, this is the cookie that will do it!

   Meanwhile here is a picture that Alan took out the kitchen window this evening. Quail taking a damp dust bath before sunset. There were so many of them. I deliberately dampened the ground, making a perfect spa for quail.

   They looked delightfully delicious. They inspired me to raid my freezer.

No Backyard Quail Were Harmed In The Making Of This Recipe

Here's The Rub for fixing them.
   Quail Rub:
     1 tsp. of salt
  1/2 tsp of cayenne
  1/2 tsp of allspice
    Mix together and rub into the bird
  drizzle lightly with olive oil before grilling

   I use this rub any time I'm fixing quail or any small game bird. I even use it on ribs, with a bit of chutney on the side and some red cabbage it's a winner for any Fall lunch or dinner.

Finally, about Project Food Blog
I made it to Round 2 in the Project Foodbuzz Foodblogger of The Year Competition. 
     So for anyone who hasn't heard about this before, what exactly is this Project Foodblog Contest and why do I want it so badly???
     Project Food Blog is the first-ever interactive competition where thousands of Foodbuzz Featured    Publishers are competing in a series of culinary blogging challenges for the chance to advance and a  shot at the ultimate prize: $10,000 and a special feature on Foodbuzz.com for one year
     Voting is now open  until the 30th and I'm trying to make the cut to the next round. Please register to vote on Foodbuzz.com (it's free!) or if you're already a member, do me a solid,  Click  HERE and give me a vote and help me make it to the next round.