Medieval Lego River Fort

I just recently took apart my Lego British Royal Navy fort, since I had had it out for a while, and I wanted to use the gray blocks for something else.  I turned it into a fort that guarded a river from Scandinavian (Viking) raids.

I built two towers, one for each side, and on the lowest platform in the middle I put four entirely wooden spears at even intervals that pointed down.  In between the spears I put three shields that had lion faces on them, the one in the middle bigger than the other two on each side.  Then behind them I put the defenders, two out of the three in the front with additional shields.  I put two defenders in the second row, where I could have squeezed in three defenders; but that way I have enough armor and weapons left so that if any of the defenders were injured or killed, I could replace them with another fully armed soldier and not have to take weapons and armor from another soldier.       

On the right tower I had one rank of one archer and one crossbowmen.  (I couldn't fit any more archers on the same tower without the second rank having to shoot straight through the first, and I was also clean out of bows and crossbows.)                                                         

On the other tower (which I'm pretty proud of) I built I giant crossbow somewhat like the Mangler all on my own.  (The Mangler is the giant crossbow fixed on the prow of the Heron, which is Hal's ship in The Brotherband Chronicles.)  I made it out of three sticks with clips on the end that stuck up in a triangle.  The back two sticks in the triangle held up two horizontal sticks attached to make one stick, a chain attached to each end of the extra long stick.  The two chains connected on the other end, and you could stick a spear made out of all wood into the two chain ends, rest the middle of the spear on the connecter for the two sticks, clipping the end of the spear onto the stick at the point of the triangle.  I put two 2x2 brown bricks in the middle of the triangle so that the Mangler 2.0 didn't look as flimsy as it was.  I also had a barrel behind it with three of the spear-projectiles sticking out of it, and a guy in a plain gray cuirass manning it.                                                                                                                      

I also made banks along the river out of silt and dirt, in other words tan, dark tan, and brown bricks, with the classic green oval with three leaves coming out of it all over the sides of the bank.  I attached a green platform to each bank which I put trees on so that it looked like the river was below the normal level of the ground, which was actually there, not just like, "Yup, this is the edge of the river, the bank goes up... and then the bank stops and there isn't much beyond that." 

For the Scandinavian longship, I took the seats and flag out of a pirate rowboat, keeping the cutlass that had been thrust upside down through the part in front of the boat where a round block size opening was, so that they could cut other ships in half.  Now I had a Scandinavian shortship, and all I had to do was man it with four berserkers, three of which with Lego Ron hair, which by the way works really well for Scandinavians, or anyone with red beards for that matter.  The other one had a Scandinavian helmet, with the horns taken out.  Whoever made those Scandinavians must not have done their research, since Scandinavians never had horned helmets.  Some Russian opera writer had written a play that depicted female Scandinavians with helmet that had feathers sticking out, so for the male Scandinavians to match he gave them horns on their helmets, and it stuck, resulting in the Lego Scandinavians with the un-historically accurate horns that we have today.  

Overall I think I did a pretty good job arming and armoring both sides, and the fort is now officially ready for battle.

  

Greek Food Day

Since I've been learning Greek, my mom thought it would be a fun springtime end of the year project to have a day when we had Greek food.  I could choose what Greek food we had.  I tried searching for Greek food, but when I clicked on something that looked like it would be a good eggroll-ish dinner, it turned out to be fried dough balls that were a common dessert.  I wasn't finding any good ideas until I saw some article about Greek seafood.  

My three ideas for dinners ended up being Sea Bass, which I thought was a good idea, Brown Trout, which I didn't know about, since even though they looked really good, they live all through New Hampshire and Vermont, and we were looking for Greek foods.  My last idea for dinner was Octopus, which I'm pretty excited about, but I don't know if the store, or anywhere around here, has a whole Octopus, head and all, which is what the recipe calls for.  

For breakfast I had written down this custard called rizogalo, which looked pretty good.  (It said it could be a breakfast or a dessert, which sounded promising.)  I also had bougatsa, which was a sweet or savory filling wrapped in phyllo dough, which is a combination of flour, water, vinegar, and a little oil.  The last one was called staka me ayga, which looked like scrambled eggs, but it said you put in staka, which is some sort of buttery creamy and floury mixture, which sounded good.  

For dessert I had written down lokma, the fried dough balls I had clicked on first.  I had also written down karythopita, which was a spiced cake with walnuts on top that sounded pretty good.  That was as far as I had gotten on dessert, because the recipes for dessert were all a few paragraphs long, not like the nice quick overviews on how to make the different breakfasts and dinners.  I tried writing down the ingredients, but that was also a really long list.  The others I would have written down were filo and butter pull-apart, which was this circular dessert with multiple thin layers, and the whole thing looked like it was encrusted in honey.  There was also lemon bougatsa, which looked super good, and was a thick lemony paste that looked kind of like a lemon pie.  Also there was honey and rosewater baklava, which was a nut-filled filo pastry with cinnamon syrup.  There was white chocolate baklava cigars, that, sure enough, resembled cigars.  And kataifi, which looked like a clump of spaghetti does when you twirl it on the end of your fork, but apparently it was supposed to be an almond pastry covered in syrup.     

I've been writing back and forth with a kid from Greece lately, which has been fun.  I asked him if he had any suggestions for foods, and he sent me four different links to food he liked.  For seafood, he said octopus with chopped pasta, and he also sent me links to bean soup, which sounded good.  (He said it was the national Greek food, and it must be pretty good if it's the national food.)  The other two were called Greek village salad, and the stuffed.  The stuffed was peppers and tomatoes that you stuffed with rice.

For breakfast I decided to have staka me ayga, 1, because I had ruled out rizogalo since, even though it looked so good, it was just rice pudding, and it wasn't only in Greece that people had rice pudding.  2,  because staka me ayga sounded way more Greek, since it said staka was local cow milk, and we looked it up and found bottles of staka for sale, with all the labels in Greek.  3, because I was curious about staka me ayga, since it looked like normal scrambled eggs, but there were different ingredients.  

For lunch I decided to have Greek village salad, since I thought it looked okay, and because every other lunch didn't look that good, and I'm not really a vegetable casserole fan.  

For dinner I decided to have brown trout, because I didn't know if we could get good octopus, and that looked pretty complicated, so I decided to stick with something that lived right around here and didn't have to be shipped in from Timbuctoo.  I don't know what kind of sea bass the recipe wants, and it turns out there are a million different species of sea bass, so I ruled that one out too. 

Lastly for dessert I decided to have lemon bougatsa, which I decided by ruling out desserts like lokma (those dough balls) so that I had the most dessert looking ones, then I ruled out watermelon in cinnamon sauce and ones that I was a little unsure about, since I didn't think the cinnamon sauce would pair well with the watermelon.  Finally I was left with just these almond shortbread balls and lemon bougatsa.  The shortbread balls were so covered with confectioner-sugar-looking icing, that I didn't know if I would be able to taste the shortbread.  Thus is how I decided upon lemon bougatsa.  

I'm excited for everything, especially dinner, and we've ordered all the ingredients so that I can make it this weekend.