1 March 2012 / leggypeggy

Pick-a-Number Winner

Pick-a-number prize

The numbers are in and there’s a winner.

I’m pleased to announce the kudos (and prize) go to Emma Bickley, who chose the number 33, and then modified it to 32.

So the winning number is 32, but 33 will play a role too (see below).

Actually either number would have done, because it was Emma’s reason that clinched the prize for her.

She linked her choice/s to my grandmother’s birthday, which was also the day that entries closed. That’s a good enough reason for me.

On this 29 February, my grandmother (my dad’s mother) would have been 132.

Now some of you might think that means she would have been celebrating her 33rd birthday but—and it’s a little known fact—29 February was not observed in the year 1900, so given that she was born in 1880, she would have been celebrating her 32nd birthday.

Grandma Zula—yes, that was her name—was larger than life. A true character.

She lived with my folks, my sisters and me for the last 6–7 years of her life. I’ll tell some of those stories another time, but you should know that life with Zula was like being on a roller coaster.

I remember her 21st birthday party in 1968.

She asked for an electric guitar! My mother got her one. Well, it wasn’t actually electric, but an electric look-alike. I think mum paid about $60 for it way-back-when. Zula taught herself to play it.

Quite a few years later mum sold that guitar for $600. Turns out very few of these were ever made and it became a collector’s item.

Grandma was a collector’s item too.

The prize

So what’s the prize for the winner.

It’s a copy of the cookbook My Egyptian Grandmother’s Kitchen by Magda Mehdawy. I bought it in Egypt and it’s a lot of fun to read, but then I read cookbooks like most people read novels.

Why pick a number?

I have a plan for an additional blog. Actually it’s more than a plan—it’s already being shaped—but I needed a number.

I have more than 500 cookbooks and probably another 500 cooking magazines. I read them like novels, but don’t cook from them nearly often enough. I need motivation to get into each and every book.

So from now on, at least a few times a week I’m going to cook from page 32, 132 or 232. If there isn’t a recipe on 32, I’ll look at page 33 or 133 or 233. My fall-back position will be page 64, which just happens to be Poor John’s age. He knew he’d get his age factored in there somewhere.

I’ll share the recipe and what I do with it in a new blog called What’s cooking on page 32.

And congratulations Emma!