THE PENARIOUS CHALLENGE

penarious: adj. of or pertaining to food supplies or provisions

Once upon a time there lived a word that went by the name Penarious. It was a good word, but got lost among the thousands of other words that were put in the dictionary every year. As the decades went by people forgot about the word penarious. Other food related words like victuals, viands and vittles somehow made it through this process of word elimination, but penarious (a better sounding word in my opinion) was sent to keep company with other endangered words like nidifice, seplasiary, gumfiate, sagitipotent and locupletative at savethewords.org.

It was at this little website where I discovered and adopted the word, Penarious, for my 2010 Penarious Challenge. The 2010 Penarious Challenge was an opportunity for readers to submit a recipe for me to test-try to see what was involved in making it and if it was worth their time, or just submitting an idea for a recipe that I would attempt to create one for them. This resulted in great recipes like Heinz-like homemade ketchup, dairy and gluten free potato soup, best ever chocolate ice cream, a low carb casserole for diabetics, parsley pesto, and an amazing orange almond cream cake.

Sadly, savethewords.org no longer exists, but the word penarious lives on here at Stir It Up!

While the original Penarious Challenge is always open for readers to submit suggestions or recipes, it has now evolved into a personal challenge for me to step outside my comfort zone and make something that I wouldn’t ordinarily make, or use an ingredient that I don’t normally keep on hand. I’m always trying to broaden my horizons in the kitchen, so what better way than a challenge?

Will you join me?