From the Modern to the Medieval: In Which I Look Back at Two Years of Posts and Choose My Seven Superlative Links

I was first tagged in the 7 Links Meme by Claudia of What's Cooking, followed shortly thereafter by Maya of Foodiva's Kitchen. I kept meaning to set aside time to play along, but to no avail. Then,  when I was recently tagged by Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks! the third time turned out to be the charm, and here we are. The challenge? Participants are tasked with choosing one post each of the most beautiful, overlooked, helpful, successful, popular, controversial, and the one of which they are most proud. It's not as easy as it sounds, but it is every bit as fun.

I had the hardest time choosing my most beautiful post, as I found myself rejecting each potential contender for some fatal aesthetic flaw, real or imagined. Prompted by Poppa Trix, I settled on my savory salmon mousse eclair "hot dogs." I also chose these because of Leaf the Indolent Cook's comment that there were the most serene hot dogs she had ever seen:

My most overlooked post is not a single post, but rather a category: all my African dishes, like this West African pepper soup:

I have been cooking African dishes since before I began my blog - here on Tasty Trix I've done Kenyan curried fish, Senegalese yassa, Kenyan maharagwe, Liberian bean soup, Ghanaian red red, m'baazi, and peanut stew, and for some reason these posts never get the traffic I think they deserve. Is the (non-African) world not ready for African food? I hope that's not the case!

My malfatti post is easily the most helpful, given that I included a lot of process shots, and many commentors noted the helpful wine glass trick I shared that makes forming these quenelles easy-peasy:

I never expected an innocent restaurant review to be controversial - especially a positive one - but when a local newspaper picked up my post about Chinese restaurant Grace Garden, things really hit the fan. The issue? I called the area dangerous, and dubbed it a suburb of D.C. Baltimoreans took issue with this, leaving upsetting and aggressive comments both on my blog and the paper's Web site claiming that just because people get murdered, shot, or robbed  in a given area with a certain (and to my mind alarming) degree of frequency doesn't make a place dangerous.  They also took offense at the fact that I labeled the town a suburb of D.C., rather than Baltimore ... hey, you want it? You can have it. For me, it was only ever about the amazing food, like this tea-smoked duck, which I had to order three days in advance:

I am torn about my most successful post, so I am going to cheat and call it a tie. It's either my pretzels with black lava salt, which I have made many times since, and are always a huge hit with whoever tries them:

Or it's these bacon-and-egg purses in aromatic broth, a dish I was inspired to make after that notorious trip to Grace Garden:

My most popular post, based on traffic, is a real mystery to me. It's a really early one -  libum, or ancient Roman cheese bread post. I mean, it's nice and all that, but I can't for the life of me figure out why it's my most viewed post of all time:

And the post that I am most proud of is actually a series: the 12 Days of Feasting, in which I posted a different Medieval recipe every day for 12 days during the holiday season. Clearly I did not have enough work to do at the time! It was madness, and I doubt I will ever have the energy for something quite so ambitious again, but I'm glad I did it. Below is the collage image from my Medieval series wrap up post:

And while I'm talking about bests, check out the neat-o nav bar Poppa Trix made for me. Now you can search posts by type of cuisine, category, travel, and more!

Now I believe it is customary for me to tag some fellow food bloggers and see if they'd like to take up the 7 Links challenge ... though for all I know, since I'm so late to the party  everyone has already been tagged. On the chance that's not true, here's who I would love to see  play along (and if I've forgotten you and you'd like to play, consider yourself tagged):

Trevor of Sis. Boom! Blog

Deana of Lost Past Remembered

Emily of Emily Malloy

Theresa of Island Vittles

Penny of Jeroxie

No pressure - if you don't feel like it or you don't have time I totally understand. In the meantime, here's to many more posts!