Quiz and garlic

I had the chance to exercise a couple of my talents yesterday. I've said before about feeling guilty about the fact that I seemed to be accepting the generous hospitality of my brother and his family without giving anything back, but, for once, I was able to repay them a little by cooking them a meal yesterday evening. I have no claims to be any sort of culinary expert, but there are some dishes that I can make a reasonable fist of, and paella is one of my specialities. I'm quite interested in Spanish food in general, and its Canarian variant in particular, so I added a side dish that anyone who's been to the Canary Islands might recognise - Papas Arrugadas con Mojo Rojo. Mojo is a garlic sauce which has a number of variations, my version of it being made with lots (and I mean lots!) of garlic, smoked paprika and olive oil, which is then served with the Papas Arrugadas, wrinkled potatoes, which are small potatoes cooked in their skins. The traditional way of getting the skins to wrinkle is to boil them in heavily salted water, but I cook mine in the oven in a small amount of olive oil, which seems to have the desired effect. It all seemed to go down pretty well - there was nothing left over, anyway! - but it left us all smelling very garlicky, something even heavy teeth cleaning couldn't overcome! My niece ended up going to buy some mints to try and become a bit less anti-social!
After the evening meal, we went to a village pub a quarter of an hour or so from my brother's house where he plays in the pub quiz league. Perhaps my most notable ability is answering general knowledge questions - I seem to have not only the sort of memory that can retain trivia, but also the capacity to recall it pretty effectively. I have, albeit not recently, had my proverbial 'fifteen minutes of fame' by appearing quite successfully on a couple of TV quiz shows, so when my brother's team found out I was potentially available last night, they were keen to bring me on board as a bit of a 'ringer' to help them along (it was all legal under the quiz league's rules, I hasten to add). It turned out to be quite a competitive game, but we managed to prevail in the end, and I think I made enough of a contribution to justify my existence. I would've been most disappointed if I hadn't ended up on the winning side - without wishing to seem conceited, I'm not used to losing in pub quizzes, and, even allowing for the fact that I don't play very often these days, it's a good few years since I have been on the wrong side of a result.
Just in case we hadn't had enough garlic earlier in the evening, the after-match food provided by the host pub included some fairly piquant garlic bread. It's a good job you can't overdose on garlic, because we'd have been in great danger of doing so otherwise!
I'm back at home now, having just about managed to drive back to Cornwall after work this afternoon without falling asleep at the wheel! I'm now starting to get into 'holiday mode', with a nice glass of Chardonnay on hand while I'm writing this. As has been said before, it's a tough job, but someone's got to do it!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B