Hungarian Spaetzle : Little Dumplings

Ah, so the Hungarian dumplings that I remember and love from my childhood while sitting in my grandma Julia Nagy's kitchen in Cleveland, Ohio -- those are LITTLE DUMPLINGS more easily referred to as Hungarian Spaetzle. Spaetzle you see definitely indicates that you want "little" dumplings. This is a very good picture of what a plate of Hungarian "little dumplings" or Spaetzle should look like.

These Hungarian Spaetzle are incredibly easy to make. And, the little dumplings taste fabulous in Chicken and Veal Paprikas. Oh, and you can serve them in your Hungarian Goulash too. In fact, there are plenty of applications er dishes that would taste delicious with Hungarian Spaetzle.

You know, I'm even thinking that my recipe for beef stroganoff would benefit from using Hungarian Spaetzle instead of plain butter noodles! Why don't you try it some time. Oh, and I've included a simple and easy to prepare recipe for Hungarian Spaetzle below!

See this picture? Hungarian Spaetzle, as little dumplings go, should never look like this! You see this is a picture of my dinner plate when we vacationed in The Czech Republic, in Prague. It was our first dinner in the Eastern European city. We had opted to eat at the restaurant that advertised Hungarian Goulash with Dumplings. When this plate arrived, I looked at my hubby and exclaimed, "What the heck is this? Those aren't DUMPLINGS!"

You see size does matter. This was not the last time that I ordered DUMPLINGS while we toured The Czech Republic. Yep, ordering DUMPLINGS off the menu produced the same results as what you see on this plate. Well, at least they were consistent. For a third time, I asked if I could get Hungarian DUMPLINGS for dinner at the hostel we stayed at in the countryside. We did a lot of 'charades' back and forth to communicate what I had in mind. The chef told me it took her a day to prepare them. Well, although I thought that seemed odd as they are easy and simple to make, I nodded my head and said we'd see her the next night.

As hubby and I took our seat, that next night, my tastebuds were already in overdrive. It wasn't too long before dinner was served. OMG, "Those aren't dumplings!" Yep, you guessed it! For the third time, I got the type of BREAD "dumplings" as shown on this plate.

When we got home from our vacation, I relayed the story to mom. Ah, she laughed, "Next time, ask for SPAETZLE!"

I am using this lens on Hungarian Spaetzle as a "case study" lens to document how this lens is promoted and to chart lens stats. It was my idea to publish a lens to be used as a "case study" as I was writing on the topic of lens promotion for a special project. It made sense to me that a lens be the "case study" to show how lens promotion could impact lens statistics -- including traffic and lensrank. So, I made that suggestion that everyone do a "case study" lens to demonstrate their topic of discussion on Squidoo and Squidoo lenses.

Of course, we all know the IMPACT of Squid Angels in that lensrank -- so if a group of angels were to bless a lens, that could definitely skew the rankings. At this time, It is not believed that this lens HAS had many of those angel blessings. So the lensrank achieved for this "case study" lens should be truer to the lens promotion that has been used for Hungarian Spaetzle -- Little Dumplings. Nowadays, with all the groups supporting group members, it is difficult to get many lensmasters' ratings for non-group lensmasters. I don't currently belong in any "groups" aside from Seth Godin's original Tribes project. So, getting visitors to rate lenses demands more creative lens promotion!

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This lens was originally created on 8/28/09 and worked for for a few days before publishing. This screen capture, taken before Noon on 8/31/09, shows that the lens has a 5-star rating, been rated by 5 people, and is Ranked #2,073 in Food, #46,019 overall.

A bug: This lens was originally created on 8/28/09, but was held until 8/31/09 to publish. It got caught in the bug that showed the lens in red WIP on the dashboard. The bug assigned lensranks of Aug 29: 792,181 and Aug 30: 794,020 with a two day Average Lensrank for Aug of: 793,101. A bug report was issued to ask that this lensrank be adjusted to 0.

After lensrolling, throughout the day, this lens was added to social media platforms, first through the lens buttons to StumbleUpon, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Delicious. It was added later in the day to Stumpedia, RedGage, Tagfoot, and ThisNext. A blog post was done on JaguarJulie Blog On and On along with a Posterous blog entry.

First of all! This is a very important statistic to note in the "case study" with regards to my previous comment about groups! See the previous module that reported "Lensrank Chronology" of:

9/03/09: Ranked #134 in Food, #2,169 overall - 13 ratings - 5 stars

Compare that bit of information with today's lensrank AND ratings:

12/20/09: Ranked #1,200 in Food, #20,821 overall - 16 ratings - 5 stars

Does this NOT speak volumes that this non-group lensmaster's lens has ONLY been able to garner 3 ratings in a 3.5 month time period? That equates to one vote per month! Heck, I've visited brand new Rocketmom's lenses with some 19-20 votes right out of the gate! And, I've visited many of the other private/semi-private groups members lenses to see equally high number of lenses' ratings -- far more than the 16 ratings on a nearly 4-month old lens.

The power of Squidoo = the power of groups!