Despite getting a doctorate in economics, Mr. De Lancey nevertheless managed to get married and produce two children.
– Paul De Lancey, from the great beyond
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
New Zealander Entree
INGREDIENTS
1 small onion
1 Roma tomato
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound ground lamb
½ teaspoon lemon zest
½ teaspoon marjoram
1½ tablespoons mayonnaise
1 teaspoon mint, crushed
¼ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon rosemary
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 avocado
4 hamburger buns
4 lettuce leaves
4 slices beetroot (Optional? Depends on whom you ask.)
PREPARATION
Cut onion and tomato into thin slices. Add onion and olive oil to skillet. Sauté for 5 minutes on medium-high heat or until onion softens. Add lamb, lemon zest, marjoram, mayonnaise, mint, pepper, rosemary, and Worcestershire sauce to large mixing bowl. Mix with hands.
Make four patties. Fry patties at medium-high heat with lid on for about 6 minutes or until the insides of the patties are done to the desired level of pinkness or brownness. Flip patties once.
While patties are cooking, cut tomato into ⅛” thick slices. Peel avocado and remove pit. Cut avocado into four slices lengthwise. Toast hamburger buns. Put a patty on bottom bun. Put tomato and sautéed onion slices and 1 lettuce leaf on each patty. Top with beetroot slice, if desired. Add top bun. Combine the bottom and top parts of the burger. Repeat for the next 3 burgers.
TIDBITS
1) Sheep is an anagram for . . . sheep. Lamb is an anagram for balm. Lambs do not use lip balm. They do not have opposable thumbs, so they can’t hold the tubes of lip balm.
2) Sheep can be shorn for their wool. Wool makes nice clothes and blankets for people to use. People get haircuts. However, sheep do not wear wigs made from human hair, not even if they wonder what it would be like to be a redhead.
3) Law enforcement can track you with your cell phone’s GPS. Smart sheep can do the same, so Mary’s little lamb doesn’t need to follow Mary anymore. This is why you don’t hear the nursery rhyme anymore.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
Laotian Entree
INGREDIENTS
3 garlic cloves
2 shallots
2½” fresh ginger
5 chicken breasts
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1½ tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons oyster sauce*
3 tablespoons soy sauce
3 tablespoons fresh cilantro
* = There is some debate about allergies and oyster sauce. There is also much discussion over substitutes for oyster sauce. The best substitute seems to be hoisin sauce. Some say to just omit the oyster sauce. The culinary community is a fractious one.
SPECIAL UTENSIL
Dutch oven or wok
Takes about 30 minutes. Makes 4 bowls.
PREPARATION
Mince garlic and shallots. Grate ginger. Slice chicken breasts into ½” strips. Add oil, garlic, ginger, and shallots to Dutch oven. Sauté at medium-high for 5 minutes or until garlic softens. Stir frequently. Add chicken strips. Sauté for 5-to-10 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink. Stir occasionally. Add honey, oyster sauce, and soy sauce. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. While chicken simmers, remove stems from cilantro. Garnish chicken with cilantro. This dish goes well with rice.
TIDBITS
1) Laos is the world’s most bombed country. There are entire spots in Laos that are off limits due to numerous unexploded bombs. Laos is also home to the King Cobra, one of the world’s most venomous snakes. Don’t wander off the beaten path!
2) Head instead in May for Laos’ Bun Bang Fai Festival, where villages vie for the best looking and highest soaring bamboo rockets. Can bamboo rockets be dangerous? Well yes, but not as much as King Cobras or 500-pound bombs. Besides the slight chance of bodily harm, the festival also features plenty of wonderful music, dancing, and parades You will have fun. You will come back.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
ON HOLD HAIKU #1
You put me on hold
What’d I ever do to you
To be put on hold.
ON HOLD HAIKU #1
I am still on hold
I feel my will to live leave.
I grow old waiting.
– Paul De Lancey, Bad Artist
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
I got e-mail from a company that made me feel so squooshy. The subject was “<<First\Name Default=”Valued”>> Now whatever could more intimate than that?
– Paul De Lancey, etiquette adviser
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
People often ask me, “Paul, what is the secret to culinary happiness?” Here are four more tips.
1) Guys, do not scratch your balls immediately after removing seeds from an habanero pepper. Watch your hands first. Thoroughly.
2) Warm beer cools downs faster in a sink of cold water than it does in the fridge or freezer. This is because water has a much higher heat-transfer coefficient than air.
3) Is microwaving taking up too much of your time, time that you could have been using to build a financial empire? Well then, this tip is for you. Punch in 6-0 for sixty seconds instead of 1-0-0 for one minute. It results in the same amount of microwaving, but you will have saved yourself the time required to press that third button. You will now have an extra tenth of a second to do investment analysis. Enjoy your millions.
4) Speaking of saving time, how many times have you made your perfect meal, the best meal of your life where everything turned just right, and your guests literally walked to their cares singing your culinary praises? Well, just once. But it doesn’t have to be that way with the Bushnell 303 Time Machine. Whenever your more likable guests show up for dinner, simply fire up the ol’ reliable 303, go back in time to that special night when you made that perfect meal, return with your food fit for the gods, and serve it to your guests. And best of all, with your Time Machine, you’ll never have to cook a perfect meal again. You’ll say, “Thank you, Bushnell.”
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
Mexican Appetizer
INGREDIENTS
1 jalapeno pepper
½ medium honeydew melon
1 peach
1 red bell pepper
½ teaspoon cilantro
1½ tablespoons lime juice
PREPARATION
Remove seeds from jalapeno pepper. (Remember to wash hands after doing this.) Remove seeds from honeydew melon, peach, and red bell pepper. Dice jalapeno pepper, honeydew, peach, and red bell pepper. Add all ingredients to serving bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Goes well with chicken, fish, and tortilla chips.
TIDBITS
1) This dish is not that spicy hot as it contains only one jalapeno pepper. However, there are people who sweat profusely even at the sight of a hot pepper. Some people are even tempted to strip off all their clothes in order to get relief from the spicy heat.
2) If your one of these people may I suggest attending the Global Rainbow Gathering in La Paz, Mexico? The festival runs from November 1 to 30 and celebrates peace and love. And nudity, but you’ll already be nude because you panicked from the spicy heat of a jalapeno pepper and doffed your clothes in front of everybody. But it’ll be okay because many of the other revelers will naked as well. You’ll feel one with the universe and friends with everyone as sample the plentiful marijuana. Discuss healing the world with your new-found friends while getting a massage from Sunshine. Don’t expect to imbibe alcohol here; the emphasis is on good, clean fun.
3) Crave nocturnal excitement ‘round Christmas time? Visit Oaxaca, Mexico, on December 23 for the Night of the Radishes. No, this is not a low-budget sequel to The Night of the Living Dead. It is the height of after-dusk vegetarian excitement. Radish growers neighboring towns assemble for perhaps the largest radish-carving competition in the world. See culinary artists depict scenes from the Bible, history, and mythology from huge, carved radishes. Enjoy gigantic radish salads while watching spectacular firework displays. This festival is a must for the radish lover in all of us.
4) Visit the Zacatecas, Mexico for its La Morisma celebration. Held in late August, this festival features a staged battle between thousands of Christian and Moorish warriors. I had never heard of Moorish soldiers getting to Mexico, so it all sounds historically dubious. Men and women, people of all ages dress up in period uniforms and recreate fictitious battles for three days. Whoa. Fine wandering bands of musicians provide additional entertainment. Note, people who fit it well with the Global Rainbow Gathering usually do not enjoy this event. It’s an either or sort of thing.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
Portuguese Appetizer
INGREDIENTS
3 garlic cloves
6 tablespoons fresh parsley
1 onion
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 teaspoon crushed red peppers
½ teaspoon pepper
1 package saffron
⅓ cup cold water
1 cup cider vinegar
PREPARATION
Mince garlic and parsley. Dice onion. Add all ingredients to serving bowl. Mix with whisk until well blended. Put bowl in refrigerator for 30 minutes. Serve cold. This dish also works well for marinating fish.
TIDBITS
1) Want to really run with the bulls? Visit the Portuguese island of Terceira for the Sanjoaninas festivites in August. Simply hold a rope that is tied to a running bull. Okay, it is suggested that you run as well. Prove your courage to your loved one by scampering as close to the enraged, huge, muscular, sharp horned beast as possible. A gore wound is guaranteed to give you a story you can tell your friends forever. Go for it!
2) Admittedly, painful injuries just aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. Well, if you’re one of these people may I suggest the Orange Throwing Competition in Ivrea, Italy? Held forty days before Lent, it’s perfect for the warrior in all of us yearning to participate in a safe war. (And how many of those occur these days?) Watch a parade. Blend in, pretend to savor the historical significance of some long ago battle. Then pelt other tourists and locals with overripe oranges. If life gives you rotten oranges, hold a festival.
3) Sometimes you just feel like being a dick. That’s a good time to head to Tyrnavos, Greece for its Phallus Festival. Start your celebration of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and whoopee, by eating spinach and nettle soup. Then go crazy and bop others on their heads with an enormous phallus–fake, not your own. This all ensures a good harvest and occurs at the start of Lent.
4) The Festa della Madonna Bruna in Matera, Italy, is perfect for everyone thirsting for vengeance against the law for that $400 in towing fees and fines they gave you for parking illegally in a spot where you couldn’t see the no-parking signs twelve feet off the ground and twenty yards behind you. Ahem. Police, locals, and participants battle for the possession of the float honoring the Madonna. Held on July 2, it’s good fun, it’s legal, and doesn’t cause run-on sentences.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
SUPERMARKET-SIGN HAIKU #1
Please sir, will you move?
Stop reading those cans and move.
I need to buy soup.
SUPERMARKET-SIGN HAIKU #2
Don’t care if it has
Monosodium glutamate
Buy the frickin’ can.
– Paul De Lancey, Bad Artist
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
People often ask me, “Paul, what is the secret to culinary happiness?” Here are four more tips.
1) Know what T, t and c mean in recipes. A bread loaf with 1/2 cup (1/2 c) of vanilla extract packs a much stronger taste sensation than does 1/2 teaspoon (1/2 t.) Similarly, be prepared to have your guests hate you for the rest of their lives when you serve them a dish with 1 tablespoon (1 T) of diced ghost chiles instead of the correct amount of 1 teaspoon (1 t)
2) Chili sauce comes from chiles, unless you’re from a part of the country where it comes from chilis. Or even chillis.
3) Do not cook in the nude. Not ever. Hot bacon grease splatter hurts oh so much when it lands on your face. Imagine what it’ll feel like when it hits one of the more exciting parts of your body. If you do get hot bacon grease or oil or your hand, place it immediately under running cold water. Good luck getting your special bits under the cold-water faucet. And if you do, it’s almost a certainty your postal carrier will be walking by your kitchen window at that precise moment.
4) No matter many herbs and spices you have, and I possess more than one hundred, there will be so many times when you’ll find you’re missing an ingredient essential to your meal. Try to marry someone who will love you enough to enough to drive to the store for that one item. And then do the same thing 186 more times.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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