Do your bit!
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
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.
SALATA DE BOEUF
(Beef Salad)
INGREDIENTS
1 pound thin beef sirloin
1⅓ pounds potatoes
2 carrots
2 eggs
⅓ cup green peas
1 cup diced or sliced pickles
½ cup pickled red bell peppers
1 cup mayonnaise (¼ cup more later)
2 tablespoons mustard
½ teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon salt
¼ cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon fresh parsley
Serves 8. Takes 1 hour. No mayonnaise topping at front, so you can see inside.
PREPARATION
Add sirloin and enough water to cover. Bring to boil at high heat. Boil for 30 minutes or until sirloin is tender. Drain. Remove sirloin, let cool, and chop into ½” cubes. While beef cooks, add potatoes and enough water to large pot. Bring to boil at high heat. Boil for 25 minutes or until tender. Drain. Let potatoes cool. Peel potatoes and chop them into ½” cubes.
While sirloin and potatoes cook, add carrots and water to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Boil for 15 minutes or until carrots becomes tender. Drain and cool. Chop carrots into ½” cubes. Add water to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Carefully add eggs. Boil for 8 minutes for soft boiled and 12 minutes for hard boiled. Let cool. Peel and cut each egg into 6 slices.
Add sirloin, potato, carrot, peas, pickles, pickled red-bell peppers, 1 cup mayonnaise, mustard, pepper, and salt. Mix by hand until well blended. Add this mixture to a serving plate. Mold by hand into a flat, round shape like a layer of cake. Use spatula to coat cake-shape mixture with ¼ cup mayonnaise. Dice parsley. Garnish with egg slices and parsley.
TIDBITS
1) Prehistoric humans believed the Sun was a god. Egg yolks look like the Sun. Our ancestors reasoned that egg yolks themselves must possess a bit of divinity. The ancient Egyptians went further. Any animal that could birth so much godliness must itself be divine. The chicken became the preeminent Egyptian god. However, during the 18th dynasty, the priests of Amun Ra gained power and destroyed the Chicken Cult. Chickens would never again be worshipped. Their eggs, however, may be enjoyed in this dish.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
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.
Has this happened to you? You’re playing the part of Jean Valjean for the Broadway premier of Les Miserables. Curtain goes up in about a hour. You’re a bit nervous. Who wouldn’t be? So you ask the actor for Javert to play a board game with you. He agrees. He’s nervous as well. The two of you vote against chess. It’d take way too long. So you play checkers. You become engrossed in the game. Neither of you hears the five-minutes call. The producer, frantic with worry, gives your roles to your understudy. Neither of you will ever act again. What could have been done?
Play Paul’s Simplified Checkers. It’s played on a three-by-three board. Each side get two checkers. Now let’s look at a truly exciting game.
The start of the game.
End of first move. Red player has moved from End of second move. Black player has jumped
A1 to A2. Red’s checker, C3 to A1 and was kinged.
End of third move. Red Player has moved from End of fourth move. Black played has jumped
from A3 to B2. Red’s, A1 to C3. Black player wins.
My goodness that was exciting. And it was quick. You needn’t ever again lose a Broadway acting job because you checker’s game took too long. In fact, all games will last exactly four moves. What more do you want?
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
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.
Hi! The picture to the right shows my blog’s stats for the morning of July 27, 2021. It’s exciting to note that I had only one visitor, yet my blog was read in five different countries. You, dear mystery reader, read my blog: six times in the United States, five times in India, two times in Canada, once in Finland, and once again in Ireland.
Clearly, you love my blog and you love to travel. Naysayers might say that my blog host made a mistake in saying that I had only one visitor, that I really had more, and that the statistic for the number of visitors needed updating. I think, however, that such frivolous negativity can be dismissed out of hand.
Thank you, dear readers. You’re the best.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
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.
INGREDIENTS
6 eggs
2 cups cottage cheese
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
1 cup sour cream
¾ cup (1½ sticks) butter
1 pound filo (phyllo) dough
SPECIAL UTENSILS
9″-x-13″ baking pan or casserole dish
Serves 8. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.
PREPARATION
Separate eggs. Beat egg whites until fluffy. Add egg yolks, cottage cheese, feta cheese, and sour cream to mixing bowl. Blend thoroughly with whisk or fork. Fold in egg whites. Preheat oven to 360 degrees. Melt butter using low heat. Brush pan with 2 tablespoons melted butter.
Place 2 sheets filo dough in pan. Drizzle 2 tablespoons melted butter over filo. Spread ¼ cup egg/cheese mix on top. Gently crinkle 2 filo sheets into accordion-like balls. Dip accordion balls into cheese/egg mix from bowl until lightly coated. Place coated accordion-like filo balls over flat filo sheets in pan. Repeat until you have 2 filo sheets remaining. Top with remaining 2 filo sheets. Brush top filo sheets with remaining butter and cheese/egg mix. Bake in over at 360 degrees for 50 minutes or until top is reddish, golden brown. Serve warm or let cool.
TIDBITS
1) This recipe use eggs. When cooking, you really want eggs that stay put. It’s so hard to hold onto eggs that move around. Dancing eggs are the bane of chefs. Cooks everywhere drop thousands of dancing eggs every day. But how do you know if the eggs in the carton are motionless or prone to dance? After all, they can’t move in the carton. Study carefully the photos below for signs.
Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
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.
Where’s Bettie?
Where’s Waldo is quite the amusing diversion. It’s loved by millions. But it can take time to find that rascally Waldo, particularly since he loves to hang with folks wearing nearly identical outfits. Clearly he doesn’t want to stand out in a crowd. I think it would be nigh on impossible to pick Waldo out of a police lineup.
As mentioned above, finding Waldo is quite the pleasant way to pass the time. But what if you don’t have the time to pass? What if your fiancée is flying back from a trip to see her family? You’re supposed to leave the house at at nine at night to get her home from the airport.. However, it’s only 8 P.M.. You decide to pass the time playing Waldo. But you can’t find Waldo. You really, really can’t pick him out. He’s in a crowd of Waldo impersonators. Also the characters in the picture are teeny tiny and you can’t distinguish them since you lost your reading glasses.
You’re really not having a good day. However, you’re not a quitter. You persevere. The minutes pass. The hours pass. At first, she waits eagerly for the love of her life to come rescue her from airport hell. Soon she looks forward to seeing you. Then she grows antsy. A deep and abiding hatred develops. Eventually, a red mist envelops her.
You break all speed limits to get to the airport. At 3 a.m.. You run toward her and throw open your arms to hug her. She drills you between your eyes with a bullet from her Glock(tm). Ironically, you gave her the Glock for her own protection. You, however, cannot appreciate the irony. You’re dead.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. You should have played “Where’s Bettie?” I show the game in the picture on the right. The game is rated as being solvable in five minutes, but many people claim to have solved the puzzle in less time than that. Play “Where’s Bettie?” and you’ll never miss a can’t-miss appointment again.
Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
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 really had to test my brain to remember some of these from way back. I’m probably forgetting some great shows. Some I never saw.
I enjoyed all of the ones in this list.
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984-1985)
Age of Samurai
Alias Smith and Jones
All Creatures Great and Small
Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations
Band of Brothers
Baseball by Ken Burns
Civil War by Ken Burns
Clarkson’s Farm
Daniel Boone
Father Brown
Have Gun Will Travel
I, Claudius
Jack Whitehall : Travels With My Father
John Adams
Kung Fu
Last Kingdom
Little House on the Prairie
Maverick
Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries
Miss Marple
Mister Roger’s Neighborhood
Mr. Selfridge
Nova
Outer Limits
Peaky Blinders
Planet Earth
Rifleman
Roots
Sesame Street
Troy: Fall of a City
Wagon Train
White Queen
World at War
Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D., critic
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.
INGREDIENTS
2 pound piece of sirloin or beef chuck
2 tablespoons vinegar
½ teaspoon pepper
3 garlic cloves
1″ ginger root
1 small green chile
1 large onion
1 stalk lemongrass (tender inner bottom part only)
2½ tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil
2″ cinnamon stick
¼ teaspoon fenugreek seeds
10 fresh curry leaves or ½ teaspoon dry curry leaves or curry powder
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1¼ cups coconut milk
1 tablespoon lemon or tamarind juice
Serves 6. Takes 2 hour 30 minutes
PREPARATION
Make holes in beef with fork. (This will aid marinating.) Add beef, vinegar, and pepper to bowl. Marinate for 1 hour.
While beef marinates. Mince garlic cloves, ginger root, green chile, and onion. Seed and mince green chile. Thinly slice lemongrass. Add ghee to pan. Heat ghee at high heat until is hot enough to make a fenugreek seed dance. Carefully add beef to pan. Sauté for 2 minutes on each side or until browned all over. Remove meat to plate. Leave beef juices in pan.
Add garlic, ginger, green chile, onion, cinnamon stick, fenugreek seeds, fresh curry leaves. and lemongrass Sauté for 3 minutes on medium heat. Stir frequently. Add beef back to pan. Add beef, red pepper flakes, coconut milk, and lime juice. Lower heat to low and simmer 40 minutes or until the beef reaches your desired level of doneness and coconut milk reduces to a gravy. Turn beef over every 10 minutes. Slice beef to your desired thickness. Spoon onion gravy over beef slices.
TIDBITS
1) Every recipe in this cookbook requires a clock, a wristwatch, or a timer. But what would anyone do way back when there were no such timepieces? Why they’d use sundials of course. But, but, this recipes requires us to sauté beef for 2 minutes. Wouldn’t that require a precision lacking in normal sundials? Of course, that’s why serious ancient chefs always used. precision sundials. But such sundials cost quite a lot and weren’t very portable, not even if you had many servants. So they kinda fell into disuse. Cloudy countries never adapted these new timepieces at all.
Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
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.
Future contestant in training
The Nanaimo Marine Festive is held every year in Nanaimo, Canada near the end of July. So we missed it again. Bummer. But boy, we will sure be ready for next year. As always, there will be amazing firework displays, decorations, and food everywhere. Arts and crafts stalls will dot the landscape, as well an entertainment stage, and a children’s tent. Visit the farmers’ markets, and do other stuff.
Let’s face it the highlight of this festival is, and will always, be the stupendous bathtub race. It’s known appropriately enough as the Great International World Championship Bathtub Race. The race crosses the 36-mile Strait of Georgia. Take that, marathoners. Bathtubs for the event run about $3,000. Each bathtub gets an 8-horsepower motor. This race has been held now for about fifty years and is overseen by the Royal Nanaimo Bathtub Society, as well an exciting event like this should be.
Just remember:
1) Bathtub race
2) 36 miles
3) Outboard motor
4) July
See you then.
Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D., travel advisor
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.
This poster is why I took typing in the 7th and 8th grades.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D., motivator
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.
Paul De Lancey's Blog 