Wanda Wunder is on to something.
– 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
1 egg
½ cup water
1 cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
⅛ teaspoon saffron (or ¼ teaspoon safflower)
¾ pound jumbo shrimp (20-25 count, peeled and deveined)
2 cups oil (vegetable or olive)
SPECIAL UTENSIL
deep fryer or skillet with tall edges
Serves 8. Takes 25 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add egg and water to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended. Add flour and salt. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add baking soda and saffron. Mix batter with whisk until well blended.
Add oil to deep fryer. Heat oil using medium heat. until a little bit of batter starts to dance in the oil. Roll shrimp in batter until they are completely covered. Shake off any excess.
Carefully drop shrimp one at a time into the hot oil. Do not let them touch each other. Let shrimp deep fry for 2 minutes they become crispy and turn golden brown. Remove shrimp with slotted spoon or regular spoon and let dry on plate covered with paper towel. Goes well with parsley and lemon wedges.
TIDBITS
1) Shepherds use sheep dogs to move their flocks of sheep. No other animal does this job as well. Similarly, clover drovers use shrimp to corral their herds of clover. (An unattended clover is prone to wander off anywhere and get into all sorts of mischief.)
2) Four-leaf clovers are more than worth their weight in gold. For these clovers will provide good luck as long as you keep them on your person. (Take that genies, with your paltry three wishes.) So, four-leaf clover drovers employ shrimp in crispy batter. Culinary veterinarians tell us this is because the whole process toughens up the shrimp something considerable, making them more than a match for the wily four-leafers. Just like boot camp toughens up marine recruits.
– 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.
Asteroid or Cocoa Pebble?
Yesterday’s blog proved that the Universe arose from an exploded egg. But maybe not. For cereal astrophysicists maintain just as vehemently that all galaxies derived from one giant cereal bowl. Of Cocoa Pebbles.
According to these plucky scientists, nothing happened until at 12am, January, 0 CBS (Cereal Bowl Spilling) the cereal bowl tipped over. Speculation runs rampant and tensions flare over how exactly the bowl tipped, but all cereal astrophysicists agree that it did. Out flew the Cocoa Pebbles. When they coalesced over billions of years through gravitational forces, they became solid planets like Earth and Mars. Whenever Cocoa Pebbles didn’t come together, they remained Coca-Pebbly Asteroids.
Milk from the cereal bowl expanded in all directions and in great amounts. The Milky War formed from this very same milk. Gaseous giants such as Jupiter and Uranus formed from this milk as well. The Great Red Spot and other colors in Jupiter, however, derive from Fruity Pebbles(tm). The gassy giant Uranus is also a breakfast cereal. Did you know that NASA’s deep-space probes took photos of Uranus? Heh, heh.
All those stars in the night-sky are gigantic balls of milk that became so massive that their very own gravitational fields compressed the milk molecules to such an extent that they generated heat and lights. So, we are seeing milk rays that have traveled thousands of light years to get to us.
There you have it. Look at the photo to the right. Can you tell if it is a Cocoa Pebble or an asteroid? You can’t. They’re the same. Proof you cannot deny.
And every time you eat a spoonful of delicious Cocoa Pebbles, you’re devouring a building block of our universe. Heavens, space is tasty.
– 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.
The building blocks of the Universe aren’t hydrogen, nitrogen, iron, and other elements. No. Eggs make up the most important part of all the galaxies. In fact, culinary astrophysicists believe the Universe came from one incredibly dense chicken egg.
Then the colossal egg exploded, just like when you’ve forgotten about an egg you’re boiling. First, the egg water boils the egg. Then the water evaporates, just like what happened to Mars’ atmosphere. At this point, all the energy from the burner goes into the egg. The egg heats up until it can no longer contain all the incoming heat. The egg explodes, flinging bits of egg in all directions. This is know as the Big Egg Bang Theory, or BEBT.
The Earth’s egginess has been hidden by millions of years of accumulating egg-shell dust, aka, soil. But you really can see the Solar System’s egginess in one of Jupiter’s moons, Titan. Look at the two photos below. The one on the left is one of NASA’s images of Titan. The picture on the right is a hardboiled egg yolk. They are the same. They’re the same! Titan is made of egg. Proof you cannot deny.
Titan Hardboiled Egg Yolk
– 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
1¼ ounces sun dried tomatoes*
2 tablespoons fresh basil
1 garlic clove
2 tablespoons fresh parsley
1 cup butter, softened
* = or 4 tablespoons ground
SPECIAL UTENSILS
spice grinder
electric beater
Makes 1⅓ cups. Takes 45 minutes.
PREPARATION
Mince sun-dried tomatoes in spice grinder. (Don’t add so much at a time that your grinder can’t handle the load). Mince basil, garlic, and parsley.
Add butter to mixing bowl. Cream butter with electric beater set at medium. Add all other ingredients. Cream with electric beater set on medium until well blended. Chill in refrigerator for 30 minutes. Place unused tomato butter in sealed container. It should keep for a week in the fridge.
TIDBITS
1) We all know the saying “Red sky at night, sailors delight.” For a night’s red sky the setting Sun’s rays are traveling through a thicker than usual concentration of dust particles. This event foretells high pressure and stable air coming in from the west.
2) I suppose this means easy sailing if your boat’s heading to the west. But what if your ship is heading east, wouldn’t a red sky indicate foul weather in the morning? Perhaps this saying needs to be made more robust?
3) Anyway, a red sky at night also means a rising moon will be red at night. Quick witted sailors soon associated red moons with smooth sailing. It was but two shakes of a lamb’s tail to think that red moons brought luck.
4) Then in 1822, during a red half moon, First Mate Tom Albacore won and won and won playing poker. At port, the next day, he wooed and wed the richest heiress in the world. From then on red half moons became a particularly lucky sign to sailors. But red half moons are rare, so sailors took the making Sun Dried Tomato Butter on sourdough toast because it looks like that phenomenon.
– 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.
The struggle is real, Wanda.
– 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.
They’re going to Redhead Days
The Redhead Days Festival will be held this year in Tilburg, Netherlands during August 26 to 28. Be there to strut your awesome redheadness or if you’re not redheaded yourself, to absorb the sunshine emanating from so much redheads assembled in one place.
The whole thing started when painter from Asten, Bart Rouwenhorst, asked for 15 redheads to sit for portraits for an exhibition he planned to hold. However, 150 showed up. The artist took a group photo of all the gingers. So began the first Redhead Day. A humble beginning surely, but the event has grown ever since.
Oh, before I forget, January 12 is Kiss a Ginger Day. Don’t you forget, too.
– 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
3 cups vanilla ice cream
1 cup milk
½ cup huckleberry preserves
SPECIAL UTENSIL
blender
Serves 4. Takes 5 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add all ingredients to blender. Set blender to milkshake. Blend until you get the consistency of a milkshake.
TIDBITS
1) Fresh huckleberries can be quite hard to find. Really, really hard As hard as finding yak butter? No, you find can buy fresh huckleberries in Wyoming when they’re in season.
2) Honest men, according to Diogenes, the ancient philosopher, are as hard to find as fresh huckleberries.
3) Diogenes, the ancient philosopher, carried a lamp with him as he wandered the days looking for an honest man. He never found a honest soul as most people walked away from him. What a loony, using a lamp when there was a perfectly good Sun in the sky illuminating everything.
4) Travelers also thought Diogenes was a highwayman out to steal their fresh huckleberries. Looking for honest men selling blueberries took up all Diogenes time. He had no time to get a good-paying job. So, he remained poor. Then he made a virtue of poverty. The little faker
5) It’s too bad. The Great Greek was a crackerjack philosopher when he put his mind to it. But he didn’t. Bereft of his calming philosophical guidance, the Greek city states plunged themselves in decades-long war where many died and all huckleberry farms withered away from neglect.
6) Some 100 years later the brainy mathematician, Archimedes, proved the proved the Earth to be round and, for extra credit, calculated its circumference. The Earth was round! Greek sailors could have traveled across the Atlantic Ocean without fear of falling off the edge of the Earth. Then it would have only been a hop, skip, and a jump to Wyoming, land of the huckleberries. But all knowledge of huckleberries had long since disappeared. Huckleberry deficient Greeks got conquered by Rome. All because of events set in motion by the obsessed Diogenes. Bummer.
– 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.
Uncle Sam isn’t best pleased. There are pandemics, partisan politics running rampant, and war clouds brewing abroad. However, these are things far beyond the power of John and Jane Citizen to affect. But there are still things we can do, just by ourselves, to better everybody else’s life.
Uncle Sam’s visiting us to tell us the number-one thing we can do to brighten the world of our fellow citizens.
– 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
10 pounds ham
⅓ cup barbecue rub
no-stick spray
1⅓ cup brown sugar
1 cup honey mustard
2 cups orange juice
SPECIAL UTENSILS
smoker
apple or cherry wood chunks
meat thermometer
disposal aluminum pan
sonic obliterator
Takes 7 hours 30 minutes. (Times vary with smoker.) Serves 15.
PREPARATION
Preheat smoker to 250 degrees. Add wood chunks to smoker. Rub barbecue rub onto ham. Score ham in a diamond patter ½” deep. Spray disposal aluminum pan with no-stick spray. Let ham sit out at room temperature for 1 hour. Add ham to aluminum pan. Cook for 1 hour
While ham cooks for 1 hour, add brown sugar, honey mustard, and orange juice to mixing bowl. Mix with fork or whisk until well blended. This is the glaze. Cook until temperature registered by meat thermometer reaches145 degrees. Baste ham with glaze every 45 minutes until done. Remove ham and let sit for 20 minutes
TIDBITS
1) Sometimes, ingredients can be hard to find. Once I looked for a specific herb for a Mongolian dish. However, this herb could only be found in a remote part of northwestern China. You need to get permission from the Chinese authorities to go there. Chinese police will probably start to tail you when you start looking all over the land for this rare herb. And even then, it’s seasonal. I opted for a substitute herb.
2) Then there are instances, like for this recipe. I wanted a 7-pound ham. My local supermarket did not have a ham in the refrigerated aisles. They did not have one on display at the butcher. They did not have one there. They did not have one anywhere. I asked the butcher if there might be one at the back. He said no. He added there were no hams in all of Poway, my fair city. I eventually found a ten-pounder 30 miles away. So if your guests give you any guff about the meal you created, zap them with your sonic obliterator. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your kitchen.
– 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.
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