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.
Mauretanian Entree
INGREDIENTS
3 chicken breasts
1 small cassava root
1 small eggplant
⅔ head cabbage
2 carrots
2 garlic cloves
1 large onion
1 pili pili pepper (or other red chile pepper or ¼ teaspoon cayenne)
4 tablespoons butter
4 cups chicken broth
1 bay leaf
2½ tablespoons Dijon or prepared mustard
2 cups rice
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
Makes about 12 bowls. You can make only 6 bowls by cutting the ingredients in half, but what will you do with that ½ cassava root and ½ eggplant that’s left over? E-Bay perhaps?
PREPARATION
Slice chicken breasts, cassava root, and eggplant into 1″ cubes. Shred cabbage. Cut carrots into ½” thick slices. Mince garlic cloves. Dice onion. Remove seeds from pili pili or other chile pepper and dice. Add butter, chicken cubes, garlic, and onion to large pot. Sauté on medium-high for 5 minutes or until onion softens and chicken starts to brown. Stir frequently. Add chicken broth. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to low. Add bay leaf, eggplant, carrot, cabbage, cassava, chile pepper, Dijon mustard, rice, black pepper, and salt. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes or until rice becomes tender.
TIDBITS
1) Eggplant is important to Mauretanian cooking. This mighty vegetable figures prominently in other Saharan cuisines as well such as: Ivorian, Nigerien, and Burkinabe.
2) Why? Because in 1073 A.D., culinary warriors from the forgotten Saharan city of Aubergine started a war of conquest. The cleaver wielding Aubergine warriors could not abide the vegetable selections to be found in their newly added lands. So they imposed their eggplant on the Sahara. They diverted entire popultations to the production and harvesting of eggplant. Eggplant became a mandatory part of every meal. Over the years, the natives came to love the vegetable and wouldn’t think of dining without it. Gosh, I sure hope there won’t ever be any lutefisk-loving armies.
– 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.
I love the old western series Gunsmoke. I enjoy testing my gun slinging skills with Matt Dillon at the start of the show. The result is bad for the marshal of Dodge City. I’ve won everyone showdown except three. My secret?
Don’t try to draw first, even when standing your ground. You’ll waste precious moments deciding when to draw and when you do that you’ll find a lead bullet burrowing through your chest. And that’s a bummer. However, when you wait for the other fella to draw your reflexes will take over and you’ll clear leather first.
I got the idea the idea from scientist Niels Bohr and fellow Ph.D.* He loved westerns and enjoyed fake gunfights with his grad students. He won everytime using the above method.
There you have it. There’s no downside to this. The annoying stranger is dead, you’re alive, and he made for his gun first so the killing is in self defense.
And as always, have a nice day.
* = Unfortunately, we are not fellow Nobel Prize winners.
– Paul R. De Lancey, gunslinger
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, how do you make your food so, so edible?” Well, in the interest of culinary advancement, I shall pass on my cooking tips to the world.
1) Food generally heats up quicker if you turn on the heat or plug in the oven.
2) You are allowed to turn the burner or toaster oven off after cooking.
3) A hard-boiled egg left unattended will explode.
4) You meal will take on a whole new taste if you confuse cinnamon with cayenne pepper.
– 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.
Paul De Lancey's Blog 