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– 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.
How good are your survival skills?
.
.
– 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
4 russet potatoes
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 garlic cloves
1 stalk green onion
½ small yellow onion
2 ounces diced green chiles
2 eggs
¼ cup grated Four Mexican cheeses
4 deli slices ham
4 deli slices turkey
PREPARATION
Wash potatoes. Bake potatoes at 425 degrees for about 50 to 60 minutes or according to instructions shown on bag.
While the potatoes are baking, put olive oil in frying pan. Mince garlic, yellow onion, and green onion. Put garlic, yellow onion, and green onion in frying pan. Sauté at medium high for about 3 minutes or until yellow onion is tender.
Also while potatoes are baking, boil eggs for 12 minutes. (Roger Bannister was the first man to run the mile in under four minutes with a time of 3:59.4. It is thus really cool to think how he could have left his kitchen, run the mile three times, and come back in time with 1.8 seconds to spare.) Cool eggs, peel off the shell, and mince the eggs.
Cut baked potatoes in two lengthwise. Put an equal amount of the sautéed mixture and the minced eggs on each potato half. Add half a ham slice and half a turkey slice to each potato half. Top each potato half with an equal amount of the grated cheese.
Put 8 fully assembled potato halves in the microwave for about 2 minutes or until cheese is completely melted.
TIDBITS
1) The Powegian Vacation Potato has a long tradition.
2) Where “long” is an hour. I was going on vacation and using up perishable ingredients.
3) My wife kept asking when it would be done. I had to say I didn’t know; it was a new recipe.
4) Everything is all right now. The dish came out well and I’m listening to my neighbor’s garage band. They’re quite good.
– 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.
Shrinkflation
Spoiler alert, this blog is more informative than funny. It’s also has a bit of an opinion.
A local discount store raised the price of most of its goods to $1.25 from its once hallmark, $1.00. This is 25% inflation.
One of the coffee drinks shrank from 11 ounces to 8 ounces. This corresponds to a 37.5% increase in the per-ounce price of the coffee drink. A corresponding 37.5% increase in the 11-ounce can would have made the new price $1.72. The manufacturers chose not to do this. They hope we will continue to see the same price and think nothing has changed.
Disguising price increases by shrinking the product is shrinkflation, the kissing cousin of inflation.
If we combine the 25% price increase over a year ago with the 37.5% increase via shrinkflation, we get the percentage increase per ounce in this coffee drink to be 71.9%. I don’t think we can blame all of this 71.9% on increases in wages. Yet, our policy, especially the Federal Reserve’s, seems to be dedicated to throwing the lowest-earning workers out of jobs.
I had thought up a scathingly brilliant and funny blog early today, but I forgot the idea. So you got this post instead. Modern life can be hard.
– 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.
But I don’t want to have organic baby, I’m a vegetarian.
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– 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 cup Crema Mexicana (Mexican sour cream)
¼ cup green onion
1½ tablespoons parsley
1 garlic clove
½ teaspoon Vegetable MagicTM spice
½ cup Cotija cheese
PREPARATION
Mince green onion and garlic clove. Crumble Cotija cheese. Mix all ingredients in bowl. Serve as a dip or on baked potatoes.
Wow! Wow! Wow! Two lines of instruction. It doesn’t get much easier than this or tastier.
(The following three blank lines are reserved for tic-tac-toe games.)
TIDBITS
1) According to a GoogleTM search there are no fun facts about sour cream, only interesting ones.
2) Further investigation showed the information that was supposed to be listed here to be false. So, it was deleted.
3) That is why the following tidbit now makes no sense.
4) I’m guessing a year is way more than sufficient.
5) I told you above that tidbit 4) no longer makes sense. Did you listen?
6) Russians use sour cream in cold, salted potato fish soups.
7) Yum.
8) Not.
9) It is unlikely that there will ever be a movie about sour cream as there was about FacebookTM.
– 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
MARINADE
2 chicken breasts
2 cloves garlic
1 stalk green onion
1 tablespoon soy sauce (2 more tablespoons later)
1½ tablespoons cornstarch (1 teaspoon more later)
½ teaspoon ginger
¼ teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice (¼ teaspoon more later)
2 teaspoons rice wine
1½ tablespoons water
SAUCE
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 tablespoon malt vinegar
¼ teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
4 red chiles
½ cup unsalted roasted peanuts
1½ tablespoons vegetable oil
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
SPECIAL UTENSIL
wok or skillet
Serves 4. Takes 50 minutes.
PREPARATION OF MARINADE
Cut chicken into 1-inch cubes. Mince garlic. Dice green onion. Mix 1½ tablespoons cornstarch, garlic, green onion, ginger, ¼ teaspoon poultry spice, rice wine, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, and water. Cover all sides of the chicken cubes with this mixture. Set aside for at least 30 minutes.
PREPARATION OF SAUCE
Combine 1 teaspoon cornstarch, malt vinegar, ¼ teaspoon poultry spice, salt, 2 tablespoons soy sauce, sugar, and sesame oil in 2nd mixing bowl. Set aside.
FINAL PREPARATION
Cut red chiles in half, remove seed, and mince (I cannot say strongly enough, WEAR GLOVES OR WASH YOUR HANDS THOROUGHLY WITH SOAP after touching the chiles and their seeds. They make your skin burn. My gosh, they cause pain. Don’t rub a throbbing temple or wipe sweat from your upper lip immediately after touching red chiles and their seeds. Your face will be on fire. And guy chefs, this is a really bad time to scratch your balls.)
Put unsalted peanuts and 1½ tablespoons vegetable oil in wok. Sauté at 350 degrees until peanuts start turning golden brown. Stir frequently. (The golden brown phase is astonishingly short. The following dark brown/black state is forever.)
Add the coated chicken cubes. Sauté at 350 degrees. Fry for 2 minutes or until chicken is done or no longer pink inside. Stir and turn cubes frequently.
Add red chiles and 2 tablespoons vegetable oil. Sauté at 350 degrees and stir until the peppers turn dark. Add soy/malt vinegar/sugar/sesame oil sauce. Cook until sauce thickens. Stir frequently.
Thank the person who washes and cleans after this meal. If you are both the cook and cleaner, sit down, have a cold root beer, and admire the halo above your head.
TIDBITS
1) If all strange dishes taste like chicken, why not have chicken?
2) Kung Pao chickens are much milder than their more peppery cousins, Kung Fu Chickens.
3) Peppers that look similar to each other can vary greatly in spiciness. So, keep that in mind when you and a bunch of friends from Madison, Wisconsin travel to St. Louis, Missouri to see two classmates get married and you all stop in a restaurant that serves free peppers.
4) Throat germs don’t like peppers either. Hah, take that!
5) Some people think that cuisine near the Equator is filled with peppery dishes because food didn’t keep well there before refrigeration. I think people in Cuba eat more peppers than the Swedes because peppers are grown in Cuba and not in Sweden.
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 pairs of sourdough muffins top and bottom
6 slices provolone cheese
½ cup pasta sauce
6 eggs
¼ teaspoon basil
¼ teaspoon parsley
½ teaspoon garlic salt
no-stick cooking spray.
PREPARATION
Mix eggs, basil, parsley, and garlic salt in small bowl. Spray saucepan with no-stick cooking spray in hopeful attempt to prevent any egg bits sticking to the pan.
Scramble eggs and spices in pan. Add pasta sauce and scramble some more. Cook until eggs are done. This is a matter of taste.
Toast sourdough muffins. (To your health, sourdough muffin.) Adorn bottom muffin with scrambled eggs. Top with a slice of provolone. Complete sandwich with top muffin half. Mange bene.
TIDBITS
1) The sourdough biscuits are in honor of the hardy Italian restaurateurs who came to San Francisco during the Gold Rush to feed the hungry 49ers.
2) Tidbit 1 is quite possibly true.
3) Provolone cheese did not originate in Provo, Utah.
4) This dish symbolizes the major theme of this cookbook, “Cooking With What’s Handy.”
5) A “theme” was also a major administrative district of the Byzantine Empire.
6) “Parsley” is easy to misspell. Thank goodness, it was never on a spelling test.
7) Garlic is thought to ward off vampires. As far I can tell, it works. We have lots of garlic cloves and garlic salt, and vampires never bother our home.
8) Vampires might like basil, but how would we know? We’ve already frightened them off.
9) Basil Rathbone was famous for his movie portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.
10) Eggs sure can stick to pans, can’t they?
– 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.
Today was a horrible day. One of my cars started leaking oil. The repair is going to cost a minimum of $1,500 and the handwriting is on the wall for its demise. Maybe it’s as soon as tomorrow. The other car might last another year, Ugh.
Fortunately, a two-week reorganization of the garage, my office, and part of the living room help me uncover this picture of my mom when was especially beautiful.
– 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.
All the following thoughts come from personal experience, from watching TV, reading articles, and from what I consider reputable online sites, such as Yahoo Finance, CNN, etc.
THING I LIKE ABOUT WALMART(tm)
You can see what WalMart carries and where they stock it. For example, I looked up Nescafe(tm) Cafe Mocha Creamer. Their website walmart.com said they had it and listed to be in 35A. This is wonderful information for someone who needs a particular ingredient and other things. Sure beats the heck of searching stores all around the county, going up and down one aisle after another. Thumbs up, WALMART.
Unfortunately . . .
THINGS I HATE ABOUT WALMART
1) Their chaotic parking lots.
2) Many of their aisles are tiny.
3) Their apparent war on checkers. I went their today. My WalMart had only one of about twenty checkout stands with a person at it. Of course, the line stretched to the next time zone.
4) Not everyone agrees with me on this one. I hate the self-checkout stands. I always have problems with them. I have seen people who’ve had many experiences with this machine, have problems.
5) I DON’T work for WalMart. I don’t want to do the checking out. Don’t make me do something that all other supermarkets and superstores do.
6) Don’t take jobs away people. Hire more checkers and have fewer checkout machines.
7) Pay your workers more. Do that and stop telling your workers how to get municipal and state assistance. Stop making taxpayers pay your employees.
8) This is no fault of WalMart’s, but more shoppers there seem to block aisles with their carts than anyone else.
9) Hire checkers with more experience. WalMart checkers seem to need more assistance than anywhere else. Walmart might need to pay more money to get better workers to fix this problem.
10) Stop driving long-standing small stores out of business.
11) Then closing a WalMart. Small towns have seen their small stores shut down because of WalMart. Then when WalMart decides to leave, the small community has nothing. No where to shop. Nowhere to get together.
I’m not a complete grump. I do like some supermarkets. They include Stater Bros., Grocery Outlet, and Sprouts. I also like Target.
– 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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