Posts Tagged With: analysis

You Need to Clear Your Mind

Posted on June 7, 2024 by pauldelancey

We get stressed. We have too many responsibilities. Too many things to ponder. Our mind gets pulled in more and more directions and all at once. We find ourselves performing ever shallower analysis on our projects. We shun contact with the people around us. No time.

Our brain’s ability to function decreases all the time. We have forgotten there’s no “function” without “fun.” Of course, we also can’t “function” without “ction,” but that’s a subject for a future blog.

Anyway, our minds cry to the heavens for some rest, some time off to recalibrate.

How do we do that? As they say in internet technology, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

We will turn off our minds. We’ll do that by thinking of nothing. Nothing. Like what is shown in the rectangle below. Look inside it.

Nothing

 

If you still have troubling clearing your mind, try again while chanting, “Iggy piggy poo” over and again. You’ll be amazed how much more revitalized you will feel.

 

– 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.

Categories: you need to get | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Strawberry Cucumber Water

Posted on September 9, 2023 by pauldelancey

American Appetizer

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STRAWBERRY CUCUMBER WATER

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INGREDIENTS – MAIN
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½ pound strawberries (¼ pound more later)
5″ cucumber (2½” more later)
8 cups water
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INGREDIENTS – GARNISH
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¼ pound strawberries
2½” cucumber
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SPECIAL UTENSILS
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mandoline (optional)
colander
2½ quart or larger pitcher
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Serves 8. Takes 30 minutes plus 3 hours to refrigerate
PREPARATION – MAIN
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Remove stems from ½ pound strawberries. Slice strawberries as thinly as you can. Cut 5″ cucumber into slices 1/16″ to ¼” thick. Add strawberry slices, cucumber slices, and water to pitcher. Refrigerate for 3 hours. Strain contents through colander. Discard solids. This is the infused water. Return infused water to pitcher. Keeps for 3 days in refrigerator.
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PREPARATION – GARNISH
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Remove stems from ¼ pound strawberries. Slice strawberries as thinly as you can. Cut 2½” cucumber into slices 1/16″ to ¼” thick. Garnish with strawberries and cucumber slices before serving. Stir 2 times with long wooden spoon.
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TIDBITS
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1) Engineers do extensive analysis before building. This usually includes constructing a scale model and subjecting it to all sorts of tests.
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2) In this case a city, which shall remain nameless, wanted to build a bridge to tout their thriving strawberry and cucumber industries. This meant making the world’s first strawberry/cucumber bridge. Alas, the bridge failed on the very first and simple test. With the strawberry slices collapsing catastrophically under the weight of cucumber slices. (See the submerged red slices above.) A bridge that collapses under the weight of small vegetable slices is likely to collapse under the weight of vehicular traffic and even pedestrian traffic. City planners abandoned the fruit hybrid bridge.
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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.

Categories: cuisine, observations, recipes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Chicheme From Panama

Posted on October 19, 2021 by pauldelancey

Panamanian Appetizer

CHICHEME

INGREDIENTS

⅔ pound dry cracked corn
6 cups water
2 cinnamon sticks
1 cup (10¾ ounces) condensed milk
1½ cups (13½ ounces) evaporated milk
½ tablespoon vanilla extract
⅓ cup sugar
½ teaspoon nutmeg

Serves 9. Takes 3 hours plus overnight soaking.

PREPARATION

Place cracked corn and water in large pot. Keep pot overnight in refrigerator. Keep water. Add cinnamon sticks. Cook corn at medium heat for 1 hour 15 minutes or until corn starts to break apart under the slightest pressure. Stir frequently enough to prevent burning. Check occasionally to make sure water still covers the corn. Add water as necessary. Remove cinnamon sticks.

Remove pot from heat and let cool for 30 minutes . (Liquid will cool quicker if you pour it into a cold pot.) Add condensed milk, evaporated milk, sugar, and vanilla extract. Stir until sugar dissolves completely, nothing sticks to the bottom, and there are no clumps. Remove cinnamon sticks. Refrigerate for 1 hour. Pour into glasses. Sprinkle nutmeg on top. Drink and eat with spoon.

Keep in jars or pitcher in refrigerator. Stir to break any up clumps before pouring.

TIDBITS

1) Just last year, culinary scientist Carl La Fong, announced that rock samples from the Earth and its moon contain nearly identical percentages of Chicheme. (See recipe above.) This assertion has rocked the scientific world. “Where did all this Chicheme come from?” ask the theory’s doubters.

2) “From the Earth’s core,” says La Fong. “Recent ultra-long-wave analysis shows the core to made up entirely of Chicheme. Over the period of 100 million years, about twenty meteor strikes at the same spot on the Earth’s crusts opened a tunnel to the core. Molten Chicheme flew out of there into space where it eventually coalesced into our moon.”

3) La Fong added, “There’s simply not enough cracked corn, cinnamon sticks, condensed milk, evaporated milk, etc. produced on the Earth’s surface to produce all the Chicheme that people consume. It simply must come from the Earth’s core via a 4,000 mile tunnel. So there, I’m right.”

 

– 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.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

I Analyze a Cereal-Box Game

Posted on May 4, 2021 by pauldelancey

 

Please look at the picture of the Alpha-Bits game. (Sorry, it’s a bit blurry. I have fired my camera man.) You draw from a deck of cards, containing each of the following numbers, 1, 2, 3, and 4. If you draw a 1, you move your piece, an Alpha-Bit letter, ahead one square, and so on. However, there is something funny about the game. Unsettling even.

Starting the game, it is impossible to land anywhere but on the 3rd square, the one with the bee. For . . .

If you draw a 1, then you move to square 1. The result tells you to move ahead two squares to square 3, the one with the bee.

If you draw a 2, then you move to square 2. The result tells you to move ahead one square to square 3, the one with the bee.

If you draw a 3, then you move to square 3, the one with the bee.

If you draw a 4 then you move to square 4. The result tells you to move back square to square 3, the one with the bee.

No matter what you draw, you end up on the bee.

Similarly, if your piece is on square 13, the one with the rocket, no matter what you draw, you’ll finish the game.

Working backwards from square 13, you can determine the expected numbers of turns needed to win the game.

THE EXCITING RESULTS

Square #   Expected Numbers of Turns needed to win the game.

———-   ———————————————————–

13            –         1.00

8              –         2.00

6              –         2.25

5              –         2.56

3*            –         3.15

Start        –         4.15

* = Mathematical excitement abounds if you’re starting on square 3. If you draw a 1, you have to go back to your bee. If in your second turn, you again draw a 1, you will once more be back at the bee square. Fear not! By using the mathematical formula for infinite sums, you can calculate how many turns you can expect to be stuck in this purgatory. (It’s 1.33 turns.) Knowing this, our calculations become simple again.

Note that is impossible to end your turn on squares: 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 20.

I have come to believe that the designers of this game never really played it. I am quite certain they never subjected their creation to mathematical analysis.

Please do not use this analysis for betting purposes. And if you do, do not employ a doubling cube as in backgammon.

At any rate, my years of mathematics has served me well. And you get a gold star if you read this blog all the way through.

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D., nerd

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.

Categories: humor, obsevations | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

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