So wise.
– 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.
Simply squeeze
Sometimes humanity does great things such as landing a man on the moon, building the Panama Canal, or making laptops. These projects helped us all immensely and caused us to swell with pride.
Then there’s squeezable peanut butter. I mean, how hard is it to scoop peanut butter and spread it on a slice of bread? The simple amoeba could almost do it. All we’d have to do is make a knife small enough for it to grasp.
As of press time, aircraft carriers, necessary for our national defense, still cost a pretty penny. So, we don’t build many of them. Machines vital to the success of surgeries remain in short supply.
Why?
Because we’re devoting much of our brain power and funds to making spreadable peanut butter. So, nations will compete for scarcer and scarcer non-PB resources. Tensions will rise. Armies will mobilize.
Run for the hills, the Peanut Butter Armageddon is coming.
– 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.
Punxatawny Phil, Mr. Armageddon
We all know that when the gopher Punxatawny Phil comes outside our temperatures hang in the balance. If he sees his shadow we get six more weeks of winter. If not, we get spring right away. Up to now, Phil has alternated fairly well between producing spring and extending winter.
It’s all fine if this alternating continues. However, if Phil, for any reason, sees his shadow each and every February, then we’ll have long winter after long winter. Our Earth will plunge into a new ice age. Crops will fail. People will freeze. Economies will fracture. Countries will compete for scarcer and scarcer resoures. Wars will break out around the globe. Losing nations will launch nuclear weapons, if they have them. Between scarce resources, the ravages of conventional and nuclear warfare, and nuclear winter, we’ll all die.
Well, that’s a bummer.
The future stays almost as bleak if the bloody minded Phil never sees his shadow. We’ll have long-and-scorching summer after long-and-scorching summer. Our Earth will become a permanent furnace. Crops will fail. People will die of heat stroke. Economies will fracture. Countries will compete for scarcer and scarcer resoures. Wars will break out around the globe. Losing nations will launch nuclear weapons, if they have them. Between scarce resources, the ravages of conventional and nuclear warfare, and nuclear winter, we’ll all die. But maybe not all of us. If we’re lucky, the nuclear winter will bring the oven-hot temperatures back to normal. Still, we’d have to deal will slow starvation and bone-melting levels of radiation. Over all, this is still a bad scenario.
So what’s to keep a cantankerous Puxnatic Phil from unleashing climatic armaggedon?
Hostages.
We have to take Phil’s family hostages. Everytime forecasts the same way three times in row, shadow or no shadow, we off one of his family. Every similar forecast after that brings about another gopher-family execution. Harsh, I know, but eight billion people will die in Punxatawny Phil’s Mass Extinction.
We also need to worry about Phil going blind. Will he take his blindness as a never-ending gigantic shadow? Or maybe he won’t see, see what I did there, any shadow in the omnipresent blackness.
Either way, as we established above, the consequences will be armageddon.
We have to give Phil annual eye exams.
We have to take Punxatawny Phil’s existential threat seriously.
Have a nice day.
– 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.
Turkish Entree
GARLIC BUTTER SHRIMP
(Tereyaǧli Karides)
INGREDIENTS
3 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon Aleppo chili powder or chile pepper
½ teaspoon salt
¾ pound large peeled, deveined shrimp
½ tablespoon parsley
SPECIAL UTENSIL
x-ray vision (not essential)
Serves 3. Takes 15 minutes.
PREPARATION
Dice garlic. Add butter and olive oil to pan. Sauté using low-medium heat until butter melts. Stir constantly. Add garlic and Aleppo chili powder. Sauté at medium heat for 3 minutes or until liquid starts to redden. Stir constantly. Add salt and shrimp. Sauté at medium heat for 2 minutes or until shrimp turns pinkish orange on bottom. (Use x-ray vision to determine pinkness of shrimp or simply flip a shrimp and look. Turn over shrimp. Sauté again for 2 minutes or until both sides are pink. Garnish with parsley. Goes well with crusty bread, such as a baguette.
TIDBITS
1) Butter lakes, butter pools.
2) I wrote the above tidbit a few days ago. What the heck was I thinking? Clearly, I had a scathingly brilliant train of thought or I wouldn’t have bothered to write it down. My memory has failed me. What else have I forgotten? Do . . . Oh crudness, distracted again.
4) Oh I remember! Do I have a child waiting for me at the airport? Looks at calendar. No, not today. A point for my memory.
5) Oh no, oh no, oh no! Did I forget to close safety catch on my nuclear missile launcher?!!! (It’s okay to end a sentence with three exclamation points if you’re staring nuclear Armageddon in the face, otherwise no.) Excuse me.
6) Pants heavily. Excuse me, I’m back. The safety catch was engaged. We’re all safe. Still, let this be a caution to all. You have to, have to, pay attention when you’re in charge of nuclear weapons. The same thing applies to all things culinary. As France’s nuclear chefs say, “Bon appetit et faites attention.”
Chef Paul
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.
Spanish Entree
(spicy potatoes)
INGREDIENTS
3 garlic cloves
½ onion
2 Roma tomatoes
1 tablespoon flour
½ cup water
5 medium russet potatoes
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
2 ½ tablespoons olive oil (½ cup more later)
¾ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons Spanish paprika (or paprika)
¼ teaspoon thyme
½ teaspoon sugar
½ cup olive oil
½ tablespoon parsley
PREPARATION
Mince garlic cloves, onion, and tomatoes. Add flour to ½ cup water. Stir until flour dissolves. Put potatoes in large pot and cover them with water. Bring to boil using high heat. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 20 minutes or until potatoes are soft. Carefully remove potatoes and let them cool. Cut potatoes into 1″ cubes. Add potato cubes, pepper, and salt to mixing bowl. Turn potato cubes until they are coated with pepper and salt.
Add 2½ tablespoons olive oil and garlic, onion, and cayenne pepper to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens and garlic browns. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to low. Add tomato, paprika, thyme, sugar, and dissolved flour. Simmer on low heat for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.
While tomato/garlic/onion/spice mix simmers, add ½ cup olive oil and potato cubes to second pan. Sauté on high heat for 5-to-10 minutes or until potatoes turn golden brown. Stir constantly Remove potato cubes and place them on paper towels to remove excess oil. Put potatoes in bowls and top with tomato sauce. Garnish with parsley.
TIDBITS
1) Gerona, Spain has a dating agency for pets. Happy Animals caters to lovelorn dogs, cats and birds. The mind boggles.
2) You are more likely to be robbed in Spain than anywhere else.
3) Sure, with all those cash-strapped Spaniards needing to pony up big Euros for their animals’ social lives.
4) However, Spain started paying women around a thousand dollars for each baby they have. If they want, the señoras can spend their money at Happy Animals. Maybe with all that extra cash, the robbery rate will fall.
5) If robbery rates fall, people can spend the money they would have spent on alarm systems for their homes on romantic dinners.
6) If Spanish couples have enough romantic dinners, they will have more babies.
7) It costs money to raise babies. A lot more than $1,000. The money to pay for these kids will have to come from somewhere.
9) From cutting out Doggy Dating Centers or taking up robbery. Tough choice.
10) Most Spanish women will curtail their dogs’ love lives.
11) But not all. Home burglaries will soar. Spanish families will have to spend more money on home security. Where will they get the money for all these alarms?
16) From robbing people’s homes. Spaniards will spend ever more money protecting their abode.
17) This will spiral out of control. Lawlessness will stalk the land.
18) The Spanish government will have to step in. The army will have to patrol every home on every street to keep order.
19) But not for long. Spanish families will have no money to pay their taxes. They will have spent it all on burglar alarms. The Spanish government won’t be able to pay its army. Mutinies will break out among the soldiers. This will occur in small units at first. Nothing will coordinated. But the trend will be unmistakable.
20) Where will the authorities get the money to pay its fighting men?
21) From saffron. Saffron costs seven dollars a gram. It’s far more expensive than oil.
22) How will the Spanish get enough saffron to pay its army?
23) By invading Iran. Iran is a huge producer of saffron. Won’t Iran fight back? Yes, it will.
24) And that’s bad. Iran could very well develop nuclear weapons in the near future. Iran also has lots of enemies who will inevitably be drawn into the Spanish-Iranian War. The war will spread until it becomes global. We will have Armageddon.
25) That’s bad. So, let your pets find their own soul mates. It’ll be character building experience for them and save the world as well. Remember, the culinary arts will the first to go after the apocalypse.
– 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.
American Entree
INGREDIENTS
8 total tablespoons or a stick of butter
(You will be using butter four times.)
8 ounces bow-tie pasta
1 stalk celery
1/2 medium onion
1 clove garlic
2 5 ounce cans solid white albacore tuna
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Seafood MagicTM spice
2 tablespoons bread crumbs
1 2 ounce bag barbecue potato chips
1 cup shredded Four Mexican cheeses
3 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Coat a medium baking dish with 1/2 tablespoon butter. (First use of butter.) Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add bow-tie pasta. Cook for 9 minutes or al dente-firm but not hard. Drain.
While waiting for the pasta to be ready, cut the leafy top and white bottom off the celery stalk. De-vein the celery. That is, remove the thin green threads, or veins, that run down the length of the outside. It is easy to get a start on these pesky threads if you first snap the stalk in half. The alternative to de-veining is living with thready celery or not having celery. (Both choices put the entire cosmos in its own alternative universe, perhaps resulting in Armageddon tomorrow. Choose wisely.)
Metaphorically destroy (mince) the garlic, celery, and onion. Melt 2 tablespoons butter in saucepan over low-medium heat. (Second use of butter.) Stir in the onion, celery, and garlic for seven minutes or until tender. The mix really should be tender. You have been warned.
Melt 3 1/2 tablespoons butter in another saucepan. (Third use of butter.) Add milk, mayonnaise, and flour. Stir with whisk. Cook for 5 minutes until sauce is smooth and thickened. Add tuna, onion-celery-garlic mixture, and bow-tie pasta. Mix. Pour all of this casserole into baking dish.
Melt 2 tablespoons butter in yet another pan. (Last use of butter.) Mix in bread crumbs. Sprinkle mixture over the casserole. Top with grated four cheeses and Parmesan cheese.
Bake casserole 20 minutes in the oven at 375 degrees. Take casserole out of the oven and sprinkle potato chips on top. Bake casserole for another 10 minutes or until it is bubbly and lightly browned. This dish is crunchy and yummy.
You generated lots of dishes for your companion to wash. Be sure to say thank you.
TIDBITS
1) My grandmother always said the outstanding chef would have everything cleaned and put away by the time the meal was ready to be eaten.
2) I actually did this for this meal. My grandmother would have been proud. My mother would have been astounded.
3) This is not a good meal to make if your dishwasher doesn’t work as happened to me. Grr!
4) 75 percent of all fish eaten comes from the ocean. Within a generation the percentage will drop to 50.
5) Only 1 percent of all tuna is sold fresh. The rest is canned.
6) “Tuna” spelled backwards is “a nut.” It is also an anagram for “aunt.”
7) Tuna can cruise up to 55 miles per hour and never stop moving. Cars in the heart of the world’s big cities move at an average of 8 miles per hour and are often stopped.
8) Most of the world’s oil supply comes from OPEC nations. Most of the world’s tuna is caught off California.
9) Tuna in France is canned in water, vegetable oil, tomato juice, and lemon juice.
– 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.
It is your duty as an American and a peace-loving citizen of the world to say, “Your butt” to as many people as possible three weeks from now, Thursday, June 7. Here’s why:
Little kids laugh 40 to 400 times more than adults. Why? Because infantile humor is funnier than anything adult can produce. Here’s proof:
1) Crabby people go to war unless distracted by a funny joke. Sure, toddlers have problems such as having to eat creamed peas. Do they go to war? No, they say “butt” and dissolve into giggles. Do adults go to war? Sadly, all to often and often with disconcerting results. Do we tell butt jokes? Unfortunately, not very often.
2) Sure, comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld make tens of millions of dollars every year without telling one butt joke. But that just underscores how few people can tell a knee slapper without saying “butt” or even the more erudite “Your butt.” And would he even be on tv or stage without war-weary governments subsidizing him. I fear not.
So, do you fear nuclear Armageddon. Do you want to live in peace? Do you wish peace for your children? Then you must help make the world laugh. Say “Your butt” to as many people as possible and after every sentence you hear spoken.
The world thanks you.
– 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.
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