Posts Tagged With: baseball

Beef on Spiced Potatoes From Belize

Posted on December 17, 2022 by pauldelancey

Belizean Entree

BEEF ON SPICED POTATOES

INGREDIENTS

2 large unpeeled baking potatoes

BEEF MIXTURE
3 garlic cloves
1 pound lean ground beef
1 14.5 ounce can Mexican, or spicy, diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon Jamaican Jerk spice
½ teaspoon red recado (This Belizean spice is found online.)

POTATO SPICES
1 teaspoon Jamaican Jerk spice
1 teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon black pepper

TOPPING
½ cup plain yogurt
½ teaspoon Jamaican Jerk spice
1 teaspoon garlic salt
1 tablespoon diced tomatoes

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Cut potatoes lengthwise into ¼-inch thick slices. Well, this is the ideal. You might end up with ½-inch thick slices. Whatever you do, don’t rush this part or use too big a knife or cleaver. (One big mistake and you won’t be able to use the expression, “I’m all thumbs” anymore.) Use fork to pierce each potato slice multiple times. Mince garlic cloves.

Cook ground beef in skillet on medium-high temperature until beef is no longer pink. Reserve 1 tablespoon of diced tomatoes. Add remaining diced tomatoes, minced garlic, Jerk seasoning and red recado to beef. Stir. Bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 12 to 15 minutes. Stir this beef mixture occasionally.(I won’t be responsible for the burning of the mixture or the rending of the time-space continuum if you don’t stir at all.)

Meanwhile, back at the spuds. Dip potato slices in cold water. Sprinkle lightly with Jerk spice, sea salt, and black pepper. Place slices in a single layer on no-stick baking pan. Bake for 6 minutes then turn. Redo this baking for 6 minutes and turn until the slices are soft and lightly browned.

(There can be a huge variance in cooking time for this step due to the size and efficiency of your oven and the thickness of your potato slices.)

Mix yogurt, Jerk spice, garlic salt, and remaining diced tomatoes in bowl.

Spoon beef mixture over potato slices. Then add topping.

TIDBITS

1) Potatoes, or spuds, contain lots of calories.

2) So does beer.

3) Budweiser(tm) once used a dog named “Spuds McKenzie” to sell its beer.

4) The New York Yankees had a pitcher during the 1940s called Spud Chandler.

5) Other great baseball names are: Art “What A Man” Shires, Mike “The Human Rain Delay” Hargrove, Luke “Old Aches and Pains” Appling, Bob “Death to All Flying Things” Ferguson, Walter “Boom Boom” Beck, The Only Nolan, Walt “No Neck” Williams, Dave “Swish” Nicholson, and Harry “Suitcase” Simpson.

6) Even more great baseball names include: Bombo Rivera, Clarence “Choo Choo” Coleman, Dick “Dr. Strangeglove” Stuart, Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky, “Blue Moon” Odom, Mick “Killer” Kelleher, Dave “King Kong” Kingman, Wilmer “Vinegar Bend” Mizell, Van Lingle Mungo, “Boileryard” Clarke, and perhaps my favorite, Bristol “The Human Eyeball” Lord.

7) And who can ever forget Joe Shlabotnik?

 

– 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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Simple Fig Bars

Posted on November 13, 2022 by pauldelancey

American Dessert

SIMPLE FIG BARS

INGREDIENTS

6½ tablespoons butter, softened
½ cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup flour (2 tablespoons more later)
½ cup wheat flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons flour
½ pound fig jam

SPECIAL UTENSILS

electric beater
14″ x 10″ cookie sheet
parchment paper

Makes 32 bars. Takes 2 hours 15 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add butter and brown sugar to large mixing bowl. Mix with electric beater set on high until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla extract. Mix with electric beater set on high until light and fluffy.

Add 1 cup flour, wheat flour, baking powder, and salt to small mixing bowl. Mix with fork or whisk until well blended. Gradually add in flour mix from small mixing bowl to egg/sugar mix in large mixing bowl. Mix with electric beater set on high until light and fluffy. Use hands to form a round dough ball. Cover and place in refrigerator for 1 hour or until firm.

Dust 14″ x 10″ flat surface with 2 tablespoons flour. Add dough ball. Roll out dough ball until it’s ¼” thick. Cut dough along its length into 10″ x 3½” strips. Spread ¼ of the fig jam down the middle of a strip until it’s 1″ wide. Carefully fold both edges of the dough over the fig jam. Pinch seam together to complete fig/dough log. Repeat for each dough strip. Cut each log into 2 shorter mini-logs to make transferring them to the parchment paper easier.

Place parchment paper on cookie sheet. Use spatula to carefully place mini logs seam side down on parchment paper. Use fingers to smooth together any tears in the mini logs. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until mini logs turn golden brown and feel slightly firm. Cut each mini log into 4 fig bars. Let cool on cookie sheet for 15 minutes or until slightly warm. Store in airtight container.

TIDBITS

1) Be sure to mark your calendar for January 16. That’s International Hot and Spicy Food Day.

2) It’s also National Fig Newton Day.

3) So eat hot-and-spicy food and fig bars on that day (IHSFNFND).

4) You might not want to do anything else.

5) Indeed. The Super Bowl used to held in January, but the prospect of having their biggest game of the year fall on International Hot and Spicy Day AND National Fig Newton Day terrified National Football League Executives. They knew the NFL would lose the match up.

6) This is why recent Super Bowls have been held in February.

7) Baseball, for decades, held its World Series in October for the very same reason.

8) Now, World Series Games spillover into November.

9) November is still two months away from IHSFNFND.

10) But the end of the World Series is getting ever closer to that eventful culinary day, because of ever increasing rounds of post-season play.

11) The World Series might eventually coincide with IHSFNFND. If that happens, television executives will simply throw up their hands and stop broadcasting the Fall Classic. This is something even World War II could not do.

12) This must not happen. Contact your senator. Now.

13) It’s worth noting that fig bars’ existential challenge to professional sports in America derives from their many great attributes.

14) Fig bars are high in fiber. Football and baseball are not.

15) Fig bars have many vitamins. Football and baseball do not.

16) Fig bars have many minerals. Football and baseball do not.

17) Fig bars are a tasty snack. Football and baseball do not.

18) Fig bars help digestion. Football and baseball do not.

19) Indeed, footballs and baseballs are even difficult to eat.

20) Oh crudness, National Fig Week runs from November 1 to November 7. The same time as the World Series. Stock up on fig bars; we live in dark, troubling times.

 

– 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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Lemon Drizzle Cake from Britain

Posted on September 10, 2022 by pauldelancey

British Dessert

LEMON DRIZZLE CAKE

INGREDIENTS – CAKE

1½ cups sugar
2 tablespoons lemon zest (takes 2-to-3 lemons)
1 cup butter
4 eggs
¼ cup milk
5 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon salt
2¼ cups flour
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
4½ tablespoon lemon juice

SPECIAL UTENSILS

electric beater
9″ * 12″ baking pan
parchment paper

Serves 12. Takes 1 hour 5 minutes to prepare and 30 minutes to cool.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 340 degrees. Add sugar, lemon zest, butter, eggs, milk, baking powder, and salt to large mixing bowl. Blend with electric beater set on high until mixture becomes fluffy. Fold in the flour with a spatula until cake mix is well blended. Line baking pan with parchment paper. Ladle cake mix into baking pan. Smooth cake mix with spatula. Bake at 340 degrees for 35 minutes or until cake turns golden brown, becomes springy, and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

While cake bakes, add confectioners’ sugar and lemon juice to mixing bowl. Stir with whisk or fork until confectioner’s sugar dissolves. Use toothpick to poke holes in the warm cake. Spoon drizzle over cake. Let cake sit in tin until it’s cools completely. Remove cake and cut into squares.

TIDBITS

1) In 1844, Alexander Cartwright was eating a corner piece of Lemon Drizzle Cake. His piece looked very much like the one like the one shone in this recipe. Then a mosquito landed on his cake. He flicked it off. This act inspired him to invent the sport of Lemon Drizzle. LD as it was called, was supposed to have been played a lot like baseball. However, the athletes would show up and stuff themselves cake after cake until they didn’t feel athletic anymore.

2) Then in 1845, Mr. Cartwright forbade the eating of Lemon Drizzle Cake. Once, players actually played baseball, they loved it. So much so, that it became the national pastime.

 

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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Chispi Mayai (French Fry Omelette)

Posted on August 12, 2018 by pauldelancey

Tanzanian Entree

CHIPSI MAYAI
(French Fry Omelette)

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon fresh coriander*
1 small onion*
3 eggs
⅛ teaspoon pepper*
¼ teaspoon salt*
½ cup vegetable oil (½ tablespoon later)
2 pounds potatoes

SPECIAL UTENSIL

no-stick pan or spray pan or no-stick spray before adding egg mixture.
x-ray vision

* = These ingredients are all optional. You have an unparalleled opportunity to create you own unique chipsi mayai. Go for it. Go for gold.

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour.

PREPARATION

Dice coriander and onion. Add eggs to mixing bowl. Beat with whisk or fork until well blended. Add coriander, onion, pepper, and salt. Mix with whisk or fork until well blended.

Cut potatoes into French fries. Add ½ cup vegetable oil to pan. Heat oil at high heat until a tiny piece of French fry in the oil starts to dance. Carefully add French fries. (Hot oil is nasty when it splatters.) Fry French fries for 10 minutes until they start to brown. Stir occasionally. Remove fries. Drain oil from pan. Add fries and ½ tablespoon oil to a second, unused pan.

Ladle coriander/onion/egg mixture evenly over fries. Sauté for 5 minutes at medium heat or until bottom side is golden brown. (X-ray vision is helpful here.) Spray plate with no-stick spray. Then place plate over pan. Hold plate on pan while flipping pan upside down. The half-cooked omelette will now be upside down. Slide omelette back into pan to cook the other side. Cook for another 3 minutes or until this side too is golden brown.

Goes well with kachumbari (an East African salad), ketchup, tomato sauce, or chili sauce.

TIDBITS

1) You wake up at 3 a.m. to whispering in the kitchen. You sit up in bed. As you do so, the bed frame creaks. The little voices fall quiet. Silence, there is silence. You lie down or perhaps lay down; this is a miserable verb to conjugate. Nervous little laughter emanates from the kitchen. Then more whispering. This time it’s a little more rapid. Does it have a nasty tone? Yes, yes, it does.

2) Post traumatic stress from watching all Friday 13th(TM) makes your heart race. You get out of bed, oh so carefully. Don’t make any noise. Tiptoe to the closet. Get that baseball bat. Go the kitchen. Turn on the light.

3) Dozens of russet potatoes shriek. Their eyes are on you. It’s uncanny how they don’t blink. Is it because of an evolutionary dead end or because they’re tough?

4) They’re wearing potato panty house over themselves. Oh my gosh, your potatoes are going bad. You raise the baseball bat.

5) A potato rolls with amazing speed and strikes your shin. Ow. Another spud rolls on top of that. And then another and another until one has shoved itself into your mouth. You can’t breathe. You drop your bat.

6) In your panic, your stagger to the kitchen-utensil drawer. Your hand flails as you grab for anything to fight off your rogue, murderous tubers.

7) As contrived luck would have it, you latch onto a potato peeler.

8) The potatoes gasp in horror, drop off you and roll to a corner. You julienne the whimpering spuds one by one into majestic, harmless French fries.

9) What to do with all those fries? Why, make this entree, Chipsi Mayai.

10) Indeed, culinary historians believe Chipsi Mayai came about, in Tanzania, because of repeated potato uprisings.

11) Indeed, it is for this very reason that it is illegal to have more than two pounds of potatoes in Tanzanian homes.

12) Don’t try to cheat and say you have two pounds of taters when you actually have three. The phrase “The Tanzanian Potato Police” is a byword for terror.

13) Look at the potatoes below. Are they about to go bad? Don’t take chances. Cook them now.

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.

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Shrimp And Grits

Posted on December 14, 2016 by pauldelancey

American Entree

SHRIMP AND GRITS

INGREDIENTSshrimpandgrits

1 cup chicken broth
¾ cup milk
2½ cups water
1 cup grits
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter
1¾ cups grated Cheddar cheese
1 garlic clove
4 stalks green onions
5 bacon strips
1½ pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
1½ tablespoons lemon juice

Makes 4 bowls. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add chicken broth, milk, and water to large pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Add grits gradually, stirring with whisk until no lumps exist. Add pepper and salt. Reduce heat to warm. Simmer to 10-to-20 minutes or until grits become tender and all the water has been absorbed. Stir occasionally. Remove from heat and add butter and Cheddar cheese. Blend in cheese and butter with fork. Cover.

While liquid boils and grits become tender, mince garlic and dice green onions. Chop bacon into ½” squares. Add bacon squares to pan. Cook at medium-high heat for 3-to-5 minutes or until bacon becomes crispy, turning them over at least 1 time. Remove bacon and place on paper towel. Keep bacon grease in pan.

Add shrimp to pan. Sauté shrimp for 3 minutes at medium heat or until they start to turn pink or orange. (Don’t overcook shrimp. It will get mushy.) Add lemon juice. garlic, and green onion. Stir quickly until shrimp is well coated with garlic and green onion. Remove from heat.

Ladle grits into bowls. Top with shrimp and garlic/green onion/lemon juice. Sprinkle with bacon squares.

TIDBITS

1) It seems hard to believe now, but shrimp portraits were once quite popular in America during the late nineteenth century.

2) Darned difficult. I mean, why?

3) Okay, to understand phenomenon, one simply must read, Dr. Amos Keeto’s enthralling work, “Amazing Fads of the Gilded Age,” Garlic Press, Paducah, Kentucky, 1933.

4) According to Dr. Keeto, horse racing was incredibly popular in the 1890s. People with too much money, having bought up anything of any value in America, turned to gambling. They wouldn’t bet on baseball. Ordinary folk did that.

5) So the filthy rich, so called because oil from their wells constantly spurted onto their clothes, would clean up and go the race tracks to wager on horses, the sport of kings.

6) Everything went well. The had fun playing the horses. They lost vast sums, of course, but they had vast sum to lose. The race course owners became quite wealthy as well. They purchased gigantic mansions and went on railroad buying sprees. The Race Track magnate, Silas Brunswick, even bought BrusselsSproutsTM for $250,000 after it came out with the BS PadTM.

7) The BS Pad, a precursor to iPhonesTM, tablets, and the such, consisted of two tin cans tied together with a string, an abacus, and a sketch pad. Improvements have been made since then. Nevertheless, it was all new back then and the sexy BS was all the rage

8) But the craze stopped a scant year later when all of a sudden shouting became socially acceptable once more.

9) Then horse racing died out. On May 5, 1897, the swiftest horses gathered for the prestigious Mississippi Derby in Biloxi. Society’s elite bet over a million on the horses. The favorites were Southern Boil and Sandstorm.

10) People still debate what happened. As the horses turned the corner to enter the final stretch, an enormous fog rolled into. When the fog had lifted, all of the horses were gone. Everyone.

11) Where had they gone? Some speculated that the horses had gone to the same parallel universe that orphan socks go to when placed in a dryer. Some folks dispute this, noting electric dryers weren’t invented back then. The proponents counter, “Where you there, na, na, na, na, poo, poo?”

12) Some folks say that a mare in heat passed by the track and that time and the stallions merely left the race to chase after her. Still others maintain mass spontaneous combustion claimed all the horses, ignoring the fact that no explosions were ever heard. I mean, really.

13) We’ll never know what happened to the race horses. The race-track owner claiming that since no horse crossed the finished line, paid off none of the bets. This defiant act angered the wealthy bettors. Horse racing rapidly fell out of favor.

14) Fortunately, the crowd spied a cocktail of shrimp–you know, like a pod of whales–swimming off shore, and fast! An energetic entrepreneur, his name is lost to history, improvised a shrimp race course. By heavens, the event was fun. Shrimp racing became the most popular social event of the 1890s.

15) Breeding shrimp for speed became a lucrative business. Wealthy owners hired artists to paint their prize shrimps. These artists loved to eat grits. Hence, shrimp and grits. There you go.

– 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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Qurotob (Bread salad from Tajikistan)

Posted on October 30, 2016 by pauldelancey

Tajik Entree

QUROTOB
(Bread Salad)

INGREDIENTS – SALADquorotub

2 pita loaves
1½ tablespoons olive oil (1½ more tablespoons later)
1 onion
2 green onions
1½ tablespoons olive oil
2 cups Greek yogurt
½ cup hot water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon dill
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
½ cucumber
4 tomatoes
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon fresh parsley
8 non breads (See above recipe) or other flatbreads such as fatir or pita

SPECIAL UTENSILS

cookie sheet
large serving plate

Serves 8. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, Brush pita loaves with 1½ tablespoons olive oil. Break loaves into small bits. Place pita bits on cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-to-20 minutes or until pita bits turn golden brown. (The time varies with the thickness of the pita loaves.)

While pita bits bake, dice onion and green onions. Add 1½ tablespoons olive oil, onion, and green onion to pan. Sauté at medium high heat for 5 minutes or until onion and green onion soften. Add Greek yogurt, hot water, lemon juice, coriander, dill, salt, and sugar to large mixing bowl. Whisk until well blended. Seed cucumber. Dice cucumber, tomatoes, cilantro, and parsley.

Add toasted pita bits to large serving plate. Pour yogurt mixture over pita bits. Top with sautéd onion and green onion, cucumber, and tomato. Garnish with cilantro and parsley. Guests use their non bread to scoop up the yogurty, veggie, bread salad from the communal serving plate. Alternatively, spread all the fixing over a non bread and use a knife and fork.

TIDBITS

1) How did this wonderful entree come about? Here is the time line.

2) 4,500 million years ago (mya): First single-celled organisms come into existence. So does the first spam e-mail involving Nigerian dictators and their money.

3) 4,000 mya: A woman named Sally shows up at the DMV without an appointment.

4) 3,500 mya: Earliest oxygen molecule. It’s name was Bob. There were no last names that long ago.

5) 2,500 mya: Oxygen crisis. Oxygen has mid-life jitters.

6) 1,200 mya: Earliest sexual reproduction. Single-cell dating sites occur. First pickup lines invented.

7) 800 mya: Multi-cellular organisms hit the world scene. Sally’s still in line.

8) 440 mya: 86% of all species are exterminated. First known appearance of DaleksTM.

9) 350 mya: Sharks with rows of nasty, pointy teeth show up. Dun-dun, dun-dun.

10) 275 mya: Theraspid synaspids branch off from pelycosaur synapsids; no idea what this means.

11) 225 mya: The world’s first dinosaurs come from out of nowhere. They aren’t met with thunderous applause;. no life forms have hands.

12) 220 mya: Gymosperm forests dominate land life. This is not as dirty as it sounds.

13) 219 mya: It takes life 1 millions years to spot the first typo. The correct spelling is gymnosperm.

14) 160 mya: Mammals show up. Life is great until …

15) 155 mya: Mosquitoes do also.

16) 65 mya: Dinosaurs get wiped out by gigantic meteor. Mammals begin their ascent to global supremacy. Did mammals engineer this event? Who knows? They leave no written record.

17) 63 mya: Creodonts, not to be confused with orthodontists, spontaneously appear.

18) 52 mya: First bats show up.

19) 51 mya: First balls appear.

20) 50 mya: Baseball becomes popular when organisms finally agree on rules.

21) 250 thousand years ago: Humans pop up in Eastern Africa.

22) 300 years ago. Human chefs create qurotob, bread salad. Sally gets her license. Life is good.

– 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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Vidalia Onion Pie

Posted on May 16, 2015 by pauldelancey

American Entree

VIDALIA ONION PIE

INGREDIENTSVidaliaOnionPie-

3 Vidalia onions
4 tablespoons butter
2 large eggs
2 tablespoons flour
¼ cup milk
1 cup sour cream
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
2 9-inch pie shells
⅓ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Makes 2 pies. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Thinly slice Vidalia onions. Add butter and onion slices to pan. Sauté on medium-heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Add onion and its drippings, eggs, flour, milk, sour cream, pepper, and salt to large mixing bowl. Blend well with whisk. Pour into pie shell. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.

Bake in oven at 425 degrees for 15 minutes. Lower temperature to 325 degrees and bake for an additional 20-to-40 minutes or until center of pie is firm.

TIDBITS

1) Vidalia onions are too flat to be used in onion bowling. You need a completely round onion for onion bowling. The onion’s root must not stick out.

2) Don’t show up at the Onion Bowling Championship in Scalene, Iowa with ovoid and misshapen onions. Your onion will go into the gutter time after time. People will laugh at you. And have you tried to pick up a 7-10 split with a lumpy onion? Well, it’s difficult!

3). The roundest onions come found Roundia, Tennessee.

4) Onion bowling was particularly popular during the Civil War. Union and Confederate armies fighting in Tennessee would periodically declare three-day truces to hold onion-bowling tournaments. A good time was had by all. The Southerners usually won, having been raised since infancy to bowl onions.

5) Many culinary historians believe onion bowling would have won out over baseball in the South had the Rebels won the war. But the Yankees prevailed, Reconstruction followed, and the Southern states had to adopt baseball as their primary sport in order to be readmitted to the Union.

– 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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Baseball, the Game of Failure

Posted on October 31, 2014 by pauldelancey
  In hardly any aspect of life can a man be if a failure if he succeeds .700 of the time. However, a pitcher stinks if he gets .700 of his batters out. A fielder is wretched if he succeeds on only .925baseball
of his plays. Indeed if he fields the ball or throws the ball when there is no chance to get a runner out, he can only lower his fielding average by making an error. He cannot raise it. But there’s a silver lining in all of this. Every time a major-league pitcher gives up a grand slam you can proudly say, “I’m just as good as he is. ” And indeed you would be. You’d probably uncork a wild pitch and walk the next batter, but the point is you’d be letting only one run in as opposed to four. And just how many pitchers in Major League Baseball can say they could save their team three runs. Time to sit by that phone and wait for those big contract offers.- Paul R. De Lancey, philosopher

– 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.

 

 

Categories: humor, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Romanian Stuffed Bell Peppers

Posted on June 22, 2014 by pauldelancey

Romanian Entree

STUFFED BELL PEPPERS

INGREDIENTSStuffedBell-

5 Roma tomatoes
6 yellow or red or green bell peppers
2 onions
12 ounces ground beef
12 ounces ground pork
½ cup rice
1 tablespoon dill
2 tablespoons paprika
½ teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon flour
3/4 cup sour cream (1/4 cup more later)
1/4 cup sour cream

SPECIAL UTENSIL

1 or 2 8″-casserole dishes

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Puree tomatoes. Cut off tops from bell peppers. Keep tops for later. Remove seeds. Mince onions.

Add beef, pork, rice, onion, dill, paprika, pepper, salt, and HALF of the pureed tomatoes to mixing bowl. Mix by hand. Fill bell peppers with beef/pork/rice mix. Do not overstuff or they will crack open later. Top peppers with flour to prevent beef/pork/rice mix from spilling out. Put stuffed peppers in casserole dish.

Add ¾ cup sour cream and second HALF of the pureed tomatoes to mixing bowl. Mix well with whisk. Pour sour cream/pureed tomato sauce onto stuffed bell peppers. Add water to casserole dish until water is 1″ from the top. Bake at 375 for 90 minutes-to-2 hours or until bell peppers are soft. Serve with ¼ cup sour cream on top of stuffed bell peppers. Pour or spray a little water on bell peppers every 40 minutes if they look too dry. CAREFULLY take out dish when done baking. The hot water in it can slosh out if moved too quickly.

TIDBITS

1) Count Vladimir the Impaler of Transylvania killed many people with wooden stakes. You too can kill people with food, ordinary food. All you have to do is use the wrong parts, cook improperly, or eat way too much of it. The following crossword puzzle lists common foods that can kill when in the wrong hands.

2) Crossword Puzzle – POISONOUS ORDINARY FOODS WHEN USED IMPROPERLY

ACROSS
4) Highly toxic fish, must be cooked with care.
6) This nut sounds like a sneeze
8) A brawl on a baseball field
9) Use this to make French fries
10) An anagram for “rip taco”
11) First three letters of this veggie bit Cleopatra
12) Add joy after this nut to get a candy bar

DOWN
1) Can she bake a ….. pie?
2) Moms once poured this vile liquid down their sick kids’ throat to make them better (2 words)
3) Toadstool
5) Sassafras is a controversial …..
7) Legally, this fruit is a vegetable in America.
10) An ….. a day keeps the doctor away

puzzle2e

ANSWERS

Puzzle2AnswersInverted

 

 

 

– 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.

 

Categories: cuisine, humor, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sausage and Pepperoni Pizza

Posted on March 12, 2014 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

SAUSAGE AND PEPPERONI PIZZA

INGREDIENTSSausagePeppPizza-

1 pizza crust
2 cups pasta sauce (see recipe)
8 ounces sausage meat
4 ounces sliced pepperoni
1⅔ cups mozzarella cheese

SPECIAL UTENSIL

16″ pizza pan

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put pizza crust on pizza pan. Spread pasta sauce over entire crust. Make ½” sausage balls. Put sausage balls and pepperoni slice evenly over sauce. Bake pizza in oven at 400 degrees for 10-to-15 minutes or until cheese turns golden brown.

TIDBITS

1) Pizza has a long and rich history. So does the game of rock, paper, scissors.

2) The game started as rock, rock, rock in Vivaldi Gorge in the year 3,200,010 BC.. The game was played with real rocks and always ended in a tie. Caveman Ogg never lost. He even considered going pro, but stopped from a lack of corporate sponsors.

3) Ten years later Ogg accused Lucy from Olduvai Gorge of cheating. The enraged Ogg used the rock to brain his foe. Ogg fictionalized the account of his bloody deed on his cave’s walls. This was the start of the literary crime genre. So some good came out of it.

4) Lucy’s kin attacked Ogg’s family, driving them far away. In 1949 Drs. Leakey started looking for human bones in Vivaldi Gorge. Ten years later, they switched to Olduvai Gorge and found the bones of Lucy next to a tablet inscribed with the cryptic code of W-0, L-0, T-1,723. Oh, a baseball was found as well, but that’s almost certainly an artifact.

5) In 1845, Alexander Cartwright formalized the rules of baseball. Baseball with its clear victor took America and much of the world by storm. Dr. Simon Iota did change the game of rock, rock, rock to rock, paper, scissors, paper in 1867. But the new rules came too late. Baseball would reign supreme. Rock, paper, scissors is hardly played and is never shown on T.V., except maybe on ESPN4 at 4 a.m. on Tuesdays.

– 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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