Posts Tagged With: bread

Paul’s Awesome English Dictionary, Today’s Word, Leadbread

Posted on May 29, 2023 by pauldelancey

My whole wheat bread did not rise yesterday. It was tasty. But it was not a tasty loaf of bread, it was a tasty brick. Gray clouds appeared in my kitchen.

Those clouds, however, had a silver lining. Paul’s Awesome English Dictionary is as pleased as punch to provide a snazzy new entry.

TODAY’S AWESOME WORD

Leadbread:

Awesome Entry #7

– 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: Paul's Awesome Dictionay | Tags: awesome, bread, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, dictionary, English, family, good food, ledbread, Paul's Awesome English Dictionary, recipes, thriller, whole wheat, yeast | Leave a comment

Loving Poem – Men’s Hairy Ears

Posted on March 8, 2023 by pauldelancey

Can’t hear you. My ears are hairy.

Now that I’m getting older
Hair will grow longer in my ears.
I’d rather not have it happen.
Does it help the cause of evolution?

Bread slices evolved o’er the years
To hold PB&J, roast beef,
And chili cheese dogs, too.
But why hair in men’s ears?

At least we now have an excuse.
Sorry, boss. Sorry, dears.
We can’t hear you ‘cuz
There’s hair in our ears.

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

Categories: poems | Tags: appetizer, bread, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, ears, evolution, hairy ears, loving poem, Lutheran, men, murders, poems, roast beef, thriller | 1 Comment

Full English Breakfast (Fry Up)

Posted on May 13, 2022 by pauldelancey

British Breakfast

FULL ENGLISH BREAKFAST
(Fry Up)

INGREDIENTS

1 15-ounce can baked beans*
1 large tomato
4 pork sausages, breakfast sausages, or bangers
4 slices bacon**
6 mushroom caps
2 slices black pudding (optional)***
1½ tablespoons olive oil
2 slices bread
2 eggs

* = Try to use Heinz beans. Heinz is really popular in England
** = back bacon, pork belly, or regular bacon
*** = can be found online

SPECIAL UTENSILS

3 pans and 1 pot (Not really special, but you’ll need 4 of them.)
sonic obliterator (Now this is a truly special kitchen utensil. Once you get one, you’ll wonder how your ever managed to do without one.)

Serves 2. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Cut tomato into 4 slices. Add beans to small pot. Simmer at low heat until the sauce that comes with the beans thicken. Cover and reduce heat to warm or lowest setting. Stir enough to prevent burning.

Poke sausages with fork or toothpick. (This keeps the sausage juices from building up and coming out in a hot jet.) Add sausages to 1st pan. Fry sausages at medium heat for 15 minutes or until completely browned. Turn enough to ensure even browning. Turn enough to prevent burning Cover and reduce heat to warm..

While sausage fry or warm, add bacon to 2nd pan. Fry bacon for 3 minutes or until it reaches your desired level of doneness. Turn occasionally to ensure even browning. Cover and reduce heat to warm. Remove from heat and set aside Turn enough to prevent burning.

While sausages simmer, add mushrooms to 2rd pan. (The one that had the bacon.) Sauté at medium-high heat for 2 minutes or until they turn brown. Turn enough to keep from burning. Remove mushrooms from heat. Add black pudding to 3rd pan. Sauté at medium heat for 3 minutes or until it both sides turn crispy. Flip once. Remove and set aside.

Add 1½ tablespoons olive oil to 3th pan. Heat at medium heat until tiny piece of bread in the oil starts to dance. Add bread slices. Sauté for 2 minutes or until both sides are crispy and golden brown. Flip once. Remove and set aside Add eggs to this, the 3rd pan. Fry eggs until they are done to your liking. Remove from heat and set aside. Add tomato slices. Reduce heat to low-medium. Sauté for 2 minutes. Flip once.

Add equal amounts of everything to 2 serving plates. Use sonic obliterator on anyone gives you any guff at all during the cooking or the presentation. You don’t need that kind of negativity in your kitchen.

TIDBITS

1) People ask me, “How does one start writing again while suffering from writers’ block?”

2) Go find your muse. Of course, you might just discover that your muse has gone on a drunken bender.

3) So you go on a pub crawl to find her. At each stop, you ask the bartender if he’s seen your muse.

4)“I’m not telling you a thing,” says the bartender, “until you’ve ordered a drink.”

5) So, you order and down a whiskey.

6) “Your muse was here ten minutes ago,” says the man serving drinks, “but she went to the next bar up the street.”

7) So you enter the next bar. That bartender also refuses to talk unless you’ve bought a drink. You order another whiskey. The barkeep informs you that she moved onto a bar two blocks west. “She was a with a gal called Betty.”

8) And so it goes. You drink a whiskey at every bar you go into. The bartender states that you just missed her, but you can find at a bar that’s really not very far away. And so you stagger doggedly on after her.

9) Hours later, your muse parts company with Betty. But the muse conquers bar after bar.

10) Eventually, you give up. You decide to head home. In your car.

11) A vigilant traffic cop notices you weaving from lane to lane. He pulls you over.

12) “But officer,” you hear yourself saying, “I’m a writer. I was looking for my muse, but she was on a pub crawl.”

13) The officer sneers. “Like, I haven’t heard that one before.”

14) This is why writing is not as easy as some people think.

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

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: apocalyptic, baked beans, bartender, black pudding, bread, breakfast, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, De Lancey, drunken, eggs, English, full, good food, Heinz, hunks, Lutheran, murders, muse, mushrooms, Paul De Lancey, pub crawl, recipes, sausages, thriller, tomato, writer, writers' block | Leave a comment

NASA Set to Make Perfect Landings Every Time

Posted on October 27, 2021 by pauldelancey

We all know that if we drop a slice of buttered bread, it will land buttered-side down. Pizzas, however, often fall dough-side down. But it’s a certainty that something will land atop the newly dropped pizza.

We know this. So does NASA. Sure, their geniuses delight in solving mathematical formulas, after all who doesn’t? But their staff also prides itself on its powers of observation. They will be using the pizza observation to perfectly land their Landing Modules. For NASA does cranky if after untold hours of development at a cost of several billion dollars, their Landing Module lands upside down or tips over.

NASA’s solution? Their New Landing Module (NLM) ejects four pizzas 100 feet before they want to land. The only possible way for the Landing Module to make contact with each and every pizza is for the module to pierce the pizzas with all four landing arms , as shown in the picture below. They plan to use this technique on their next mission to Mars. They also have a long run plan to do this on Uranus.

20 weeks or your pizza is free.

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

Categories: observations, science | Tags: apocalyptic, bread, Comic Chef, cookbook, formulas, good food, landing modules, Lutheran, Mars, murders, NASA, Paul De Lancey, pizza, recipes, thriller, Uranus | Leave a comment

Motivational Poster #6, Become A Chemist

Posted on June 26, 2021 by pauldelancey

Humanity has always been doggedly slogging away from the primordial ooze from whence it came. The advances from hominids to the first human, Lucy of Olduvai Gorge, came slowly. Then we evolved into Neanderthals, next Cro Magnons, and finally to our current state, the Modern Human. Along the way, we learned to hunt, raise crops, and build settlements. All of these advances were pretty darn exciting. People buzzed about the new achievements for decades.

But that was also a problem. The advances did take decades, if not millennia, to occur. Then chemists got involved. And Bam! Boom! The ideas and inventions kept coming, faster and faster. Before one could take down the year’s calendar, a new breakthrough in chemistry had occurred. And those new achievements were whizz-bang ones as well. Thanks to chemists we now have: distillation, gunpowder, pharmaceuticals, chemical batteries, petroleum, and plastics. “Those chemists have done it all,” I hear you say. “There’s no more breakthroughs to be had.”

But you’d be wrong. Why just recently, after extensive research, chemists came up with sliced peanut butter. Yes, no longer must we labor excavating peanut butter out of its jar and then, and then, spreading it painstakingly over a fragile slice of bread. Now, thanks to those visionaries we can simply peel off a slice of peanut butter and place it easily on a slice of bread. Life is good! Life is truly good. We are living in a golden age. Life couldn’t possibly improve.

But you’d be in error once more. That is if we don’t run out of chemists. A world without chemists is a world without blessed innovation. We need new chemists. Will you be one? The current and future generations will be ever so grateful.

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

Categories: motivational | Tags: apocalyptic, bread, chemists, Comic Chef, cookbook, cro magnons, good food, homonids, motivational, motivational poster, mushrooms, Neanderthals, Paul De Lancey, peanut butter, recipes, research, sliced, thriller | Leave a comment

Spelt Bread

Posted on April 30, 2017 by pauldelancey

Swedish Appetizer

SPELT BREAD

INGREDIENTS

2¼ teaspoons (1 package) yeast
1½ cups lukewarm water
1 tablespoon butter (2 more tablespoons later)
2 tablespoons honey
½ tablespoon salt
4 cups spelt flour
1 tablespoon butter (1 more tablespoon later)
1 tablespoon butter (1 more tablespoon later)

SPECIAL UTENSILS

electric beater or stand mixer
9″-x-5″ loaf pan

Makes 1 loaf. Takes 2 hours 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add yeast, lukewarm water, and honey to mixing bowl. Let sit for 15 minutes or until water becomes foamy. While yeast sits, melt 1 tablespoons butter in small pot using low-medium heat. Add melted butter and salt. Stir gently until well blended.

Add 1 cup flour to bowl. Blend using low setting on beater for 1 minute. Repeat until all flour has been added. Dough should be slightly sticky. Cover with cloth and let sit for 1 hour or until dough doubles in size. Grease flat surface with 1 tablespoon butter. Transfer dough to flat surface. Press down on dough to push air out of it. Cover with cloth and let sit for 45 minutes or until dough doubles in size again. While dough is doubling in size a second time, preheat oven to 425 degrees. Grease loaf pan with 1 tablespoon butter.

Bake dough at 425 degrees for 40 minutes or until dough turns golden brown and toothpick inserted in bread comes out clean. Gently remove bread from pan and let cool on wire rack for 30 minutes or until bread firms enough for slicing.

TIDBITS

1) On January 31, 1968, Hiraama Kamouda of the tiny U.S. island of Madrana spelt “heteroskedasticity” with a c instead of a k. That cost Hiraama the National Spelling Bee Championship. Kamouda’s supporters vigorously maintained their spelling, but to no avail.

2) Their island’s honor tarnished, the Mandranans seceded from America. But no one noticed because the North Vietnamese had just launched the Tet Offensive. Now no one can find the island nation because Happy MapsTM mislabeled it as What Island. Madrana’s tourism industry is suffering.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: apocalyptic, appetizer, bread, Chef Paul, cookbook, good food, hunks, island, Lutheran, North Vietnamese, recipes, spelling bee championship.heteroskedasticity, spelt bread, spelt flour, Swedish, Tet Offensive, thriller, tourism | Leave a comment

Anise Bread

Posted on April 15, 2017 by pauldelancey

Burundian Appetizer

ANISE BREAD

INGREDIENTS

2¼ teaspoons yeast
½ teaspoon sugar (5 teaspoons more later)
¾ cup warm water
1 cup flour (2½ cups more later)
7 teaspoons anise seed
1 teaspoon salt
5 teaspoons sugar
2½ tablespoons peanut oil or vegetable oil
2½ cups flour
½ cup water (or as needed)
1 egg yolk

SPECIAL UTENSILS

bread maker (optional)
cookie sheet
parchment paper

Makes 4 bread rolls. Takes 2 hours 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add yeast, ½ teaspoon sugar, and warm water to large mixing bowl. Stir with fork until yeast dissolves. Let sit for 15 minutes or until yeast becomes foamy. Add 1 cup flour. Stir with fork until well blended. Let sit for 30 minutes or until mixture doubles in size. Add anise seed, salt, sugar and oil. Knead mixture with bread maker or by hand until blended. Add 2½ cups flour gradually. Knead by bread machine or by hand for 10 minutes. Add ½ cup water, or as needed, to get soft, pliable dough. Cover and let sit for 1 hour or until dough doubles in size.

Place parchment paper on cookie sheet. Separate dough into 4 balls Add balls to parchment paper. Flatten dough balls slightly with hands. Cover with damp kitchen towel. Let rise for 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Add egg yolk to cup. Beat egg with whisk. Use kitchen brush to coat dough balls with egg yolk. Bake at 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until dough balls turn golden brown and their surface hardens. Serve warm or let cool.

TIDBITS

1) In 2200 B.C., King M’bokong of Burundi ordered his subjects bring him a dish to celebrate his 50th birthday. By incredible coincidence, everyone made anise bread. The people further honored their monarch by building a great pyramid three times as tall as the later pyramids of Egypt out of the leftover bread. However, the Pharaohs’ pyramids are made from stone. Stone resists rain. Bread does not. The pyramids of Giza remain. The Burundian pyramid is no more. Bummer.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: anise, aniseed, apocalyptic, bread, Burundi, Burunidan, Chef Paul, cookbook, Giza, good food, hunks, Lutheran, mushrooms, Pharohs', pyramids, recipes, thriller | Leave a comment

Paul’s Banana Strawberry Nut Bread

Posted on March 11, 2017 by pauldelancey

American Breakfast

PAUL’S BANANA STRAWBERRY NUT BREAD

INGREDIENTS

3 bananas (overripe ones are better)
5 ripe strawberries
½ cup pecans
½ cup butter (softened or melted)
½ cup raisins
2 eggs
½ cup sugar
2¾ teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
⅛ teaspoon salt
¾ teaspoon vanilla extract
2¼ cups flour
no-stick spray

SPECIAL UTENSILS

spice grinder
electric beater
9″ x 5″ loaf pan

Makes 1 loaf. Takes 1 hour 20 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel bananas. Put bananas and strawberrues in large mixing bowl. Mash or smoosh with potato masher or fork. Chop pecans or grind with spice grinder until all the pecan bits are quite small. Add butter, pecan bits, raisins, eggs, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt, and vanilla extract to mixing bowl. Blend with electric beater set on medium or “cake.” With electric beater running, gradually add all the flour. Blend until the batter is smooth. Spray loaf pan with no-stick spray. Pour batter into pan. Put pan in oven. Cook for 45 minutes or until a toothpick or fork inserted into the middle comes out clean. Let cool for 20 minutes. Turn loaf pan over onto a plate.

TIDBITS

1) This is a moist and tasty bread. However, it would surely harden like a brick if left out under a hot, summer Sun and forgotten. Indeed, the Great Wall of China, built to keep out northern invaders, was constructed with banana-strawberry-bread bricks. These ingredients arrived via caravan along the great Banana Strawberry Road, stretching from Bananistan to Peking. The fruit bricks of Great Wall did their job until the advent of the Mongols, fierce fruit lovers who ate their way through. No country has a built a culinary wall ever since.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, history | Tags: Ameican, banana, bread, breakfast, Chef Paul, China, cookbook, De Lancey, fruit, good food, Great Wall, Mongols, nut, pecans, Peking, raisins, recipes, strawberry, Sun | 8 Comments

Swedish Saffransbröd

Posted on December 23, 2015 by pauldelancey

Swedish Dessert

SAFFRANSBRÖD

INGREDIENTS

2¼ teaspoons yeast
⅓ cup warm water
1 cup milk
½ cup butter
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar (½ cup more later)
½ teaspoon (1 gram) saffron threads
⅓ cup raisins
½ cup sugar
2 eggs (1 more egg later)
4 cups flour (2 more tablespoons later)
2 tablespoons flour
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
no-stick spray

SPECIAL UTENSILS

tin foil
cookie sheet

Makes 4 6″ buns. Takes 2 hours 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Add yeast and water to large mixing bowl. While yeast dissolves, add milk to small pot. Heat milk at high heat until scalding hot (almost boiling). Stir constantly. Reduce heat to medium. Add butter, salt, and 1 teaspoon sugar to pot. Stir constantly until butter melts. Remove from heat.

Add saffron to tin foil. Bake at 250 for 5 minutes or until saffron is toasted. Add toasted saffron to cup. Crush saffron with fingers. Add 1 teaspoon sugar to cup. Mix with fork. Add crushed saffron/sugar to mixing bowl with dissolved yeast. Add 2 eggs, raisins, ½ cup sugar, and buttery milk to mixing bowl. Stir in 4 cups flour, one cup a time. Mix with whisk or fork.

Dust cutting board with 2 tablespoons flour. Add dough to cutting board. Let dough stand for 10 minutes. Knead with hands until dough stiffens. Add oil and dough to large bowl. Turn dough until it is coated with oil. Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until dough doubles in size.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Divide dough into 12 pieces. Use hands to turn each piece into a 12″ rope. Put 3 ropes side by side. Braid the 3 ropes together by crossing the left rope and then the right rope over the center rope until there is one long braid. Join ends of long braid to make a circle or crown. Repeat to make three more crowns. Beat one egg. Brush egg over crowns.
Spray cookie sheet with no-stick spray. Place crowns on parchment-covered cookie sheet. Let crowns rise for 15 minutes or until they puff up into a bun. Bake for 15-to-25 minutes or until golden brown and when a toothpick inserted into buns comes out clean. Let cool on rack.

TIDBITS

1) Böard is Swedish for surfboard. Yes, surfboards were invented by the Swedish baker, Franf. For in 1618, Franf found a large tree trunk washed up on shore. The tree was of a sort unknown to Europe. Franf reasoned it must have come from a large continent to the west.

2) He announced his discovery to the Swedish court and asked royal packing for a proposed voyage of discovery. The Swedish king said Franf was an idiot, noting Christopher Columbus had discovered the New World in 1492, in addition to Basque fishermen, Viking explorers, the third-grade class of Stockholm’s very own Lutefisk academy, Chinese traders, and the people of the great migration across the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska.

3) Franf wondered why entire tribes would assemble in frozen Siberia and then trek eastward into howling blizzards to an unknown land. Perhaps they really had a hankering for a White CastleTM burger. Those tiny delights with their minced onions are really tasty. Perhaps the ancient trekkers honestly thought there be a White Castle in the new land, just like the Spanish conquistadors and their Seven Cities of Gold. We’ll never know. Researchers are still waiting for the Cliff NotesTM to come out.

4) Franf waited patiently for the above long tidbit to end, before he could go home.

5) He moped for countless seconds–there were no stopwatches in 1618–before rebounding with the boundless optimism of all Post-Renaissance Swedish bakers.

6) Fraf went to a dock, sat down, pulled out his pipe, lit a match, and commenced to day dreaming. His long reddish beard burst into a fireball of flame; not applying the burning match to the pipe was a mistake. Howling with pain, Franf dove into the bay to put out the fire.

7) Flame extinguished, Franf immediately inventoried certain gaps in his education and there were many. However, the one that consistently came to the forefront was not learning to swim. Thank goodness, the tree trunk from the first tidbit, by now worn down to a thin board, was right next to him. (Notice the neat foreshadowing?)

8) Franf climbed onto the board and sat down to think. Here he was sitting in Sweden, the top of world, when suddenly, in geological terms, he caught a wave. “Häftig,” he shouted, “this is totally awesome!” People gathered on the shore as Franf rode one rörformig wave after another. They joined in. Surfing totally rocked Sweden. It was totally tubular, man.

11) Then the Thirty Years war broke out. Thousands and thousands of surfing Swedes lost their lives in the battlefields of Germany, never again to catch that perfect Baltic Sea wave. Surfing died out in that no longer care free Nordic land.

12) But Franf is still remembered in the vibrant culinary, surfing world. This recipe is called Saffransbröd, in anagrammic remembrance, of Franf’s böard.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, history, humor, international | Tags: Alaska, Baltic Sea, Basque, battlefields, bread, burger, Chef Paul, Chinese, Christopher Columbus, Cliff Notes, conquistadors, cookbook, dessert, Germany, häftig, hunks, lutefisk, Lutheran, mushrooms, nordic, recipes, saffransbröd, saffron, seven cities of gold, Siberia, Spanish, Stockholm, surfing, Sweden, Swedes, Swedish, Thirty Years War, tubular, White Castle | Leave a comment

Welsh Rarebit

Posted on March 1, 2015 by pauldelancey

British Entree

WELSH RAREBIT

INGREDIENTS

6 slices bread
1 tomato
3 tablespoons butter
2½ cups shredded Caerphilly or cheddar cheese
2 tablespoons flour
½ teaspoon mustard
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
½ cup or 8 ounces beer*

* = You probably opened a 12-ounce bottle of better to get this. This will leave 4 ounces of beer for yourself. Okay, it’s not the greatest perk in the world, but it’s a start.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

baking sheet

Takes about 15 minutes, not including the time to preheat your oven.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Toast bread. Cut tomato into 6 slices. Add butter and cheese to pan. Cook using low heat for 10 minutes or until all is melted. Stir frequently. Add flour, mustard, pepper, salt, and Worcestershire sauce. Mix with whisk until smooth. Simmer on low heat for 3 minutes or until mixture bubbles. Stir constantly. Add beer. Bring sauce to boil, stirring constantly. Remove sauce from heat.

Top each bread slice with a tomato slice. Ladle sauce equally over bread. Place sauce covered bread in oven. Broil at 500 degrees for 2 minutes or until sauce becomes brown. Serve right away to your hungry horde.

TIDBITS

1) The Mongol horde conquered much of Asia and Europe in the 13th century. Numbering in the thousands and thousands they probably would have eaten many more Welsh rarebits than your hungry horde mentioned above.

2) Many culinary historians think the Mongols would not have been so driven to conquer, loot, massacre, and enslave if their cuisine had been as tasty as this dish. Bummer.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

Categories: cuisine, humor, international | Tags: Asia, beer, bread, British, Caerphilly, cheddar, cheese, Chef Paul, conquer, cookbook, De Lancey, entree, Europe, historians, rarebit, recipes, Welsh, Worcestershire | Leave a comment

Posts Tagged With: bread

Paul’s Awesome English Dictionary, Today’s Word, Leadbread

Loving Poem – Men’s Hairy Ears