Posts Tagged With: De Lancey

Angolan Chicken Stew

Posted on June 17, 2014 by pauldelancey

Angolan Entree

CHICKEN STEW
(muamba de galinha)

INGREDIENTSChickenStew-

3 pounds boneless chicken (Probably separate parts. If you can find a farm that raises organic boneless chickens, go for it.)
1 Scotch bonnet, habañero, or red chili pepper
3 garlic cloves
3 onions
3 tomatoes
1 pound pumpkin or butternut squash
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup red palm oil or olive oil
½ pound okra (See note below for substitutes)
1 cup chicken broth
3 tablespoons cornstarch (only if you don’t use okra)

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Dutch oven
sonic obliterator

OKRAPHOBIA

A lot of people just can’t stand okra or will only eat fresh food, but can only find okra in cans. What to do? Relax, have an ice-cold root beer. Now that you’re refreshed, consider substitutes for okra. The top contenders are: asparagus, eggplant, green beans, and spinach. These don’t taste quite the same as okra. This might be a plus for you. However, if you want the okra taste, try adding a tablespoon of gumbo file (Oh gosh, gumbo file is another one of those hard herb/spice mixes that are just plain hard to find in supermarkets. In this case, bluff your guests. How many will know if you don’t have gumbo file in your chicken muamba? However, if they do know and they complain loudly, zap them with your sonic obliterator. You don’t need that kind of stress in your life.)

Anyway, okra thickens stews. So if you don’t use okra, you should add cornstarch as a thickening agent. However, cornstarch alters the taste somewhat from the authentic Angolan chicken muamba. (See above paragraph for resolving this problem.)

PREPARATION

Cut chicken into 1″ cubes. Seed and mince chili pepper. Mince garlic cloves. Dice onions. Cut each tomato into eight pieces. Seed and peel pumpkin. Cut pumpkin into 1/2″ cubes.

Add chicken, lemon juice, chili pepper, garlic, pepper, salt to large mixing bowl. Mix by hand until chicken cubes are well coated. Marinate for 1 hour.

Add coated chicken, onion, and red palm oil to Dutch oven. Sauté using medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until chicken cubes are browned on all sides and onion softens. Stir frequently. Add pumpkin, tomatoes, okra (or its substitute and cornstarch), and chicken broth. Bring stew to boil. Cover Dutch oven, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 25 minutes or until chicken and pumpkin are tender. Stir occasionally.

Goes well with rice or cassava. Whew.

TIDBITS

1) Do not worry about your fresh-okra finding problems as life is about to get a whole lot better as you can see in the following tidbits.

2) In 2023, Amos Keeto, will invent the Sonic Obliterator. This invention will be a godsend to be who hate being disturbed by door-to-door salesmen. People who hate plowing their way through the crowds surrounding the free-sample stations at CostcoTM or are too shy to ask people to move will also appreciate this device.

3) I mean can’t you see the shopper’s face as she pushes her cart through a suddenly vacant path on her way to pick up a large package of ribs for her family. Her family loves ribs and isn’t making families happy what’s it all about?

4) In 2019, Sarah Bellum, will invent the time machine. This will be invaluable for people with overdue library books and for those who can never file their taxes on time. Be sure to buy one, well, whenever.

5) In 2021, Barry Sax will invent the Orphan Socks Reuniter. No longer will your dryer be able to present you with orphan socks. The Reuniter will find the missing sock whether it will be sticking to the top of the dryer, vacationing in Poway, California, rafting down the Amazon River, performing against its will in a shocking sock-puppet show, or simply transported to a parallel universe. Barry Sax will win a Nobel Prize in 2023 for his service to humanity.

6) In 2017, just around the corner, Hal E. Kahn, will invent the organic TwizzlerTM by being the first to successfully graft the tasty snack onto strawberry plants.

7) In 2031, Ms. Terri Good, will markedly improve mornings for all people for all time by inventing the Coffee Humidifier. The CF, as it will soon be called, will emit coffee molecules all through the night. You will be inhaling 100% pure arabica bean while you sleep. You will not wake up tired and wanting to kill the first person who talks to you. No! You will be so awake, so full of energy that you will paint the house and make school lunches for your kids for the entire year.

8) In 2019, Mel Ifluous will invent UTeleport. This nifty invention will be able to teleport any item of any size over any distance. The Uteleport will be a life saver to all those still half-asleep souls who pour a bowl of cereal in the morning only to find they are out of milk. Life will be 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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Caesar’s Salad

Posted on June 13, 2014 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

CAESAR’S SALAD

INGREDIENTSCaesarsSalad-

1 head romaine lettuce
4 bread slices
2 garlic cloves
1/4 cup olive oil (1 tablespoon more later)
2 ounces anchovies, cut in half (optional)

1 egg
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

PREPARATION

Separate romaine lettuce into leaves. Tear leaves into 1″ squares. Remove crusts from bread slices. Cut bread into ½” cubes. Cut one garlic clove into four pieces and rub them along the salad bowl. Discard. (Oh no, no, discard the garlic pieces, not the salad bowl. Goodness, careful sentence structure matters.)

Add the other garlic clove and 1/4 cup olive oil to pan. Sauté at low-medium heat for 5 minutes or 300 seconds. Discard garlic clove. (It’s a bad day to be garlic.) Add bread cubes to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until bread cubes are crisp on all sides. Stir frequently. Remove crisp bread crumbs or croutons and place them on paper towels to drain.

Add romaine squares and croutons to salad bowl. (Add optional anchovies here.)

Add egg, Dijon mustard, pepper, salt, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, and red wine vinegar to blender. Use mix or middle setting to blend ingredients for 30 seconds. Pour this dressing into salad bowl. Lightly toss salad. Sprinkle salad with Parmesan cheese.

Note, pregnant women and small children should not eat raw eggs.

TIDBITS

1) Anchovies are a happening item. Italian prostitutes of the 18th century used anchovies when making their famous “spaghetti alla puttanesca” for their customers.

2) The Romans used anchovy entrails to make an aphrodisiac, to reduce ulcers, to cure dysentery, or to season their food.

3) So if you were a Roman woman and a man had you over for dinner and he served anchovy sauce, you might want to wonder about him.

4) On the other hand, we could dramatically cut the cost of health care by requiring all pizzas to come with anchovies. We wouldn’t need hospital or medical insurance, just a large anchovy with extra cheese.

5) And the aphrodisiacal–whoa spell check is okay with that–qualities of anchovy pizzas would mean we wouldn’t have to see those ViagraTM ads on T.V. anymore.

6) But PlayboyTM would sport ads about anchovies all the time.

7) The entire economy would be directed to processing anchovies.

8) Military spending would fall to zero.

9) Our anchovy-driven sexual frenzies would leave us wide open to conquest by our enemies.

10) But anchovies also contain a toxin called domoic acid whichcan drive a seagull insane if ingested in too large a quantity.

11) Which is why the United States Army has warehouses full of anchovies. Within 15 minutes of an enemy invasion, the roofs of all these warehouses retract to reveal millions of vats just brimming with anchovies.

12) America’s heroic seagulls would then gorge themselves on their favorite food, became crazy and attack the invaders, just like in Alfred Hitchcock’s, The Birds.

13) America cannot be conquered.

14) But then any country with sufficient anchovies and pelican couldn’t be conquered.

15) Countries would have an incentive to stockpile these items.

16) I fear an anchovy-and-pelican race between nations.

17) But if worse comes to worse, we will blast the Barney-the-Dinosaur song at our enemies until they cry uncle.

18) Let us banish this frightening scenario by sipping on a wonderful, ice cold root beer. Ah, life is good again.

19) Caesar’s salad, anyone?

– 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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Tuna Melt

Posted on June 11, 2014 by pauldelancey

American Entree

TUNA MELT

INGREDIENTSTunaMelt-

2 5-ounce cans albacore tuna
1/3 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup diced celery
2, tablespoons minced yellow, brown, or red onon
1 teaspoon dill weed
1/8,teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup shredded cheddar or mozzarella cheese
1 medium, ripe avocado (optional)
2 hamburger buns on 4 bread slices

PREPARATION

Drain water from tuna cans. Preheat broiler to 375 degrees. Toast bread for 2 minutes. While bread toasts, become a whirlwind and add tuna, mayonnaise, celery, onion, dill weed, pepper, and salt to mixing bowl. Mix with whisk.

Top the bread slices equally with tuna/mayonnaise mix. Put slices in broiler and broil at 375 for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove tuna/mayonnaise/bread slices from broiler and top equally with shredded cheese. Return slices to broiler and broil at 375 degrees for about 2 minutes or until cheese melts. Remove from oven. Carefully combine two slices together. (You might wish to use a spatula.)

TIDBITS

1) “December 7, 1941–a date which will live in infamy…” – President Roosevelt on the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

2) “December 23, 1941, a date which will live in culinary glory…” – me, today. For this is the date of the first recorded sighting of the word, “cheeseburger.” This wondrous event happened at a small restaurant in Burbank, California.

3) The first six months of the war in the Pacific went poorly for America. Some culinary historians speculate that the invention of the cheeseburger was the only thing that prevented defeatism spreading throughout America.

4) Moreover, the humble cheeseburger provided American soldiers, marines, and sailors the energy to keep up the good fight when their Japanese counterparts flagged from a want of calories. Now, Japan and America are friends, because we both eat cheeseburgers. May I suggest a Japanese cheeseburger with wasabi ketchup?

– 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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Chicken Jalfrezi

Posted on June 6, 2014 by pauldelancey

Pakistani Entree

CHICKEN JALFREZI

INGREDIENTSChickenJalfrezi-

2 green bell peppers
2 green chile peppers
2 garlic cloves
1 onion
2 tomatoes
1.5 pounds boneless chicken
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 chili powder
1 tablespoon ginger
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon turmeric
3 tablespoons ghee (clarified butter)
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon cumin
½ tablespoon cilantro
basmati rice (optional)
naan bread (optional)

SPECIAL UTENSILS

deep skillet, Dutch oven, or wok
magic wand

PREPARATION – with magic wand

Wave magic wand and say, “Mumbo jumbo bumbo, make me chicken jalfrezi.” Poof! Your chicken jalfrezi will appear instantly.

PREPARATION – without magic wand

Seed bell peppers and green chile peppers. Dice bell peppers, chile peppers, garlic cloves, onion, and tomatoes. Cut chicken into 1″ cubes. Add oil, garlic, and onion to skillet. Sauté for 5 minutes at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add chicken, chili powder, ginger, salt, and turmeric. Cook on medium heat for 5-to-10 minutes or until chicken is golden brown. Stir frequently.

Add ghee, bell pepper, chile pepper, tomato, coriander, and cumin to skillet. Bring to boil over high heat, stirring frequently. Cover, reduce heat to low and let simmer for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally. Uncover and let simmer for another 10 minutes or until bell pepper is tender. Garnish with cilantro.

This dish goes well with basmati rice and naan bread.

TIDBITS

1) Magic wands are truly useful. You can make a million dollars, a new house or a fancy sports car appear with them.

2) Or you could use your wand to find your car keys.

3) Nervous people about to make a speech are often told to visually their audience dressed in their underwear. But what if the speaker is too shy to picture the audience so undressed. In this case, the best thing to do, the Good Samaritan thing to do, is to wave your crowd at the crowd and say, “Mumbo jumbo bumbo, let these people wear underwear only.” Poof, the audience will be in its undies. The speaker will gain courage from this and deliver a rip-roaring speech that brings the crowd to its feet and stirs it to action.

4) Since the speech is about recycling, everyone will soon be recycling. Land fills will no longer be needed. The land once set aside for landfills will now be used for farmland, new homes, and root-beer factories.

5) In fact, the audience from the speech will be filled with such fervor that it will make things just so they have more things to recycle.

6) This will be bad. Thank goodness for all those root-beer factories we built in tidbit 4). We will distribute its root beer to the teeming, frothing masses filled with recycling exuberance.

7) One sip of root beer, will calm the frenetic recycling masses. Serenity will be restored. A perfect balance between recycling and over recycling will be achieved. We will live in a new Paradise.

8) So, let these happenings be a cautionary tale to you. Use your magic wand wisely and be prepared for unforeseen consequences.

9) Well as much as you can be prepared for something that can’t be foreseen.

10) Indeed, the motto of the Boy Scouts is “Be Prepared” and they don’t even have magic wands.

11) Always buy new wands. You can never be sure how many spells are left in a used one.

12) After all, wouldn’t you be embarrassed if you tried to impress your dinner guests by summoning a tyrannosaurus rex and found you couldn’t wave it back into non-existence because you had no spells left on your wand.

13) Some of your guests would get eaten. Your surviving friends would leave your home in a huff and would most likely never speak to you again. Your dinner would be a disaster and your homeowner insurance rates would go up.

14) Of course you could have a two-ton bag of T-Rex ChowTM on hand in case this happens. But you’d only be kicking the can down the street. Eventually, the t-rex would just get hungry again. Yep, just stick to new wands or summoning only ice-cold mugs with your used magic stick, for goodness sake.

– 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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Powegian Breakfast Burrito

Posted on June 2, 2014 by pauldelancey

Fusion Entree

POWEGIAN BREAKFAST BURRITO

INGREDIENTSPowayBreakfastBurrito-

½ white onion
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 eggs (1 more egg later)
1 4-ounce can diced green chiles

½ pound sliced ham
1 tomato
1 pound Italian pork sausage
1 cup chipotle salsa
1 cup grated four Mexican cheeses
18 8″ flour tortillas
1 egg

SPECIAL UTENSIL

9″ x 12″ casserole dish

Makes 18 burritos or a saner 9 burritos with the amount of ingredients halved. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mince onion. Dice tomato. Cut ham slices into ½” squares. Add onion and vegetable oil to pan. Sauté onion on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add eggs and diced green chiles. Sauté on medium heat for about 5 minutes or until eggs reach your desired level of doneness. Stir constantly. Remove from heat.

Cut ham into 1″ squares. Dice tomato. Add ham squares, pork sausage, and chipotle salsa to large pot. Cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes or until thoroughly warm. Stir occasionally. Add tomatoes and cook for another 2 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add cheese. Stir until well blended.

Combine egg/chiles with sausage/cheese/tomatoes mix. Place ⅓ cup of combined mixture on middle, bottom third of tortillas. Fold bottom of tortilla over mixture. Fold in sides until they touch. Roll up tortillas from the bottom to make burrito.

Put egg in small dish. Whisk egg. Brush all burritos with whisked egg. Bake at 400 degrees for 12 minutes or until egg on top of burritos is golden brown and burritos begin to brown.

TIDBITS

1) Eating sausages 5,000 years ago enabled the ancient Sumerians to establish the world’s first advanced civilization.

2) The mighty sausage was first mentioned in the play “The Sausage” written by Epimarchus a really, really long time ago. The play got lost, however, and culinary drama disappeared for a really long time. (Note: really, really long time is longer than a really long time.)

3) Aristophanes, the dude from 5th-century B.C., mentioned sausages in one of his plays. Of course, mentioning sausages is not as good or powerful as writing an entire play about this amazing, meaty delicacy.

4) Culinary tragedy struck in the fourth century A.D., when the Catholic Church banned the eating of sausages as being sinful.

5) Church leaders had noticed the barbarians hordes that were carving up the Roman Empire ate sausages at their festivals. Therefore, sausages were ungodlyl.

6) Historians, often wonder why such spirited warfare existed between the barbarians and the Roman Empire as both peoples possessed sausages. Why fight someone else for something you already have?

7) The Catholic Church, over the years, relaxed its stance on sausage eating, banning it only on Fridays.

8) Arabs burst out of the Arabian peninsula in 632 A.D.. Fired by strong religious belief and fortified with beef sausages, they conquered North Africa, Spain, Sicily, and the Middle East.

9) Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg. Normal historians take this to be the start of the Reformation which split Christian church into Catholic and Protestant ones. Culinary historians speculate that if Martin Luther had only been able to eat sausages without guilt, he would have been devouring this wonderful entree to his heart’s content. Full of sausage-induced good will, he couldn’t have possibly mustered up the rage to write even two theses, let alone ninety five. The Christian church would still be one and horrors of the Thirty Years War, 1618-1648, fought between Protestant and Catholic Europe would never have happened.

10) Sausage-eating Protestants and six-out-of-seven-days-a-week Catholics built vast colonial empires starting from the 1500s. These empires fell apart during the mid-twentieth century when the European nations switched from consuming vast amounts of sausages to more trendy things such as sushi, salmon quesadillas, and specialty coffees.

12) Vatican II led many Catholics to believe that eating meat on Fridays is okay. The world has not had a major war since then.

13) “To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.”
– German chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898).

14) “War without fire is like sausages without mustard.”
– King Henry V.

15) “The dog’s kennel is no place to keep a sausage.”
-Danish proverb

16) “Yum.”
-me

– 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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Bami Goreng From Indonesia

Posted on June 1, 2014 by pauldelancey

Indonesian Entree

BAMI GORENG

INGREDIENTSBamiGoreng-

2 chicken breasts
2 garlic cloves
12 ounces bami or medium-egg noodles
2 eggs
3 tablespoons peanut oil
½ teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon sambal oelek (Indonesian red chili paste)
1 carrot
1 leek
1 onion
3 ounces medium peeled and deveined shrimp
4 tablespoons ketjap manis

SPECIAL UTENSIL

wok or Dutch oven

PREPARATION

Cut chicken breast into 1″ cubes. Mince garlic cloves. Dice carrot, leek and onion. Cook noodles according to instructions on package. Rinse and set aside. Beat eggs. Pour egg into pan. Cook on medium heat for 2-to-3 minutes or until egg hardens. Remove egg and cut into thin strips.

Put a drop of water in wok. When drop starts to bubble or move around, add peanut oil. Add chicken, garlic, ginger, pepper, and sambal oelek. Sauté on medium heat for 6 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink. Stir frequently. Add carrot, leek, and onion and sauté on medium heat for another 4 minutes. Stir frequently. Add shrimp and ketjap manis, and stir fry for another 4 minutes or until shrimp turns orangish/pink and is no longer translucent. This dish goes great with peanut sauce or a million dollars.

TIDBITS

1) Indonesia is the home of the great volcano Krakatoa. Incomprehensible amounts of ash issued from Krakatoa when it erupted in 1889. The ash in the sky darkened the world for days.

2) Today Krakatoa’s ash would be considered a health hazard. Schools would close as a health precaution. School kids everywhere would hope for volcanic eruptions. But too much ash would block sunlight to such an extent that plants couldn’t photosynthesis and so, die. Our end would come soon, delayed only the frozen burritos in our freezer. And if the only thing in our freezers was lutefisk, we’d wish the volcanic eruption would have taken us right away. So, be careful with your wishes.

– 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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The New Global Threat

Posted on May 28, 2014 by pauldelancey

The stability of the entire world is threatened by an emerging superpower, Papua New Guinea.PapuaNewGuinea1

Hah, you say. Where is Papua New Guinea? North of Australia. What does it produce? Rain, mud, and documentaries about newly discovered stone-age tribes within its borders.

What could such a country do? Buy a lot of SPAM or … conquer the Pacific Ocean.

How? I’m glad you asked. Everyone knows the best mud for beauty care comes from Papua New Guinea, or PNG. The demand for this mud in American and European spas grows fantastically every year. Soon, PNG will be awash with the world’s money. PNG can then allocate its new billions to buy used aircraft carriers, fighter planes, bombers, tanks, and landing craft listed irresponsibly on eBay.

This is where the nightmare starts PNG has a population of 4,600,000. (I counted them twice.) Even if it puts just 10% of its people in the military, it will have a striking force of 460,000. Who has the population, the might to stop them? Not neighboring Nauru with its tiny population of 11,000 and maybe soldiers.

Emboldened by this easy conquest, Tuvalu, Palau, Marshall Islands, Kiribati, and Tonga, with their combined population of 260,000 will fall like leaves in a Wisconsin autumn. This disaster will have worldwide ramifications. Does anyone doubt the Palauan contingent keeping the peace in South Ruritania will remain under such dire circumstances? No, they will go home to fight a war of liberation. The whole idea of UN peace-keeping forces will unravel. Minor skirmishes will become full fledged regional wars. So it goes.

Soon, Micronesia and Vanuatu will topple. I don’t know much about them so let’s move onto the Solomon Islands and Fiji–biggish but still smaller than PNG. We cannot let these two nations fall. We cannot let PNG monopolize the best snorkeling sites in the world. Have you snorkeled at Key Largo? Well, let me tell you, the snorkeling at Fiji is much better. And by the way, conquest of these countries would enable PNG to block all airborne and seaborne trade across the Pacific. The snorkeling industry and the world economy would collapse.

What can Americans do? Simple. Cut off the funds for PNG’s drive for conquest. Whenever getting a mud treatment at your local spa, be sure to ask for good ol’ American mud. It’s good for your face. It’s good for world peace.

– Correspondent 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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Grilled Saffron Chicken (Joojeh kabab)

Posted on May 27, 2014 by pauldelancey

Persian Entree

GRILLED SAFFRON CHICKEN
(Joojeh Kabab)

INGREDIENTSGrilledSaffronChicken-

1 onion
1/2 tablespoon lime juice
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon chili powder
1 gram (1/28 ounce) teaspoon saffron threads
1/4 teaspoon salt

4 chicken breasts (2 pounds)
3 medium tomatoes

basmati rice (optional)
naan bread (optional)

SPECIAL UTENSIL

metal skewers
outdoor grill

PREPARATION

Grate or dice onion. Add onion, lime juice, olive oil, pepper, red pepper powder, saffron, and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix well with whisk to make marinade. Cut chicken breasts into 1 ½” cubes. Add chicken cubes to mixing bowl. Turn chicken cubes until they are completely coated with marinade. Cover with lid or plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or for about 8 hours.

Take long nap or have a nice sleep. Dream about being a pirate, becoming a monarch, or being the first person to set foot on Mars.

Wake up. Thread chicken cubes onto metal skewers. Coat tomatoes with marinade. Thread tomatoes onto its own skewer. Preheat grill to on high. Barbecue chicken for 5-to-10 minutes. Turn chicken skewers over and barbecue for another 5-to-10 minutes. (Don’t overcook as chicken will become dry. Grill times vary wildly between grill. Check constantly). Grill tomatoes for 5 minutes then make a 1/4th turn with its skewer. Repeat 3 more times for a total of 20 minutes or until skin cracks on all sides. (Again, monitor this carefully.)

Serve with basmati rice or naan bread.

TIDBITS

1) During President Johnson’s administration, the war in Vietnam escalated dramatically, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact invaded Czechoslovakia, the Civil Rights Act passed, and riots erupted in many American cities. President Johnson needed time to get away from the daily stress of his office and so added barbecues to the White House roof.

2) Decades later, anti-aircraft missiles would be added to the roof of the White House to protect its barbecues.

3) America has the world’s largest number of barbecues.

4) It also has the world’s most powerful military.

5) It has to. The world wants America’s barbecues.

6) It’s not an entirely stable situation.

7) That’s why in 2003, America embarked on a barbecue-treaty signing spree with nations around the world. The first such treaty, Oil for Barbecue, with Saudi Arabia was instant success and provided the blueprint for future Barbecue Diplomacy.

8) There is a lot of sand in Saudi Arabia. However, there are a quite a lot of dinosaurs fossils in America.

9) No one knows for sure if dinosaurs had barbecues. There are no fossil records to support or deny such a hypothesis.

10) Sauropods certainly never held barbecues. They had no opposable thumbs, essential to holding metal spatulas. Indeed, these dinosaurs possessed no hands at all, opting to involve with four feet instead. Sauropods rarely got invited to block-party barbecues as their extremely size, limited agility, and low-level intelligences meant they often stomped on the grills, ruining the festivities.

11) Oh, and sauropods were vegetarians. They wouldn’t eat the barbecued ribs their hosts prepared for them. Their carnivore hosts often took this culinary reticence for rudeness and killed the sauropods. Which provided more meat for the barbecues. The barbecue brachiosaurus ribs were to die to for. Which they did.

12) Faced with extinction from barbecue loving meat eaters such as the allosaurus, the sauropods evolve into bigger and bigger dinosaurs such as the diplodocus and the seismosaurus, so that they would become to big to fit on the existing Jurassic grills.

13) However, the succeeding Cretaceous period saw the rise of the giganotosaurus and the tyrannosaurus rex. These fierce predators loved sushi, preferring to eat their properly prepared and spice prey raw.

14) Barbecue use dwindled. Then a meteor hit the Earth 64 million years ago, extinguishing the dinosaurs and what little culinary expertise they possessed. But now, finally, barbecues are back. We live in a new, golden age.

– 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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Author Paul R. De Lancey, My Writing Progress – Blog Tour

Posted on May 12, 2014 by pauldelancey

Author Paul R. De Lancey

My Writing Process – Blog Tour

May 12, 2014

My name is Paul R. De Lancey. It has been that way since birth. Today is my day to participate in the continuing series, My Writing Process Blog Tour. My writing friend and running mate for the presidency in 2016, Candace C. Bowen, posted for the tour last week. Please visit her site at http://www.knightseries.com. She’s a great writer and a really nice person.

What am I working on?

I’m promoting my third novel which just came out. It’s called Beneficial Murders and tells the story of a modest spreadsheet analyst who makes the world better by killing annoying people. In the works is my second cookbook, Have Another Bite. (Could you tell that period was italicized?) This cookbook is chock full of tasty recipes from around the world. This book can be read as usual for its delicious recipes or simply for the delightfully funny tidbits and trivia at the end of each section. I also have a fourth novel in the wings called Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms? where Debbie Devil, Satan’s wife and supermarket checker, tries to enslave a local hottie by making him eat evil mushrooms.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I’ve written in multiple genres: foreign adventure, Western, end of the world, and culinary. I have always tried to infuse them with humor. They are designed to be read with a chuckle over and over again. However, if you buy my books just to place them under a table leg and so make the whole table level, I’m okay with that as well.

Why do I write what I do?

I need to make people laugh. I like to take adventures in my mind, ones that are just not possible in real life.

How does my writing process work?

I have a writing process? Woo hoo! Okay, I have general idea of a slighty off-kilter universe. I populate them with cheerfully eccentric characters. I usually have an idea of the ending before I star, but rarely use it as I cheerfully embrace exciting changes in story direction.

Thank you gentle reader for learning about me. Please visit my mostly cooking blog: pauldelancey.com. You can find my Author Page on Facebook and I am on Twitter @PaulDeLancey. If you wish to find out more about my books, please look at my website: www.lordsoffun.com.

The next author on this blog tour is Donna Cavanagh . Here is her bio.

Donna Cavanagh is founder of HumorOutcasts.com (HO) and HumorOutcasts Press/Shorehouse Books.  Cavanagh is a former journalist who made an unscheduled stop into humor more than 20 years ago. Her syndicated columns helped her gain a national audience and her work landed in the pages of First Magazine, USA Today and other national media.  She is a faculty member of the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop and The Philadelphia Writer’s Conference. A USA Books Contest finalist (Life On The Off Ramp), Cavanagh’s latest book, A Canine’s Guide to the Good Life, was penned with her dogs, which as you might imagine was no small feat (or should we say “paws”?).  She is host of BlogTalk’s HumorOutcasts Radio.

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Hawaiian Salad and Mongoose in Bikinis

Posted on May 2, 2014 by pauldelancey

Hawaiian Entree

HAWAIIAN SALAD

INGREDIENTSHawaiianSalad-

6 eggs
1 chicken breast
1 12 ounce can SPAMTM
1/4 head lettuce
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 cup pineapple juice*
½ cup cheddar cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
1 cup pineapple chunks*

* = Or use all the juice and ½ of the pineapple chunks from a 20 ounce can of pineapple chunks.

makes 8 salad bowls

PREPARATION

Boil eggs on high heat for 6 minutes for soft boiled or 12 minutes for hard boiled. While eggs boil, cut chicken breast and SPAM into ½” cubes. Cut or shred lettuce to desired size.

Remove eggs and let them cool. While eggs cool, add chicken, SPAM, brown sugar, and pineapple juice to pan. Sauté for 8 minutes on medium-high heat. Stir frequently. Add lettuce, chicken/SPAM/pineapple juice, cheddar cheese, mayonnaise, and pineapple chunks to mixing bowl. Cut each egg into 4 slices. Top salad with egg slices.

TIDBITS

1) In Hawaii, it is against the law to appear in public wearing only swimming trunks. I don’t know about bikinis. I hope not.

2) You may not own a mongoose without a permit, but billboards are always outlawed. Go figure.

3) You can fined if you don’t own a boat. Do not pay your fine with coins hidden in your ears as having coins in your ear is illegal. I think it’s okay to put dollar bills there.

4) You may not have more than one alcoholic drink in front of you. I know, I know, you needed two stiff drinks after getting fined for having your unpermitted mongoose appear in public wearing only swimming trunks. And your neighbor had his mongoose strut along the beach wearing a bikini and now one cared. Here’s a tip; have your second tiki drink behind you.

5) Hawaii is the only state in America to grow coffee. You may put a coffee bean in your ear.

– 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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