Posts Tagged With: Earth

Slow Cooker Refried Beans

Mexican Entree

SLOW COOKER REFRIED BEANS

INGREDIENTSRefriedBeans-

2 cups or 14 ounces dry pinto beans
1 onion
1 jalapeno or serrano pepper
3 garlic cloves
5½ cups water
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon crema Mexicana or sour cream

SPECIAL UTENSILS

slow cooker or crock pot
colander
potato masher

Makes 2½ cups. Takes 8 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Rinse beans. Cut onion into four pieces. Seed and dice jalapeno pepper. Mince garlic. Add beans, onion fourths, jalapeno, water, cumin, pepper, and salt to slow cooker. Stir once. Cook on high overnight or for 8 hours.

Remove onion fourths. Drain using colander in bowl. (Save drained water, in case your beans are too dry or use a bean broth.) Mash beans with potato masher. Add crema Mexicana. Stir with spoon. There you go. Serve hot.

TIDBITS

1) This dish takes 8-and-a-half hours. Think of all the lunar eclipses you could see in that time.

2) Depending where you are and if you want to see the whole thing or just the totality phase, you’re thinking anywhere from 2 to 120 eclipses.

3) Of course, the Moon goes its merry way after giving us an eclipse of itself. Why? It just does. So if you want to see sequential total lunar eclipses, you’ll need to take the Moon out of its orbit.

4) Repeatedly. Won’t this wreak havoc upon the Earth? Yes, it will. At the very least, displacing the moon again and again, will cause thousands of mile high tsunamis. Coastal cities will be obliterated. Humongous, terrifying earthquakes will finish off all remaining people, which makes this entree the ideal end-of-the-Earth meal.

– 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 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cool Mocha Coffee

American Appetizer

COOL MOCHA COFFEE

INGREDIENTSCoolMocha-

3 cups hot, brewed coffee
⅔ cup sugar
¾ cup semisweet chocolate chips, milk chocolate if you prefer it sweeter
3½ cups milk

SPECIAL UTENSILS

glass jars with lids if you wish to save the coffee. This coffee will keep about as long as milk does.

Makes 7 cups. Takes 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add coffee and sugar to large mixing bowl. Stir with fork until sugar dissolves. Add chocolate chips. Stir with whisk until chocolate melts completely and blends completely with coffee. Add milk. Stir with whisk until blended. The mocha is ready to drink. Keep remaining mocha is sealed glass jars in refrigerator.

TIDBITS

1) I would have written the tidbits for this recipe earlier but for my worries about plate tectonics.

2) I mean what if the Earth’s plates shifted to such an extent that my computer ended up fifty miles from my bed. That would be quite a walk in my pajamas to finish a recipe.

3) And what if the resultant earthquake from some monumental shift of the Earth’s surface created a deep crevice between me and my computer? What if there were pumas in the crevice?

4) But with any luck the earthquake that created the puma-filled crevice in my office would destroy the pumas with debris from the ceiling.

5) Of course, this is not an entirely realistic fear. My fair town of Poway is in the middle of a giant surface plate. My bedroom, my office, and indeed the rest of the house would shift the same amount and in the same direction as the rest of the region. It would indeed be like catching a wave and sitting on top of the world, except that the speed of plate surfing is maybe an inch a year. Geo tubular, man.

– 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 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Steak au Poivre Vert

French Entree

STEAK AU POIVRE VERT

INGREDIENTSSteakAuPoivre-

¾ cup whipping cream
¼ cup green peppercorns
2 shallots
1½ pounds tender boneless beef steaks cut 1″ thick
1½ tablespoons butter
1½ tablespoons olive oil
7 tablespoons cognac or brandy
½ cup beef broth
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons tarragon

SPECIAL UTENSIL

x-ray vision (helpful, but not required)
Sonic obliterator

Makes 4 steaks. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add whipping cream to pot. Cook using medium heat for 12 minutes or until cream thickens and is reduced by half. Stir frequently. Place cream in bowl and let sit in refrigerator.

Crack peppercorns by crushing them against a cutting board with a kitchen mallet or the side of a heavy knife Mince shallots. Add steaks, butter, and olive oil to large skillet. Sauté using medium heat for about 6 minutes on each side for medium rare or until steaks reach desired doneness.

Desired doneness is quite personal and just as open to heated debate just like politics. How do you decide it’s done? Well, x-ray vision is helpful. So is practice. Or you can just cut off a tiny piece and look. You are the master of your domain.

Okay. Add cognac to skillet. Sauté each side at medium-high heat for 1 minute. Place meat on serving plate. Cover with foil. Leave drippings in skillet.

Add shallot to skillet. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until shallot softens. Add cracked peppercorns, chilled whipping cream, beef broth, salt, and tarragon. Bring to boil using high heat, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to medium for 5 minutes or until sauce is reduced by half. Place steaks on plates. Ladle sauce equally over steaks. Serve hot to adoring guests. Use sonic obliterator on guests who don’t appreciate the cost and the effort. You don’t need that kind of negativity.

TIDBITS

1) Ruva Boldin, 1897 – 1962, was a famous doughnut maker in the Soviet Union. In fact, she made the best doughnut anywhere in the world. It was impossible for any world leader to stay mad at Russia when they bit into one of Ruva’s creations.

2) Stalin, the USSR’s dictator, knew this. This

3) And then what? I started to write tidbit 2) a few days ago. What interrupted me?

4) I’d like to think it was a comet. That would be a good excuse for not working, don’t you think?

5) Me: Sorry boss, I can’t go to work today, there’s a comet passing by my garage door.

Boss: Like I haven’t heard that one before.

6) Yep, it’s better to have believable excuses when calling in sick such as:

Me: Sorry boss, I can’t make it to work today. I know we have a critical meeting with our most important client, but all I have are orphaned socks. I know that their CEO is extremely fashion conscious and if I showed up with mismatched socks, we’d lose that account forever. Can we reschedule the meeting for tomorrow? I need today to buy more socks.

Boss: I know! Just yesterday. I lost half the socks I put in the dryer. I suspect the dryer is merely a portal into a sock-hungry parallel universe. Of course, we’ll reschedule. I need to buy socks myself, but was too embarrassed to say so. I would have shown up with different socks at the meeting, lost the account, and bankrupted the company. Your courage in speaking up has saved the day. I’m giving you a promotion and a raise.

7) Maybe the aliens who ride comets have tractor beams that pull in our socks. With each successive pass by the Earth, they take more and more of our socks.

8) Why do the comet-riding aliens only take one sock from each pair? Because they’re juvenile delinquents, going on a joy ride.

9) But there is a serious consequence to their behavior. As these comets take on more and more socks, the mass of the comet grows and grows. The comet’s gravitational field becomes ever stronger, strong enough to change the orbits of neighboring celestial bodies.

10) Just recently, someone predicted the discovery of huge new planet in our Solar System, because of orbit irregularities in our outer planets. However, it seems more likely that the huge gravitational pull on these planets is coming from the sock-laden Halley’s Comet. This comet is so heavy with socks that when it passes by the Earth in 2062, it’s immense gravitational field will pick us up and hurl us into the Sun.

11) Clearly, this would be bad. Get to your dryer as soon as the buzzer let’s you know the loads is dry. Space aliens will only beam up socks when they’re nice and toasty warm. But move fast, because the aliens are speedy. Save your socks. Save the world.

– 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

Not to Do List – Today’s the End of the World

CocoaPebble

My quite helpful not-to-do lists are generally meant to describe normal days, like when the Earth be around. But dedicated people keep telling us that our World is going to end and they can’t always be wrong. In fact, a large number of folks, over six, aver that our planet will be annihilated this very day. This kind of news gives what were not going to do a new urgency. In honor of the last day of our life, here are things I really, really, really won’t be doing today:

1) I will not clean the hardened egg off the frying pan. This really is a tough job. I normally put it off for hours. But now, I can avoid forever. Woo hoo!

2) I will not change my clothes. It’s the apocalypse and I’m greeting it in my comfy jammies.

3) I will not worry about all those End-of-the Earth scenarios. They’ve been narrowed down to one, thank goodness.

4) I will not clean out the garage. This alone makes our mass destruction worthwhile.

5) I will not worry where all those orphan socks from the clothes dryer went to. They’ve gone to a better place.

6) I will not spend another day in a world with Windows 8.

7) I will not remove that big weed that’s miraculously–my gosh, I spell that word correctly on the first try–growing in a crack in the sidewalk in front of my house. We will spend our last day in a spirit of live and let live.

8) I will not eat lutefisk, not even if doing so would prevent that giant Cocoa Pebble from smashing into the Earth. Don’t judge me.  Not unless you’ve already eaten lutefisk.

9) I will not hold to my diet today. I’m having a 3 by 3 three-animal style burger, French fries-animal style, and a chocolate milkshake at In-n-Out today.

10) I will not read any software terms-of-agreement.

11) I will not go to Schnecteday, New York.

12) I will not look up the correct spelling of Schnecteday.

13) I will not move the laundry along.

14) I will not change out of my comfortable jammies.

Write and let me know what you didn’t do today.

– Paul R. De Lancey, mystic seer

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 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

How I Will Save The World From Bigass Comets And War

Trampoline

If you’re like me, the thought of three-mile-wide comet striking the Earth terrifies you. I mean the last time we got hit by one, woowee, things were bad! We’re talking mass extinction with exclamation points everywhere!!!! And if you’re thinking I’m making all this up, go ask a dinosaur how things went down. Couldn’t find a dinosaur, could you? See? I was right.

Oh sure, there are some good things that would come with the obliteration of humanity. Some that occur to me: are eating English toffee ice cream and not caring a bit about the calories, no waiting in line at the DMV, no more filing of estimated taxes, never ever hearing again the theme song to Barney the Dinosaur, no more election ads, AND no more spring cleaning.

But no matter how much you try to put a happy face on this, mass extinctions are a bummer. You’ll miss things like: hot-and-heavy sex, breathing, shredded beef tacos in a crispy shell, root beer, and crossword puzzles*

So overall, I think it’s best if we deal with the incoming comets that everyone talks about. Here is my plan. It is devastating in its utter simplicity.

Have the comets bounce back into space off a three-mile wide trampoline.  Tada! The world is saved.

Of course, we’ll need helicopters to fly the trampoline to wherever it will be needed, but that should be easy to arrange. And in the meantime, it’ll  be a fantastic release for millions of energetic kids the world over who love to bounce, bounce, bounce. Face it, most people start wars because they’ve spent too much time with shrieking, whining, bored kids and just plain flipped out.

So, there you go, I’m saving the world at least two times. You’re welcome. I expect to Nobel Prize any moment now.

* = If you can find someone who lets you do crossword puzzles during hot and heavy sex, propose marriage immediately.

– Paul R. De Lancey, Ph.D. and future Nobel Prize winner

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 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Proof That Extraterrestrials Walk Among Us

SpaceAlien

For a number of days now, WordPress has been showing more visits to my blog than the sum of all visits from all countries and regions on our planet. If a visitor to my blog is not from Earth then he/she/it must be a SPACE ALIEN!

And the space aliens want to read my blog. My blog! MY GOSH! MY GOSH! The pressure! I’m hyperventilating! I’m ending all my sentences with exclamation points! Okay, calm down, Paul. You can do this.

Resolved, from now on, all my posts will be of the highest quality. They will be extremely interesting. They will so enthrall extraterrestrials that they will never entertain any thoughts of annihilating us. Indeed, I hope to make them so happy, to tickle their funny bone, wherever that may be, so much that they will reveal to us the ultimate secret of the universe; where do our socks go when then disappear from our clothes dryer?

I sense a Nobel Peace Prize in my future.

– 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 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Salami and Eggs

American Entree

SALAMI AND EGGS

INGREDIENTSSalamiAndEggs-

3 ⅓” thick slices Hebrew NationalTM salami
2 eggs
¼ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon deli mustard (optional)

Makes 1 plate. Takes 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Make ¼”-long notches around the edges of each salami slice. (This help keeps the salami flat during cooking.) Add eggs and salt to mixing bowl. Blend well with whisk. Add salami slices and oil to pan. Sauté salami slices on medium for 1 minute, flipping once, or until both sides are only slightly browned.

Add blended eggs to pan. Gently lift the salami slices so that the blended eggs can flow underneath them. Cook on medium heat for 1½ minutes or until eggs are golden brown on the bottom. (You might need to lift up the eggs and salami with a spatula to take a look.) Flip eggs and salami over with a large spatula and cook for another 1½ minutes or until eggs are again golden brown on the bottom. Spread deli mustard on top of eggs and salami, if desired.

TIDBITS

1) This dish, salami and eggs, is round and mostly flat. UFOs are round and mostly flat.

2) The salami slices in this entree are clustered in the middle. The UFO’s aliens cluster in the life-support dome, located in the middle.

3) People do not love aliens. They fear them. This is why movies such as War of the Worlds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Mars Need Women get made.

4) People love eggs. People love salami. This is why aliens from outer space make their spaceships look so much like salami and eggs. They want to be loved. The space creatures are also bashful and insecure. Which is why they don’t barge in with their massive, powerful death rays and obliterate us.

5) Why would they even consider invading Earth? Ironically, there are no eggs and salami on the aliens’ planets. We should take advantage of the aliens shyness and make the first gesture toward lasting galactic peace by offering them some of our eggs and salami. In return, they would tell us how to get rid of all our pollution and how to cook eggs without having them stick to our pans. How do the aliens know how to cook eggs if they don’t have them? They just do.

– 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 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iraqi Potato Beef Casserole (kibbe batata)

Iraqi Entree

POTATO BEEF CASSEROLE
(kibbe batata)

INGREDIENTSKibbeBatata-

6 medium brown potatoes
½ teaspoon turmeric

2 garlic cloves
1 onion
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 pound ground beef or lamb
3 tablespoons parsley
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt

no-stick spray
2½ tablespoons butter
½ tablespoon cinnamon

SPECIAL UTENSIL

9″ x 13″ casserole dish
Serves 117 square inches

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Peel potatoes. Cut each potato into eight pieces. Put potato pieces into large pot. Add enough water to cover potato bits. Bring water to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes or until potato is tender. Drain potatoes. Mash potatoes with potato masher. Add turmeric to pot. Use whisk to blend mashed potatoes and turmeric together.

While potato is cooking, mince garlic cloves and onion. Put garlic, onion, and vegetable oil in pan. Sauté at medium-high for 5 minutes. Stir frequently. Add ground beef, parsley, pepper, and salt. Cook on medium heat for 5 minutes or until beef is no longer pink.

Spray casserole dish with no stick spray. Cut butter into tiny cubes. Add ½ of mashed potatoes to casserole dish. Smooth mashed potatoes with spoon or spatula. Add ground-beef mix. Smooth ground beef. Add remaining ½ of mashed potatoes to casserole dish. Smooth mashed potatoes. Sprinkle tiny butter cubes and cinnamon over top layer of mashed potatoes.

Bake casserole at 350 degrees for 30-to-40 minutes or until top of casserole turns golden brown. Cut casseroles into squares, diamonds, or rectangles and serve to lovers of good food and friends of geometric shapes everywhere.

TIDBITS

1) This entree is Iraqi.

2) Iraqi food is great, however Iraqi is poor word for making anagrams.

3) You can use the word Iraqi to form the anagram “Qi air.”

4) Qi is a word that is only used in ScrabbleTM games. I don’t know what it means. I don’t play Scrabble anymore.

5) There is a persistent suspicion among culinary wordsmiths that wars and all types of fighting in that country occur to justify the use of the words Iraq, Iraqi, and Iraqis in Scrabble.

6) But what if Iraq were to split into separate countries?

7) Iraq and Iraqi would be taken out of the Scrabble dictionary.

8) And what if you had the tiles IRAQISW in your possession, and you could use the “q” for a triple-letter score and the entire word could be doubled?

9) And what if you were playing the leaders of the superpowers for world domination, the game was about to end because one of the leaders wanted to eat a lutefisk sandwich at the table, and the points from I1R1A1Q10I1S1 are enough to give you the game?

10) Well, you’d lose because Iraq wouldn’t exist anymore in Scrabble. You’d have to go back to your spouse in your tiny apartment who’d ask you where you’d been.

11) You’d say, “Honey, I’ve been playing the nations’ leader Scrabble for world domination.”

12) You’d be told, “Like I haven’t heard that one before. Did you get the milk like I asked you?”

13) A dark mood would envelop you. You’d head to KwikiMart thinking, “If I were the world’s dictator, I could send someone else out to get milk.”

14) On the way home, you’d realize that if Iraq were to split into three nations, the country of Kurdistan would come into existence.

15) What if you had the tiles K5U1R1D2I1S1T1S1 and you could place them in front of AN already on the board for triple K and triple word?

16) Why you’d win the game for sure! You’d be the Earth’s El Supremo. You’d have a milk fetcher on your permanent staff. Chocolate malteds anytime you want! World domination is great!

17) Did you keep the phone numbers of the world’s leaders? Great. Be sure to get those honey-mustard potato chips that Madame President likes.

– 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, food, humor, international, recipes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Question For Charles Darwin

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

We cry whenever we dice onions in a Cuisinart food processor. What evolutionary pressure caused that? How many people or microbes, roamed prehistoric Earth armed with Cuisinart food processors?

The ball’s in your court, Sir Charles. Of course, I really don’t expect a reply with you being dead and all.

 

– 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: food, history, humor, Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Malaysian Curry Noodles

Malaysian Soup

CURRY NOODLES

(laska)

INGREDIENTS – PASTECurrryNoodles-

1 large shrimp (1 pound more later in SOUP)
5 garlic cloves
4 macadamian nuts
6 fresh red chiles (remove seeds to make less spicy)
5 shallots
2 teaspoons coriander
½ teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon curry powder
2 lemongrass stalks
2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons sugar

INGREDIENTS – SOUP

1 pound shrimp
6 ounces boneless chicken
8 ounces hard tofu
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (¼ cup more later)
¼ cup vegetable oil
6 ounces yellow egg noodles
8 ounces rice sticks or vermicelli
4 cups chicken stock
1 15 ounce can coconut milk
1 tablespoon lime juice

INGREDIENTS – TOPPINGS

3 ounces bean sprouts
2 hard-boiled eggs
1 lime

SPECIAL UTENSILS

1 pan
3 pots

makes 6 bowls

PREPARATION – PASTE

Peel and devein1 large shrimp. Let dry. Add 1 large shrimp, garlic cloves, macadamian nuts, red chiles, shallots, coriander, cumin, curry powder, lemongrass, salt, and sugar to food processor. Grind ingredients until paste is smooth.

PREPARATION – SOUP

Peel and devein 1 pound shrimp. Cut chicken and tofu into ½” cubes. Put tofu and 1 tablespoon vegetable oil in pan. Sauté tofu at medium-high heat until tofu turns golden brown.

Add ¼ cup vegetable oil to pot. Warm oil using medium heat. Add paste. Cook for 3 minutes or until paste darkens and become fragrant. Add chicken stock, coconut milk, and lime juice to pot. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir frequently. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add chicken, shrimp and tofu cubes. Continue simmering on low heat for another 10 minutes. Stir occasionally.

While chicken stock/coconut milk mix simmers, cook egg noodles and rice stick according to instructions on packages. (Will you need extra pots? Will you be cleaning pots after this meal? Yes, you will!) Drain noodles after they are done.

Place an equal amount of noodles into serving bowls. Add an equal amount of chicken stock/coconut oil/shrimp/tofu mix into bowls. Peel hard-boiled eggs and cut them into halves. Cut lime into 6 slices. Top bowls with hard-boiled egg halves, lime slices, and bean sprouts.

TIDBITS

1) Curry noodles is an anagram for cloudy snorer, uncool dryers, and nosy cod ruler.

2) Dryers are uncool because they steal our socks.

3) Dryers are actually alive. They are all aliens from the planet Rohoho.

4) Rohohans love socks, any planet’s socks.

5) But they love socks from Earth most of all.

6) That’s why the Rohohans come in the middle of the night, zap your clothes dryer into another dimension, and take its place. So, that clothes dryer in your home is actually an alien.

8) But it’s no big deal. Rohohans really don’t mind drying your clothes. In fact, they are rather good at it. They just eat one of your socks occasionally.

9) Why do they eat only one sock from a pair? No one knows for sure. The best guess is that they crave variety, just like we hate to eat 1,722 hot dogs in a row.

10) If you fill your socks with lutefisk, the Rohohans won’t touch them.

11) Of course, you won’t want to touch any of your lutefisk-scented clothes either. Life is hard.

– 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: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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