Number Two Son ran and completed the Boston Marathon today.
I am rather proud.
I now return control to my regular blogs.
– 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.
It’s five minutes to midnight. Now they tell me.
– 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.
Peas porridge hot
Peas porridge hot.
Aw, to heck with it.
There’s no plot.
No character development.
I’m taking my poem
And going home.
– 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.
INGREDIENTS
1 green chile
5 green bell peppers
½ red onion
2 garlic cloves
1 cup pepper jack cheese
2 ounces Cotija cheese
1 pound ground turkey
1 7-ounce can diced tomatoes (1 can more later)
4 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon oregano
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
3/4 cup water
4 tablespoons sour cream
2 stalks green onion
1 7-ounce can diced tomatoes
¾ cup water
Serves 5. Takes 55 minutes.
PREPARATION
Remove seeds from green chile. Cut bell peppers in half lengthwise. Remove stem, white innards, and seed from green bell peppers. Dice green chile, red onion, garlic cloves, and green onion. Grate or shred pepper jack cheese and Cotija cheese.
In a large frying pan or skillet, cook the turkey, green chile, red onion, and garlic over medium-high heat until meat is no longer pink. Stir occasionally.
Add 7-ounce can diced tomatoes, chili powder, corn starch, cumin, oregano, cayenne, green onion, and 3/4 cup water. Bring to boil then reduce heat. Simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes. (No, this does not mean to get angry and cook in the nude. Sauces can splatter.)
Place bell-pepper halves in a microwavable dish. (You’ll need a 3-to-4 quart dish if you want to use just one.) Add 3/4 cup water to dish. Cover and microwave on high for 7 to 8 minutes. (Microwaves vary in strength, so in general it’s best to heat for a short time, check the food and, if necessary, microwave some more.)
Pour any water out of the bell peppers. Fill each bell-pepper half to the top with ground-beef mixture. Put an equal amount of sour cream, 7-ounce can diced tomatoes, and cheese on the bell peppers.
Serve to adoring guests.
TIDBITS
1) Bell peppers have recessive genes that prevent them from having capsaicin, the stuff that makes other peppers hot.
2) Red bell peppers are important in Portuguese cuisine.
3) In 1801 my great-great-great-grandfather Napoleon I directed an invasion of Portugal by French and Spanish troops.
4) In 1808, Napoleon I invaded Portugal again. Say what you will about his megalomania and the countless deaths he caused, he did possess an admirable work ethic.
5) Oh, and he invaded Spain as well in 1808, unleashing more bloody, unrestrained guerrilla warfare.
6) Strange to say, most Napoleonic historians fail utterly to mention how six years of conflict in that region affected red-bell-pepper production in Portugal.
7) It seems likely, though, that red-pepper planting and harvesting fell precipitously in previously culinarily happy Portugal.
8) One’s mind recoils at the thought of wary-weary Portuguese reduced to eating beef-and-red pepper sandwiches without red peppers.
9) Bad French emperor, no éclaire.
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.
The struggle is real. The outside world teems with feral people.
.
– 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.
SAUSAGES
“Bite me! Bite me!”
Said the habañero sausage.
“No, I won’t. You’lle see,”
Said the fair, young maiden.
“You will! You will!”
Said the habañero sausage.
“Okay, I’ll eat me fill.”
Said the fair, young maiden.
And she did. She did a lot.
And her breath became fiery hot.
Munching her way through the woods.
To granny’s house with her goods.
“Give me, give me, your basket good,”
Said the big, bad wolf mean all through
But deadly Little Red Riding Hood
Killed him with one flaming breath, not two.
– 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.
INGREDIENTS
1½ pounds steak
1 jalapeno pepper
1 yellow onion
1 green bell pepper
3 stalks green onion
1 ripe red tomato
4 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 16 ounce can red kidney beans
1 8 ounce can tomato sauce
3 teaspoons chili powder
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon basil
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon cilantro
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
½ cup barbecue sauce
½ cup sour cream
½ pound shredded cheddar or Four Mexican cheeses
SPECIAL UTENSILS
Dutch oven
Sufficient gas in your car so you can go to the store if you don’t have all the ingredients. Always be prepared!
PREPARATION
Cut steak into ½-inch cubes. Remove stem and innards from jalapeno pepper. Dice jalapeno, yellow onion, green bell pepper, green onion, tomato, and garlic cloves.
Put olive oil and steak cubes into Dutch oven. Cook for 3 to 5 minutes on medium heat or until steak cubes turn brown. Add jalapeno, yellow onion, bell pepper, green onion, tomato, garlic, kidney beans, tomato sauce, chili powder, Dijon mustard, basil, cayenne, pepper, cilantro, cumin, oregano, barbecue sauce, and sour cream.
Set temperature between off and warm. For best results, simmer with lid on for 2 hours. The chili will, however, still taste great if you cook it on medium heat for 20 to 30 minutes. Sprinkle cheese on top 3 minutes before serving.
Life is good.
TIDBITS
1) People going on long trips in America in the early 1800s sometimes carried chili in the form of dried bricks. It consisted of beef, chili peppers, salt, and suet.
2) From the 1880s to the 1930s Hispanic women sold hot chili to the passers by of San Antonio. People called them “Chili Queens.”
3) One of my favorite baseball players was called Chili Davis because his fellow Jamaican kids once thought his haircut looked like a “chili bowl.”
4) Chill Wills, the actor, starred in many fine Western movies.
5) Chi Chi Rodriguez was a great golfer.
6) “CH” stands for, in French, Switzerland
7) “C” is the symbol for the element Carbon and the basis for all life on Earth.
8) “ ” is what a mime says.
– 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.
Come watch Turtle Pole Vaulting on ESPN8. It’s just the thing for the jaded couch potato.
Notice that contrary to human pole vaulters, turtles grab the vaulting pole with their beak or is it their mouth? They’re not saying.
Thrill as your favorite turtle vaulter speeds like the wind down the runway, then up into the sky and over the cross pole.
Huzzah! Huzzah!
“The jump was made before I even finished my emails.” – Wanda Wunder
– 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.
Oh printer! Oh printer!
Pure Evil
You putrid pile of pig pool.
You use up ink. You jam.
You send us into fits.
All I want from a printer is for it to:
Work.
Work.
Work.
Yet it jams until eternity.
The only time it prints is
To spew out that test page
That uses up my ink cartridge.
I grow poor buying ink
While the printer’s makers
Earn enough to appear
On American Greed(tm).
May producers of computer printers
Be sentenced to sixty years of hard labor
Or be eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.
I’m reasonable; either will do.
– 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.
INGREDIENTS
1 medium white onion
2 large garlic cloves
6 mild Italian sausages
water enough to mostly cover sausages
1 cup olive oil
1½ tablespoons oregano
6 slices sourdough bread
Serves 6.
PREPARATION
It really is a good idea to thoroughly defrost the sausages. If not, you will have a tough time judging when they are cooked through. Frozen sausages cook quickly on the outside while still remaining cold, if not frozen, on the inside. You’ll either burn the outside before the inside is done or spend a lot of time at a low-to-medium temperature to cook it evenly. (And what if your guests are ravenous vampires? You don’t want to keep them waiting.)
Be sure to jab each sausage with a fork before cooking. Hot grease builds up inside the sausage if it doesn’t have an escape route. Jabbing a cooked sausage with a fork can result in a jet of hot grease heading toward you. Owie!
Mince onion and garlic cloves. Put sausages in a saucepan. Pour water on them until they are nearly covered. Pour in olive oil. Add garlic, minced onion, and oregano. Bring water to a boil. Reduce heat to a warm and simmer for 30 minutes.
Toast the sourdough bread while the sausages simmer. Sourdough bread goes great with Italian sausage. Put the sausage in the bread. Serve it like you would a hot dog. Spoon some of the olive oil/water mix along with some of the onion and garlic. Let the oil seep into the bread. Add a little of the liquid at a time to the toasted bread so that it doesn’t soak all the way through.
Wouldn’t buying spicy Italian sausage be easier than this? Yes, of course it would, but good cooks will want to have their blend of spices accenting the sausage rather than someone else’s. Also, pre-spiced sausages can never taste better than those with fresh onion marinated in olive oil.
TIDBITS
1) Sausages and legislation are the two things you should never see being made, only the final product. The Swedes like to mix in potatoes with meat to make their sausages. The Swedish word for sausage is korv.
2) I’ve never seen a sausage explode, but I’d bet it would be spectacular, if not dangerous. A frozen sausage makes a better hand-to-hand weapon than a defrosted one.
– 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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