Posts Tagged With: good food

Eternal Questions

Posted on April 7, 2023 by pauldelancey

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

How much ground could a groundhog grind, if a groundhog could grind ground?

How how much could a ground hog hog, if a groundhog could hog ground?

How much can could a soda can can, if a soda can could can soda?

How much paint could an oil painting paint, if an oil painting could paint oil?

How many clocks could an alarm clock alarm, if an alarm clock could alarm clocks?

How many trees if a peppertree pepper, if a peppertree could pepper trees?

How much toast could a French toast french, if a French toast could french toast?

How many peels could a banana peel peel, if a banana peel could peel bananas?

How many cellos could cellophane feign, if a cellophane could feign cellos?

How many bricks could a brick house house, if a brick house could house bricks?

How many cents could ten cents sense, if ten cents could sense tens?

How many Elmers could Elmers(tM) glue, if Elmers Glue could glue Elmers?

How many arkans could Arkansas saw, if Arkansas could saw arkans?

How many posts could a postscript post, if a postscript could post scripts?

And finally

How many aards could an aardvark vark, if an aadvark could vark ards?

– 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: observations | Tags: aardvarks, alarm clocks, Chef Paul, chuck, Comic Chef, cookbook, Elmers, eternal, French toast, good food, groundhog, oil painting, questions, recipes, woodchucks | 1 Comment

Cows

Bovine warrior

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Praise to the noble cow.
Its flesh gives us beef.
Its hide gives us baseballs.
Its udder gives us milk.

What does the cow get from us?
A little bit of food in a small pen.
Artificial insemination.
Then we kill it with whirling knives.

Bovine silence can’t be good.
It’s thinking up something.
Chomping. Chomping. Plotting revenge.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.

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

Categories: observations, poems | Tags: artifical insemmination, baseball, be afraid, beef, bovine, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, cow, cows, good food, loving poem, milk, recipes, revenge, warrior | Leave a comment

VANILLA PUDDING

INGREDIENTS

2 egg yolks
3 tablespoons cornstarch
⅛ teaspoon salt
½ cup sugar
2⅓ cups whole milk
1½ tablespoons butter, softened
½ tablespoon vanilla extract

SPECIAL UTENSILS

4 dessert dishes or ramekins
plastic wrap

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Beat egg yolks in mixing bowl. Add cornstarch, salt, and sugar to saucepan. Mix with spatula. Add whole milk slowly, while stirring gently with spatula. Cook using medium heat until mixture boils and thickens. Stir constantly to prevent burning. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Add ½ of the cornstarch/sugar/whole milk mixture to egg yolks. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add this mixture to saucepan. Bring to boil using medium heat. Boil for 1 minute. Stir constantly and gently.

Remove from heat. Add butter and vanilla. Stir gently until well blended. Pour pudding into dessert dishes. Cover with plastic wrap. Chill in refrigerator for 1 hour mixture firms into pudding.

TIDBITS

1) Stars are made from vanilla pudding. How do we know this? Stars are white. So is vanilla pudding white. The Sun is hot. That is because it’s yellow and not made from vanilla pudding.

2) If you were somehow able to catapult your vanilla pudding millions of light years away it would be far too small to be seen, even by the Hubble telescope. Indeed, you would need to buy trillions of pounds of: cornstarch, salt, sugar, milk, butter, and vanilla extract to fling a visible vanilla-pudding star into the far reaches of space. But don’t do it. Every van in the world would be needed to deliver your ingredients. The global economy would collapse. Oh my gosh, we’d have nothing left to make cake! For millions of years! What would we do for birthdays? I beg of you, reconsider this giant-star project!

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

Categories: cuisine, observations | Tags: American, catapult, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, dessert, egg yolks, global economy, good food, Hubble, recipes, stars, Sun, vanilla, vanilla pudding | Leave a comment

If You’re Happy and You Know It

Posted on April 4, 2023 by pauldelancey

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

Categories: observations | Tags: apocalyptic, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, good food, happy, hunks, if you're happy, if you're happy and you know it, Lutheran, murders, Paul De Lancey, recipes, thriller, will surely show it | Leave a comment

Loving Poem – Elegy for Eggo

Posted on April 3, 2023 by pauldelancey

Elegy for Eggo

The saddest words in Tierra del Fuego are,
“There are no more Eggos(tm).”
On November eighteenth*, or so
Eggo land was flooded, not from snow.

Not even if you got in your Winnebago(tm)
And drove from here to great Ohio
And even stoppoed in far-off Reno,
You’d find no stores with Eggo.

O my! O my! No Eggo! No Eggo!
Not even for those with lumbago.
So dry out soon, o wondrous dough.
Then shall our buttery smiles grow.

* = I wrote this poem some years ago. I don’t remember the year. Poems are hard.

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

Categories: poems | Tags: buttery, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, dough, Eggo, elegy, good food, loving poem, Ohio, recipes, Reno, thriller, Tierra del Fuego, Winnebago | 2 Comments

Surviving

Posted on March 31, 2023 by pauldelancey

How good are your survival skills?

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

Categories: observations | Tags: anthropologists, bear, beast, caveman, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, forgetting, good food, hungry, Lutheran, murders, predator, recipes, survival skills, thriller | 1 Comment

Food to Die For: Paul’s 365 Meals of Murder, Mayhem, and Mischief – November 14

Posted on March 25, 2023 by pauldelancey

November 14: This American entree honors a man high on bath salts breaking into a home and putting up Christmas decorations.

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Just one trial of bath salts can lead to intense withdrawal symptoms such as: physical weakness, shaking, insomnia, visual and auditory hallucinations, panic attacks, paranoia, extreme aggression, and suicidal behavior. Withdrawal symptoms are so nasty that the user often needs another dose to alleviate all these symptoms. Bath salts when put in a bath, however, relax tight muscles, soothe aches, and just overall calm the bather. Although I am loathe to rush to judgment, it does that the bathtub, not inside the body, really is the best place for bath salts.

So it truly was a pleasant surprise when a crook high on bath salts broke into a home in Vandalia, Oho and put up Christmas decorations. There’s no word whether the family appreciated enough this manifestation of the Yuletide spirit to offset the damage caused by the break in.

The meal you should serve to commerate this day: Brined Turkey Breast

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Celebrate the drive and determination of the bath-salts burglar with this tasty American entire. It uses 1½ cups coarse salt, enough for even the most ardent salt enthusiast.

True, Thanksgiving won’t be another week or so, but if you look to this plucky fellow for inspiration, you’ll have more than enough energy to make another turkey on Thanksgiving day. You might even find yourself wanting to buy a Christmans tree to decorate. Don’t let Ohio Man down.

BRINED TURKEY BREAST

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INGREDIENTS – BRINE

1 gallon ice-cold water
2 bay leaves
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon peppercorns
1 teaspoon allspice
½ teaspoon mustard
1 teaspoon rosemary
1½ cups coarse salt
½ cup light brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
½ teaspoon thyme
8 pounds thawed turkey breast (for love of God, Montressor, the turkey must be thawed)

INGREDIENTS – COOKING TURKEY

¼ cup butter
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
2-to-3 cups chicken broth

SPECIAL UTENSILS

really big pot, 8+ gallons, or turkey bag
spice grinder
large oven-safe pan or casserole dish
wire rack
meat thermometer

Serves 12. Takes 15-to-24 hours

PREPARATION – THAWING TURKEY

A large frozen item like a turkey requires at least a day (24 hours) to defrost in the refrigerator for every 5 pounds of weight.

If you are pressed for time, use this quicker defrosting method. Keep turkey in packaging and add it to a large pot. Cover turkey with ice-cold water. Let turkey sit in cold water for 30 minutes per pound. In this recipe, that would be 4 hours. Pour out water.

But the turkey must be thawed before cooking. Or there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

PREPARATION – BRINE

Crumble bay leaves. Mince garlic cloves. Grind peppercorns. Remove packaging from turkey and rinse in cold water. Add brine ingredients except turkey to pot. Stir until salt and sugar dissolve. Add turkey. Add ice-cold water as needed to cover turkey. Cover pot or close turkey bag and refrigerate for at least 12 hours but not more than 24.

PREPARATION – COOKING TURKEY

Remove turkey from brine and pat dry. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put turkey in large pan. Melt butter. Brush melted butter onto turkey. Sprinkle pepper and salt onto turkey. Place wire rack in pan. Put turkey on rack. Put meat thermometer in thickest part of turkey. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. Reduce heat to 325 degrees. Bake for 2-to-3 hours or until meat thermometer reads 165 degrees. Baste with ½ cup of chicken broth after every 30 minutes of baking at 325 degrees.

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

Categories: food to die for, meals of murder | Tags: bath salts, brined turkey breast, Chef Paul, Christmas, coarse salt, Comic Chef, cookbook, decorations, extreme aggression, good food, hallucinations, insomnia, Ohio, panic attacks, paranoia, recipes, relax, salt, Thanksgiving, tight muscles, turkey, withdrawal symptons, Yuletide | Leave a comment

Laughing Horse Thinks You’re Funny

Posted on March 23, 2023 by pauldelancey

And wonderful. Neigh

Hee! Hee!

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

Categories: Uncategorized, you need to see | Tags: apocalyptic, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, good food, horse, hunks, laughing, leave a comment, Lutheran, murders, neigh, Paul R. De Lancey, recipes | Leave a comment

Food to Die For: Paul’s 365 Meals of Murder, Mayhem, and Mischief – March 18

Posted on March 22, 2023 by pauldelancey

March 18: This entree honors a Romanian Minister of Parlement Bribing Voters with 60 tons of fried chicken
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You love fried chicken. Who else does? Your voters do. But the electorate doesn’t like you. Not much at all. How can you win the voters over to your side? Sure, you could promise them all sorts of things. But you’re a politician. The people don’t believe politicians’ promises. And they especially don’t believe you.

That leaves bribery as your only course of action. What sort of bribery? You can’t give all those people diamonds, too expensive. Cash would work. However, it’s too expensive. Bribing them with $10 of cold, hard cash will leave them cold. How about greasing their palms with $100 in paper currency. Yes, that would work. That would make the voters adore you. That would make them stampede the polling sites at six a.m. to check your box on the ballot. But tossing large bills at the masses simply is beyond your budget.

What to do? Bribe the voters with fried chicken. As mentioned above your constituents crave fried chicken. And a meal of chicken is so freaking affordable for the would-be vote buyer. Treat each and every voter to a bucket or meal of fried chicken and you’ll be elected in a landslide.

Our politician in Romania, Mr. Popescu, took this advice to heart. Florin “Chicken Baron” Popescu bribed voters with 60 tons–60 tons!–of fried chicken. It worked. The people voted him in as the leader of their county council. He used this position and name recogniton to secure election as a member of parliament in 2012. Alas, karma is relentless and law enforcement arrested him for bribery. Life can be hard.

The meal you should serve to commerate this day: Pan Fried Chicken Breasts

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Celebrate the drive and determination of politico Popescu with this tasty American favorite. You might even find yourself fantasizing yourself winning a seat in the U.S. Senate. Just don’t get caught. Meanwhile, enjoy.

Pan Fried Chicken Breasts

INGREDIENTS

4 chicken breasts, boneless & skinless
½ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
½ cup flour
1 teaspoon garlic powder
¾ teaspoon onion powder
1¼ teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon parsley (1 teaspoon more later)
3 tablespoons vegetable oil (ip to 2 tablespoons more, if necessary)
up to 2 tablespoons, if necessary
1 lemon
1 teaspoon parsley

SPECIAL UTENSIL

kitchen mallet

Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.

PREPARATION

Remove chicken breasts from refrigerator and pat dry with paper towels. Cover with plastic wrap. Pound chicken breasts lightly with kitchen mallet until they are ½” thick or thinner. Rub chicken with pepper and salt.

Add flour, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and parsley to small mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Dredge chicken breast through mixture in bowl. Shake off any excess. (Excess flour falls off in the oil, adding a burnt taste and look..) Repeat for remaining chicken.

Add 3 tablespoons vegetable oil to large pan. Heat oil using medium-high heat until a little bit of flour in the oil starts to dance. Add 2 chicken breasts to pan. Cover and fry chicken breasts for 3 minutes or until bottom of chicken breasts turn golden brown. DO NOT move them. (Only lift a corner of a chicken breast to see if the bottom is golden brown. Use spatula to flip chicken breasts. Cover and fry for another 2½ minutes or when new bottom turns golden brown as well. Remove breasts to plate and cover to keep warm. Add up to 2 more tablespoons oil, if necessary. Repeat for 2nd batch of chicken breasts.

Slice lemon into 4 pieces. Serve each chicken breasts with a lemon slice Garnish each chicken breast with ¼ teaspoon parsley..

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

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: bribery, Chef Paul, chicken, Chicken Baron, chicken breasts, Comic Chef, cookbook, good food, mayhem, meals of murder, member of Parliament, mischief, pan fried, parliament, Popescu, recipes, Romania, Romanian, voters | Leave a comment

Pizza Crust 2

Posted on March 21, 2023 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

PIZZA CRUST

INGREDIENTS

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup water
2½ tablespoons vegetable oil
¾ teaspoon sugar
¾ teaspoon salt
2½ teaspoons active dry yeast
no-stick cooking spray

UTENSILS

bread maker
16-inch pizza pan

PREPARATION

Measure out the flour and set aside. Pour the water into the bread maker. If you measure the water before the flour, the flour will stick to the sides of the measuring cup. Not the end of the world, of course, but a minor disruption in The Force, nevertheless.

Add flour, water, oil, sugar, salt, and yeast to the bread maker. Do not put the yeast directly on top of the salt. Salt is bad for yeast and yeast makes the dough rise. (“Ask not what your yeast can do for you. Ask what you can do for your yeast.”)

Set the timer or the menu on the bread maker to “Dough.” Wait the required time, probably a bit more than an hour. In the meantime preheat the oven to 400 degrees and liberally spray the pizza pan with no-stick spray. This will prevent the crust from forming a glue-like bond with the pan. Use this time to chop up any ingredients you’d like to add as toppings.

Take the dough out of the bread maker and roll it out until the dough covers the pizza pan. If you do not possess a rolling pin, any food can will do as long as it is at least 6 inches tall. It is best to spray the can or coat it with a thin layer of flour before spreading the dough.

After rolling, let the dough sit and rise for 30-to-60 minutes.

Add toppings as desired to the top of the dough. Place in the oven. Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. Ovens vary wildly in cooking times, so be sure to check after about 15 minutes and every few minutes after that. The cheese on top, a most likely ingredient for pizza, will go from golden brown to burnt in a few minutes.

TIDBITS

1) Egyptians used yeast more than 5,000 years ago.

2) Yeast is a tiny microorganism. My apologies to anyone named Yeast.

3) There are three types of yeast: baker’s, brewer’s, and nutritional.

4) The bread slicer was invented in 1912.

5) It’s getting quite difficult to buy bread that doesn’t have the evil high fructose corn syrup as an ingredient.

6) During General Grant’s siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1863, the city’s supplies got so low that bread was made out of peas. It got moldy quickly and was universally considered to be gross.

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

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: brewer's yeast, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, Egyptians, General Grant, good food, Italian, Lutheran, pizza, pizza crust, recipes, thriller, Vicksburg, yeast | Leave a comment

Posts Tagged With: good food

Eternal Questions

Loving Poem About Cows

Cows

Vanilla Pudding 2

American Dessert

VANILLA PUDDING

If You’re Happy and You Know It