On this day in 1529, a one-mile thick ice-cap covered Greenland.
Brr
– 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.
Narsaq
– 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.
– 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 MaggiTM chicken or vegetable bouillon cube*
2 tablespoons peanut oil or other oil
1 teaspoon vinegar
¼ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon salt
2 chicken breasts with bone and skin
2 chicken thighs with bone and skin
2 bay leaves
2 potatoes
2 red or green chile peppers
2 carrots
4 garlic cloves
2 medium onions
2 tablespoons butter
* = It’s way more authentic with a Maggi cube. Maggi rules western Africa.
SPECIAL UTENSILS
baking sheet.
kitchen thermometer
Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 35 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add Maggi cube to large mixing bowl. Crush Maggi cube. Add peanut oil, vinegar, pepper, and salt. Mix thoroughly with whisk or fork. Add chicken pieces. Turn chicken pieces until they are completely coated. Add bay leaves. Let marinate for 40 minutes.
While chicken pieces marinate, preheat oven to 390 degrees. Peel potatoes. Add potatoes and enough water to cover to them to pot. Boil potatoes on high heat for 20 minutes or until tender. Place chicken pieces on grill in oven. Place baking sheet under chicken to catch drippings. Cook at 390 degrees for 55 minutes or until no longer pink inside or the chicken’s temperature reaches 165 degrees. Turn chicken pieces over once.
While chicken pieces cook, seed chile peppers Mince carrots, chile peppers, garlic cloves and onions. Add butter, carrot, chile pepper, garlic, and onion to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until garlic and onion soften. Stir frequently. Add a chicken piece to each plate. Top chicken with sautéed veggies. Surround chicken with potato slices.
TIDBITS
1) There are many reasons why this dish is called Bicycle Chicken.
2) The chickens running about the streets in Burkina Faso look like they’re riding a bicycle.
3) The chicken vendors in Ouagadougu, the capital city, bicycle around the town with chickens hanging upside down from their bike’s handle bars*.
* = Do not confuse handle bars with Handle bars, which the great musical composer used to organize his written music in small sections.
4) People know chickens derive enjoyment from looking a bicycles. So whenever a bicyclist pedals past a hen, people will say, “Look, a bicycle, chicken.”
5) Would-be chicken vendors who are afraid to ride a bicycle are known as “bicycle chicken.”
6) The 1st grade textbook used in Ouagadougu’s grammar school has a picture of a bicycle on page one and a bicycle on the next page. The words are shown below the corresponding picture. So, the first words the country’s young learners learn to spell are bicycle and chicken. Walk by any 1st grade classroom first thing in the morning and you will hear the words “bicycle, chicken” spoken over and over.
7) Some very small dictionaries have the words bicycle and chicken next to each other. Don’t buy these books. They’re not of much use.
8) “Bicycle chicken” is spy code for “my cover has been compromised.” Oh dear, I compromised that code now, haven’t I?”
9) However, culinary etymologists* tend to believe that the phrase “bicycle chicken” derives from the world-renowned Le Tour du Poulet Burkinabé (LTDPB).
10) The muscular thighs of Burkina Faso’s chickens make them naturals for bicycle races.
11) Indeed, chickens are quite athletic when properly motivated. The longest recorded flight by a chicken is 301 feet. The chicken’s motivation remains unknown. At least, no one is talking.
12) Anyway, every May sees the LTDPB sees the chickens pedal like mad from Banforo toward Ougadougu.
13) Every August sees the chickens cross the finish.
14) The great popularity of the LTDPB has naturally spawned imitations such as the ones in Greenland*, Oregon, and Scotland.
15) * I’m sad to say, that this year’s Chicken Race Across Greenland (CRAG)has been cancelled due to inclement conditions. It’s best, anyway, to wait for and watch LTDPB on ESPN9TM.
– 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.
How many times has this happened to you? You’ve been scrupulously observing quarantine regulations. But you’re finding abiding them harder and harder to take. You find yourself developing a serious case of cabin fever. Finally, you can stand it no longer, so you rush outside. But before you know it, you’ve somehow organized a massive military uprising. Your forces, armed men and women who were drawn to you by your animal magnetism, have conquered a large part of a large country.
You find yourself filled with rebellion remorse. You try to give back your conquered lands, but the brave lads and lasses who fought for you won’t have any of that. “Go back to school,” you say to them. They say, “We missed our deadlines for turning in our essays. No teacher is going to accept the excuse ‘I couldn’t get term paper done as I was participating in a rebellion. ‘Begone,” the teacher will say, ‘like I haven’t heard that one.’ So, we will all get Fs. Our GPAs will plummet. We’ll lose our scholarships. We’ll have to drop out of university. But we won’t be able to get a job anywhere because taking part in bloody insurrection is such a resume stain.”
So, there you have it. You’re stuck with your new country. But won’t the old country that still exists be angry at you? You betcha! Won’t they be chomping at the bit to reconquer their lost lands? Absolutely. Can they do it? No, you inadvertently overpowered their armed forces earlier. Remember? What happens if they ally with some powerful nation and attack you?
That is the nightmare scenario. The only way to stop this international coalition from forming against you is to fool the world into thinking your country isn’t a new, that it’s really part of an old and peaceful nation. How do we do this?
Simple, pick a flag that looks like the one from another country. How do I do that?
May I suggest limiting the colors of your new flag to red and white? There are simply scads of countries that use only red and white in their banners. Look at the Polish flag.
Poland is at peace with everyone. Adopt this flag and the foreign armies will think you’re at peace with everyone. If you don’t want to use the Polish flag, possibly for copyright reasons, you flip it on its side, like this. And add a little cross and you get . . . Malta.
Malta is a tiny and peaceful land. But choices for your flag still abound. Remove the cross and rotate the flag one more time and you get . . . Monaco’s and Indonesia’s flags.
Monaco is far too tiny to invade anyone and Indonesia hasn’t tried anything like that decades. And now, if you still want a flag that’s guaranteed to confuse your fledgling nation’s with those of more-established countries but is a little bit more stylish, may I suggest that your peruse the following red-and-white flags.
You don’t even have to draw your flagian, not really a word, from a real country’s banner. Look at the Swiss and Red Cross flags.
They’re almost the same flag! One of the two entities just switched colors with the other. Is this okay? And if you stare at the Swiss flag long enough will you see the Red Cross flag and vice versa? Something to think about.
Other countries have red-and-white flags, but didn’t make the cut for displaying their flags. Anyway, honorable mention goes to: Denmark, Georgia, and Japan.
So now you have many, many red-and-white flags to choose from. You new nation needn’t fear invasion, secure in the knowledge that the rest of the world will confuse your country with another. And that’s a good feeling.
– 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.
The population of Uumannaq is 1,407 when you are not there and 1,408 when you are.
The most exhilarating tour is the Living in Nature as An Inuit. You’ll be hunting and fishing just an Inuit would. It’s a seven-day adventure where you get from place by dogsled. It also costs $4,050, but it really is a once in a lifetime experience. Heads up, it’s not wheel chair accessible.
But fear not. There’s a four-wheel drive excursion. and can take your pick of tours that cruise the harbor and the neighboring fjords.
For those who need to flee the crowd of the town, for those who wish to catch their own meal, but want to stay close to home, I certainly recommend an ice-fishing tour. Sure, you could do it yourself, but do you really want to lug your all your gear and your ice-fishing hut from Miami? Then you’d have to get all that out onto the ice. Yes, take the tour. You’ll be glad you did. And boy, oh boy, won’t your fresh fish taste good?
Dog sledding, ice fishing, cruises, super fresh fish, what more do you want? And Northern lights? Uummannaq has that too, usually, at least sometimes.
As always, “Good eating. Good traveling.”
– 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.
Find the best beer at Godthaab Bryghus. One person couldn’t find the bar, perhaps the beer drinking started before leaving the hotel.
Want free wifi? Then make you way to Cafe Wok, the only eatery that has it.
“I want pizza,” you say. “But I want Filipino food,” says your date. Wait! You’re both right at Mary’s Kitchen.
IGGU serves the best Greenlandic pizza.
Brugseni Nuuk is a specialty food market and has a little bit of everything.
Fjord lovers will certainly want to tour the magnificent and oh so nearby fjords.
Exercise lovers really must take the town’s two-hour walking tour. The single person will find its cost a tad pricey at $632. However, this price remains the same for groups up to fifteen people. So why not bring along fourteen of you closest friend?. Indeed some of Nuuk’s other activities seem tailored for large groups. Just a heads up here.
Be sure to take in the town’s fabulous Northern Lights. They’re not 100% reliable though. However, seeing them at Nuuk is probably your best bet. You get fewer and fewer displays as you head farther and farther south. They’ll be no Northern Lights by the time you get to San Diego.
Take a trip to one of the oldest permanent settlements in Greenland. You’ll meet a family living there. I don’t know their names.
And as always, “Have fun traveling.”
– 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.
Greenlandic Appetizer
INGREDIENTS – CAKE
7 tablespoons butter
1 cup lukewarm milk
2¼ teaspoons (1 packet) yeast
⅔ cup raisins
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup sugar
4 cups flour
no-stick spray
2 tablespoons cold coffee
1½ tablespoons sugar, pearl or confectioner’s
SPECIAL UTENSILS
bread maker (optional)
bread pan
Serves 8. Takes 2 hours.
PREPARATION – CAKE
Add butter to pan. Melt butter using medium heat. Add milk. Stir gently until well blended. Add in yeast, stirring gently as you do so. Mix gently until yeast dissolves. Add raisins, salt, and sugar. Mix until well blended. Add flour. Knead with bread maker or by hand for 10 minutes or until you get a smooth dough.
Place dough on flat surface, cover with towel, and let stand for 45 minutes. Preheat oven to 390 degrees 15 minutes before dough has finished standing. Spray bread ban with no-stick spray. Add dough to bread pan. Spread coffee on top with brush. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 390 degrees for 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
TIDBITS
1) The fierce Vikings of old loved cakes, particularly this cake. They got a might testy, particularly when they didn’t get their favorite dessert. Indeed, the Vikings were apt to loot whole cities when in such a mood. What towns did the berserk Norsemen target? Why, the ones with lots and lots of flour and milk, of course, there being no wheat fields or cowherds in icy, cold Greenland.
2) Why didn’t the Vikings simply move to mainland Europe where there were wheat and cows in abundance? Why not set up cake bakeries there? Because all the great Viking cake makers would only live in Greenland. Something about being able to always step out into cold Arctic air after a long day working beside hot ovens. So you can see, if air-conditioned kitchen had been available in the ninth century, there were have been no Fury of the Norsemen. Something to chew on.
– 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.
I am ready. I am able to dispense with stupendously bad advice only one date late because:
1) I had a spasm of productivity.
2) I am holding an ice-cold root beer.
3) I am caught up with laundry.
So, I shall once more be dispensing stupendously bad advice.
************************
CC asks: How can I sing if I’ve lost my voice?
Dear CC: You need to buy an iLarynxTM. Download songs to your iLarynx. Then carefully open your throat with a sharp, sterilized knife. Note, I cannot stress this enough, this self surgery is dangerous without proper sterilization. After the iLarynx is safely and comfortably placed in your throat, sew up with a thin thread. The color of the thread should match the color of your skin. I would also like to recommend purchasing the thread before performing the surgery. You only have maybe ten minutes before you lose consciousness due to loss of blood. It’s doubtful you’d be able to get to the store and back in time, especially if there’s some oaf with thirty items in the ten-items-or fewer line who also insists paying with exact change.
If you forgot to download songs to your iLarynx before surgery, may I recommend downloading songs via Wifi? If you don’t have Wifi, I suggest getting the service. Making a small hole in your throat to attach a cable from your computer seems like a false economy.
************************
RAS asks: I’m going on the Atkins diet. Should I put my dalmatian dog Trotsky in charge of the shopping because he likes protein and fat?
Dear RAS: Absolutely, as there apparently little evidence that the low-carbohydrate Atkins diet does anything useful at all. It would probably be safer to follow Claude Akins’ diet. Unfortunately while a superb, forceful actor, Mr. Akins never got around to publishing a cookbook. So, by default, you’ll have to follow the example of your dog and who doesn’t like dogs? Also, there is an elegant simplicity in a dog’s diet of meat which you don’t even have to cook if you don’t want to. (A side benefit of not cooking is saving money on a stove.) And don’t forget dog biscuits. Dog biscuits are so hard that they naturally grind away any plaque on your teeth. No plaque, no dental visits and who likes to go to the dentist?
************************
MA asks: Should I look under a toadstool for some grub?
Dear MA: It’s a lot better to look under toadstools for grub than at the toadstool itself as toadstools are often poisonous. Mushrooms look a lot like toadstools, but are not directly poisonous. Mushrooms are, however, yucky and icky beyond belief. Indeed mushrooms are quite possibly the fungus of the Devil. Do not, do not, eat mushrooms. If you do, your soul becomes his and you will go to Hell for all eternity. Enough said.
So you should instead look under the toadstool for sustenance, but what would you find there? A few twigs perhaps. A roly poly, if your lucky and are a meat eater. However, rolly pollys are best eaten at a sushi restaurant, where its taste is only displayed to its greatest advantage by a trained chef. And do you have a rolly polly sushi bar near you? I think not.
Far better than a rolly polly is the magnificent taco. The taco is God’s food and possesses magical, healing properties. Go get yourself a taco and be satisfied, healthy, and virtuous. Perhaps there’s a taco shop right around the block from you. If you live in northern Greenland, you’re screwed.
************************
JL asks: What should I do to earn some quick cash? *GULP*
Dear JL: You are so close to having a great idea. Everybody loves Seven ElevenTM’s Big GulpTM. Indeed soft drink sizes keep going up and up. One soda cup at a convenience, a hard word to spell, got so big that you had to hold onto two ropes to carry it. Clearly there is a big interest in drinking big sodas. However, most people are unable to drink that much soda. But we would pay big interest in watching people try.
So simply form your own Big Soda Drinking League (BSDL.) Collect corporate sponsorships. Let their money come rolling in. In the meantime, before the season starts, go into training by drinking ever and ever larger amounts of soda in one sitting. Go for the gold. Excelsior! That or pole dancing.
************************
TLH asks: Should I adapt Paul De Lancey recipes to be vegetarian friendly?
Dear TLH: Absolutely, any recipe by Paul De Lancey is fantastic. The easiest way to make his recipes vegetarian friendly is start with a recipe that’s already vegetarian. This is the sort of thing that seems obvious only after someone says it.
Alternatively, go to the store and buy vegetarian substitutes for various meats. Some of these substitutes are good, some are okay, and some taste like soap. They are, however, uniformly expensive. How expensive? You’ll have to take up robbing banks. Be careful, though, about serving vegetarian substitutes to law enforcement. They’ll take it as a sign of you living way beyond your means and start investigating you.
************************
– 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.
Oh my gosh. There was a Friday this week. So, I shall once more be dispensing bad advice As usual, the advice will stupendously bad. Sorry, it’s a day late. I was whooping it up on my birthday. So, you had an extra day to do things right.
SF asks: If I pour boiling water on my face to help me wake up in the morning, will the power outlet I’ve plugged my toe into electrocute me?
Dear SF: The scientific method is a must. Try plugging your toe into an outlet. If that act alone electrocutes you then you’ll know, if only for a brief moment. If however, nothing happens then try the boiling water on your face. Should you survive electrocution after this second step, take heart in the knowledge you won’t need to take a shower. The germs and bacteria won’t survive the hot deluge.
************************
LHH asks: I wanna know: Who’ll stop the rain?
Dear LHH: Congress can, but they won’t. They’re too busy with health care, fund raising, and vacations to tackle this problem head on. Ask your congressman to support the building of mile-wide umbrellas. Or as more promising research suggests, get them to provide seed money for the building of five-mile-high fans that will blow rain from areas that don’t need it to ones that do. Call your representative today. They love to get citizen input.
************************
RTC asks: I want to go to a viewing and funeral of a family member. It is 8 hours driving round trip. I can barely stay awake 2 hours in a moving car. Should I stay home or should I go? No one else is able to go with me and share the driving.
Dear RTC: This is a toughie. Family duties push you to go, but you don’t want to crash and die. I mean how many people want to go to back-to-back funerals. No, the thing to do is ask your relatives to catapult the deceased to your home. Pay your respects. Catapult the body back as I strongly suspect the dearly departed will be buried where all the mourners are. Iimportant, don’t forget to send a condolences card! Manners are always in style. There is a small silver lining in all this. Enclose your condolences card with the deceased before catapulting back. A penny saved is a penny earned.
************************
MA asks: “I am” is reported to be the shortest sentence in the English language. Could it be “I do” is the longest? Please advise…
Dear MA: Clearly, your problem is that your irresistible. So they say yes to you. But relationships are hard; hard as cheese that’s been left out for two weeks and perhaps just as moldy. You need to cut down on your attractivetudinous. Experiment. Grow dreadlocks. Some women hate them. If that special someone adores that hair style, consider wearing a tutu. Don’t give up. Keep trying. If however, she hopelessly dotes on you, you’ll have to rub lutefisk all over your body. The stench will drive away even the most ardent lover. There is a chance, however, the odor might be so bad that you’ll tear your own head off. That’s okay; this act also solves the problem of your overpowering desirability.
************************
WK asks: Where have all the flowers gone? Long time passing.
Dear WK: They’re in Greenland. What with global warming, conditions there are now favorable for flowers. Not many flower munching bunnies there either. So for decades now, flowers have been slowly migrating to Greenland. We simply been too busy, what with our hectic lifestyle, to notice. Go to your local travel agent to book a Greenland tour. Do it today. Herds of feral flowers are sights that will make your soul sing.
************************
– 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.
Paul De Lancey's Blog 