Posts Tagged With: Greenland

Bicycle Chicken

Posted on October 15, 2021 by pauldelancey

Burkina Faso

BICYCLE CHICKEN
(Poulet Bicyclette)

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.

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Flags of the World – Red and White

Posted on March 26, 2021 by pauldelancey

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.

 

 

 

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Good Arctic Eats – Uummannaq

Posted on February 6, 2021 by pauldelancey

Good Arctic Eats – Uummannaq

Do you like to eat well, but you’re an introvert? Do you find social distancing difficult in your crowded, bustling metropolis? Well, I have the place for you. It’s Uummannaq in northern Greenland. It’s location is a perfect who ache for Greenlandic cuisine but find Nuuk, Greenland just too darn far south.
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There is only one restaurant  listed in TripAdvisor.  This is because there’s only one restaurant in town or, as I like to think, its food beats the pants of all the other restaurants. Perhaps Uummanaq has enormous problems retaining Michelin-quality chefs as the great Parisian restaurants keep stealing them away. Who can say for sure? I like to think so.
This restaurant, the only one worthy enough to be listed in Trip Advisor, is Cafemma. It’s reputed to be easy to find, although I would have thought nearly every place that far north would be easy to locate.  It’s also the place to go if you’re in Uummannaq. But you can go as well. Hop on those planes, probably at least four, and go there. Enjoy its classic food. Take in the town’s wondrous views of a fjord and magnificent mountains. Spend the night there. Cafemma has rooms to stay in as well. So forget about rush-hour commutes from your hotel to your dining experience..

 

Uumnannaq’s restaurant

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.

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Great Arctic Eats – Nuuk, Greenland

Posted on February 3, 2021 by pauldelancey

Great Arctic Eats – Nuuk, Greenland

Who doesn’t yearn for the good eats of Greenland? But if you’re like me, you’ll find no Nuuk cooking near you. Even trying a good local Greenlandic restaurant is often an exercise in futility. You really have to fly to Nuuk to sample its cuisine.  And here I am to highlight the towns exciting restaurants.
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The highest rated restaurant according to TripAdvisor carries the rather exciting name of Charoen Porn. Charoen specializes in Asian and Thai cuisine. The red fish curry is said to be amazing. It does seem a bit of effort to go all the way to Greenland for Asian food, but if you live there it’s just the place for it. And you know, Porn.
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The most acclaimed seafood is at Sarfalik.
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You should also consider going to Qooqqut Nuan, whose name implies true fish a la Greenland. Gaze at a beautiful waterfall while fishermen catch cod for your meal.

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.

Nuuk’s restaurants

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.

 

 

Categories: cuisine, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Greenlandic Cake

Posted on June 30, 2019 by pauldelancey

Greenlandic Appetizer

GREENLANDIC CAKE

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.

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bad Advice Friday +1, 8-05-17

Posted on August 5, 2017 by pauldelancey

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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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– 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: bad advice, bad advice Friday | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Bad Advice Friday + 1, 5-06-17

Posted on May 6, 2017 by pauldelancey

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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– 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: bad advice Friday | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

Posted on January 15, 2017 by pauldelancey

Taiwanese Soup

BEEF NOODLE SOUP

INGREDIENTSbeefnoodlesoup

5 garlic cloves
1 inch ginger root
6 scallions (white part of green onions)
1 Roma tomato
2 Thai chiles or red chiles
8 cups water (or enough to cover short ribs)
1⅓ cups Chinese rice wine or sherry
¾ cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon Sichuan chili bean sauce
(doubanchiang), Korean gochujang. or bean sauce
4 whole star anise pods
3 pounds beef short ribs
1 cup chicken stock
1¼ pounds Asian wheat noodles or linguine
¼ cup mustard greens or spinach
¼ cup baby bok choy, bok choy, or Napa cabbage
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro

SPECIAL UTENSILS

8 quart pot
tongs

Makes 8 bowls. Takes 4 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Mince garlic cloves. Peel and grate ginger root. Cut scallions into ¼” slices. Dice tomato and Thai chiles. Add garlic, ginger, scallion, tomato, water, rice wine, soy sauce, brown sugar, chili bean sauce, and star anise into pot. Bring to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to low. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Add short ribs. Cover and simmer on low heat for 2½ hours or until meat is tender to the fork, but is still on the ribs. Turn off heat, remove lid, and let sit for 1 hour. Remove meat from pot with tongs and place on flat surface. Push bones out of short ribs. Shred beef with fork.. Return shredded beef to pot. Add chicken stock. Simmer on low heat for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.

While soup simmers, cook noodles according to instructions on package. Dice mustard greens, baby bok choy, and cilantro. Add noodles to bowls. Add mustard greens and bok choy to bowls. Ladle soup over mustard greens and baby bok choy. Garnish with cilantro.

TIDBITS

1) Not too many years ago, Susan Chang of Poway, California, posted the following question on FacebookTM, “If we took all the cooked noodles in the world and tied them together, would they reach all the way to Mars?” No response. Susan asked the same question, but added a picture of two kittens playing with noodles.

2) The post went viral. Suddenly, billions of people had to know. Purchases of noodles went up a thousand fold. The entire economies of thirteen smallish countries switched over to making noodles. Greenland built sixty million hot houses to raise wheat. Ten million babies were named after noodles, “Noodlo if they were boys or “Noodla” if they were girls.

3) Soon the world had billions of miles of noodles, enough to cover every road in the world. This naturally made traveling anywhere difficult, unless, of course, you had a JeepTM equipped with noodle tires. But we didn’t have many of those vehicles. Most factories still churned out noodles.

4) Time to cook those noodles. On May 5, all seven billion people cooked noodles. The steam from all that water boiling formed a thick cloud over the entire Earth. The cloud lasted an year. No sunlight got through at all; dinosaurs that somehow survived the meteor from 65 million years ago, died up for good. People tied noodle after noodle together. Soon a string billions of miles long circled the globe countless times. We know it was countless because no one tried counting it.

5) Sally was chose for the honor of stretching the string to Mars. Being five foot seven and standing on her tippy toes and extending her hand to sky, she managed to lift the noodle end seven feet to Mars. This was short of the Red Planet as all could see. So, Sally stood on her boyfriend Bob’s shoulders. Still short of Mars. A troupe of Chinese acrobats came over. Although they stood seventeen people tall, a GuinnessTM record for noodle standing they were still not all the way to Mars.

6) Bushnell AviationTM lent a helicopter. One person, Dwayne, held onto the helicopter and then another person held on to him, and so on. However, even though Wayne was a weight lifter, even he couldn’t hold up 15,000 pounds of people for long. He let go. Fortunately every fill into the community swimming pool, establishing Guinness records for the largest number of people to successfully perform a cannonball into a community pool and for the largest tidal wave in Wyoming.

7) Then NASA and the European Space Agency, seeing people actually performing scientific experiments got into the act. A space shuttle spooled out the noodle string as it traveled Mars. The string measured 135 billion miles, enough to get to that planet when it was closest to Earth.

12) Unfortunately, Mars was farther away than that. The phlegmatic population, there being a global cold, shrugged and built a noodle string three time longer than the first, which is still whipping around the Earth. NASA tried again. It worked! It did. It did. All the way to Mars. Sally clipped the string in two. ESA carried the second string all the way as well. The noodle strings stayed in place as the extremely cold temperatures of space froze them into super strong poles.

13) Then Amos Keeto, at Bushnell ConstructionTM said, “We have extra noodle, enough to make rungs between the noodle poles. The people of Earth, did just that. Now, if you have space suit and have enough supplies, you can climb to Mars. Way cool.

– 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, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Bunny Chow

Posted on September 30, 2016 by pauldelancey

South African Entree

BUNNY CHOW

INGREDIENTSbunnychow

1 medium onion
3 medium potatoes
4 cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
½ teaspoon fennel seeds
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tomatoes
2 pounds chicken breasts or lamb
3 fresh curry leaves
3 tablespoons Durban masala (See recipe)
⅓ cup chicken stock
2 1-lb whole white loaves
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro

Serves 4. Takes 1 hour.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

Dutch oven

PREPARATION

Dice onion. Peel potatoes. Cut potatoes into 1″ cubes. Add onion, potato, cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, fennel seeds, and vegetable oil to Dutch oven. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir constantly. Remove from heat.

Dice tomatoes. Cut chicken into 1″ cubes. Add Durban masala, Add tomato, chicken, curry leaves, and Durban masala to Dutch oven. Cook using medium heat for 5 minutes. Stir frequently. Add chicken stock. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes or until potato is tender and chicken is no longer pink inside. Remove Dutch oven from heat. Discard cinnamon stick.

Slice bread loaf in half along its length. Use sharp knife to cut off most of the soft white bread from each half. Leave ½”-to-1″ of bread crust along the edges and bottoms. (The scooped out bread can be made into bread crumbs.) Ladle potato/tomato/chicken mixture into each hollowed-out loaf half. Garnish with coriander. Repeat for second bread loaf.

TIDBITS

1) Bunnies are naturally fierce fighters. Armies everywhere had them. Napoleon wouldn’t have dreamed of conquering Europe without his corps of bunny irregulars.

2) But you say, “Aha, Napoleon didn’t conquer Europe. See, you’re wrong. Bunnies aren’t so fierce.” Ho, ho, they are. Napoleon won victory after victory up until 1808 with his beserker bunnies.

3) Then, Napoleon invaded Spain. Spain had guerrilla fighters. More importantly, it had battle hardened bunnies. Conquistador bunnies. Bunnies that pushed Moors out of the Iberian positions during the centuries of La Reconquista. Bunnies that had accompanied Cortes to Mexico, Pizarro to Peru, and Albondigas to Greenland. Bunnies that terrified conquered peoples into quiet submission for centuries.

4) The French army never had been on the receiving end of a bunny charge. Never had seen those twitching noses and the unreasoning terror that engendered. Never had to see a sea of bunny tails popping up and down as they stamped toward them . . .

5) where they nibbled your shoes and your shoelaces and so you tripped and your comrades laughed and laughed at you and felt so ashamed that you deserted the army and ran home where you sold sprigs of cilantro which tastes like soap to some people which was okay because all life tasted like soap to you and you spent the rest of your life thinking in run-on sentences.

6) And even if you managed to man up and stand your ground after all that, the bunnies would bite your ankles repeatedly which often hurt, particularly so when their teeth actually broke your skin.

7) Suppose you were a stalwart sort, a man among and you were still fighting bunnies crazed beyond belief by sangria, you’d still have to deal with the bunnies’ powerful rear legs, legs that could kick a potato twenty feet.

8) Imagine. You’ve seen their twitching noses, their bobbing cottontails, had your shoelaces nibbled in two, had your ankles bitten, and now they’re hurting your shins and they won’t stop. And then, and then, they keep your potatoes twenty feet away where they get smooshed in the heat of battle.

9) You have no food. So, you confiscate some local food, some paella perhaps, but your body hasn’t faced Spanish food bacteria. So, now you’re a French soldier in Spain fighting for an emperor who only cares about himself and you have the mother of all stomach aches. You throw thrown your musket and flee.

10) The rest of your comrades see that you, a man among men, are fleeing. They realize the fight is lost. They flee as well. Your army is routed. Bunny-fear demoralizes the other French armies. French forces reel back to France. Allied hordes attack Paris and storm the Montmarte. France capitulates. Your flight from the Spanish battlefield brought all this about.

11) The French Emperor Napoleon gets exiled to Elba. The long-time leader gives a farewell to his Old Guard, “Adieu mes amis, nous sommes battus vaillamment et aurions gagné mais pour ce lecteur de recette et sa peur des lapins.”*

* = “Good buy my friends, we fought valiantly and would have won but for this read reader of recipes and his fear of bunnies. (Sorry, apparently Napoleon’s French is only as good as mine. Weird.)

12) So you’ve changed history. Awesome responsibility, isn’t it?

– 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, history, international | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Why the Latest End of the World Didn’t Happen

Posted on October 10, 2015 by pauldelancey

NoApocalypse

It’s getting embarrassing. People confidently shout to everyone that the end of the world will end tomorrow. Then tomorrow comes. And it doesn’t end. Again. Oh sure, you might have gotten a migraine or you found no hot coffee waiting for you when woke up, but that’s not entirely the same thing as the complete destruction of seven billion people. Be fair, it isn’t.

So what happens to the doomsayers? Humiliated, they slink off to their innermost lairs, tails between their legs, until enough time has elapsed for them to come out and forecast with complete uncertainty the next apocalypse. This, of course, is a shame as most of the end-of-the-Earthers are the nicest people you’d ever meet. George, who predicted the end of the world in 2012 makes doughnuts at his bakery and has a smile for everyone, including those who pay for their purchases entirely with pennies. Sarah, a newcomer to doom, runs a charity to provide hearing aids to northern Greenland.  Prudence, a veteran with seventeen predicted apocalypses under her belt, provides the voice that says, “Recalculating,” whenever your GPS notices you’ve taken a wrong turn.

All these people are wonderful folks. It’s always a great loss to the community whenever hide because of yet another highly visible, spectacularly, amazingly, world shakingly–oops sorry, bad choice of words there–End-It-All Soothsayers. What can we do to soothe their bruised egos?

Give them excuses

1* It’s the president’s fault.

2* It happened at night. No one noticed.

3* It happened, but we all got better.

4* It happened. It did! It just happened in a parallel universe. You know the one that takes our orphan socks from the clothes dryer.

5* It can’t happen until the Cubs win the World Series. Maybe this year they will and the apocalypse will back on track.

6* Apparently we don’t need the apocalypse, we have ComcastTM.

7* The Earth didn’t get slammed by a giant Coca PebbleTM, because an immensely huge space alien, I mean a hundred times the size of Jupiter, ate the last box of immensely huge Coca Pebbles.

8* We were on Daylight Savings Time.

9* Dr. Who saved us.

10* It happened, but no one will give the doomsayers any credit. It isn’t fair.  Just because people won’t dwell on the negative, preferring to rebuild their lives and face the slaggy, radioactive world with a joyful song.

– Paul R. De Lancey, comforter

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

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