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.
Crime is bad. Let’s get rid of it. Is our present system of incarceration working? No. Who was responsible for this? Who will fix it? I will. How? I’m glad you asked. Here is my thirteen-step program.
1) Convicted criminals will never get bacon or chocolate. Our current system allows prisoners to enjoy socialized bacon and chocolate. That’s no deterrence at all. Geez!
2) Criminals will eat lutefisk at every meal. For beverages, they will have a choice of lutefisk tea and castor oil
3) Convicted criminals will download software for all the law-abiding citizens in their community. They will work with customer service until the myriad of issues are resolved.
4) Convicted criminals will be forced to shop WalMart(tm) on holiday weekends. Municipal, county, state, and federal governments will save billions and billions of dollars on prison construction costs, prison maintenance, and prison staff.
5) Criminals who leave WalMart will be sent to maximum-security cells for life. It bears repeating, these ne’er do wells will still be without chocolate and bacon for life . They will still do software downloads for life.
6) These ne’er do wells will also be forced, in their short free periods, to read and re-read James Joyce’s Ulysses until their minds explode trying to understand it. Moreover we will, if allowed, by human rights organizations, serve lutefisk everyday to our hardened criminals.
7) The prison TV will only show ESPN’s Canadian Curling Highlights.
8) Jailers will give the inmates paper cuts every day.
9) You will be put in Facebook(tm) jail whenever you use the word “the.”
10) These baddies will eat all those Christmas fruitcakes that people insist on giving, but nobody wants.
11) Convicts will seed and dice the hottest of hot chile peppers then immediately rub their foreheads. (Don’t try this at home.)
12) Prisoners must keep places in line for the elderly at the DMV. Twice a week too.
13) Criminals will be forced to listen to every high-school and college commencent speech within a 50-mile radius of their prison. This includes all speeches by students, faculty, and guest speakers. Yes, this is a severe punishment, but we must have a credible, strong deterrent against crime.
No person alive would even contemplate committing any crime when faced with the above thirteen consequences. Crime would disappear from our great country within the year. Money spent on law enforcement could be used to balance budget and distribute free bacon and chocolate to all Americans.
Now behave, don’t make me come back there.
– 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.
American Dessert
INGREDIENTS
2 tablespoons corn syrup or honey
7 tablespoons heavy cream (⅔ cup more later)
⅓ cup sugar
7 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
3 tablespoons butter, softened
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
⅔ cup heavy cream or whipped cream
2 cups vanilla ice cream
chopped peanuts as desired
maraschino cherries as desired
SPECIAL UTENSILS
food processors
sundae glasses
Serves 4. Takes 25 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add corn syrup, 7 tablespoons heavy cream, and sugar to pan. Simmer at low heat until sugar completely dissolves. Stir frequently. Add chocolate chips. Simmer at low heat until chocolate chips melt completely and blend in with heavy cream/sugar mixture. Stir frequently. Add butter and vanilla extract.. Simmer at low heat until butter melts and blends in with heavy cream/chocolate mixture. Stir frequently. This is the hot fudge. Remove from heat.
Add ⅔ cup heavy cream to food processor. Blend until you get whipped cream. Pour just enough hot fudge into sundae glasses, cups, or bowls to cover the bottom. Add equal amounts of ice cream to each glass. Top ice creams with an equal amount of hot fudge. Garnish with whipped cream, chopped peanuts, and cherries.
TIDBITS
1) The first Summer Olympics took place in Athens, Greece in 1896. These games started with the official eating of the hot fudge sundae which was made locally.
2) There were no opening ceremonies for the 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris. The official hot fudge sundae melted en route or got eaten by an Olympic relay runner. After waiting fruitlessly for a replacement sundae to arrive, an exasperated starting official said, “Screw it, let the games begin.”
3) In 1928, Olympic officials decided to reinstate the opening ceremony with a flame brought from Athens. This worked. They also shortened the opening ceremonial line to “Let the games begin.”
Chef Paul
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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