To celebrate Boxing Day, I shall put something in a box.
This is a box
– 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.
I wish you all the best.
– 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 serrano pepper
1 jalapeno pepper
1 red bell pepper
½ medium onion
1 avocado
½ cup fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon peanut oil (1 tablespoon more later)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (1 tablespoon more later)
½ tablespoon lime juice
4 beer bratwursts
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 16 ounce packages of jumbo biscuit dough
½ cup Monterrey Jack cheese
No-stick spray
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. (350 degrees is normal for most dishes. We are throwing caution to the wind today.)
Remove seeds from serrano pepper, jalapeno pepper, and red bell pepper. Dice serrano pepper, jalapeno pepper, red bell pepper, onion, and avocado. Chop cilantro. Cut bratwursts into four pieces, one cut by length and another by width.
Cook peanut oil and vegetable oil in frying pan at medium heat. Add serrano pepper, jalapeno pepper, bell pepper, onion, avocado, and cilantro. Continue cooking for about 10 minutes or until vegetables soften. Stir periodically. Remove sautéed vegetables.
Cook peanut oil and vegetable oil in frying pan at medium heat. Add bratwurst. Cook for about 5 minutes at medium heat or until bratwurst begins to brown. Make sure to turn over bratwurst so that all sides cook evenly.
Flatten individual pieces of biscuit dough to get a larger surface. Put bratwurst piece in center, bottom part of biscuit dough. Put about a tablespoon sautéed vegetable on top of the bratwurst. Sprinkle biscuit dough with Monterey Jack cheese. Roll up dough from the bottom until the tops and the bottoms meet.
Spray biscuit sheets with no-stick spray. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 16 minutes or until the biscuits are golden brown on the outside and no longer doughy on the inside. Note times needed to bake biscuits can vary wildly given the oven’s size, age, and nearness of the biscuits to a heating coil. So it’s best to keep a careful eye on the biscuits closest to a heating coil.
TIDBITS
1) This is a classic German-Mexican-American, breakfast-dinner cuisine.
2) This was almost called Fiery Brats In a Blanket.
3) There are 17.88 milligrams of magnesium in 100 grams of bratwurst. I don’t see how this fact could help you.
4) Madison, Wisconsin, holds the annual “World’s Biggest Brat Fest.”
5) I went to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in the early 80s. I don’t ever recall seeing the festival. I must have been studying.
6) About sixty years earlier, Hitler tried to overthrow the German government by taking over a beer hall.
7) German beer halls serve beer and bratwursts.
8) German bratwursts are excellent.
– 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 world can be harsh and mean. People, even close ones, do hurtful things to you. Your heart shrivels under the onslaught. All people are hateful.
But no.
Friendship still stalks the land.
Look at these happy children holding hands as a new day dawns*
Pour this picture onto your heart and feel it grow once more.
* = I assumed the Sun is in the East in this picture. If, however, it is setting in the West, then the children are happy because the day has gone well.
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
3 bananas (best when ripe)
2½ cups milk
1 cup peanut butter
UTENSIL
blender
PREPARATION
Flex your fingers. Peel the bananas. Put bananas, milk, and peanut butter in blender. Use “milkshake” setting. Blend until shake is sufficiently smooth for your taste.
This delicious milkshake is a diet buster. Drink with care.
TIDBITS
1) The smell of a banana is the same as the pheromones produced by enraged swarms of bees. Just smelling a banana makes them think they should savagely attack an intruder. So, don’t walk up to a hive of bees with a banana in your hands and expect to make friends.
2) And don’t, don’t throw your banana at the hive.
3) You can polish your shoes with a banana peel. If you do, change shoes before approaching the abode of the busy bees.
4) You can buy banana beer in East Africa. I haven’t heard anything about approaching a hive with a mug of banana beer in your hand.
5) And for goodness sake, why do you keep approaching a bee hive, anyway?
6) Indeed, Paris once fell to the Vikings in because of bees.
7) The Viking Army, under the command of Ragnar Lothbrok, attacked Paris in 845.
8) The ferocious Vikings assaulted the city walls time and time again by climbing up tall, thin ladders.
9) But the defending Franks simply pushed the scaling ladders away.
10) Eventually, the Vikings became tired of falling backwards onto hard ground. Indeed, this whole ordeal made them rather cranky.
11) And there’s nothing worse than a cranky Viking.
12) The Vikings started to fight among themselves.
13) Until Ragnar walked toward a bee hive while holding a mug of honey beer.
14) Sure, the bees viciously attacked him ferociously, but he got an idea.
15) The very next day, Ragnar “Puffy Face” Lothbrok’s army catapulted bee hives and kegs of honey beer over the city walls. The enraged bees attacked the Parisians so mercilessly that the city’s clambered over the city’s fortifications unopposed. Paris fell. The Vikings would run amok in Europe for another 200 years. There you go.
– 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.
Let’s face it, Elon Musk has brought unprecedented chaos to Twitter(tm). He offered to stop running the company if a poll said he should. The poll did say so. Mr. Musk should be be stepping down shortly.
A new CEO for Twitter is now needed. I humbly offer myself for that role. I will accept the position if the following poll says I should.
Should Paul R. De Lancey, Ph.D. become Twitter’s new CEO?
– 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.
Wanda Wunder #29
– 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
PASTA
3 cups or more of flour (¼ cup more later)
2 eggs (1 more egg used later)
¾ cup water or more
FILLING
2 garlic cloves (2 more cloves used later)
½ pound ground beef
1½ teaspoons parsley
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
½ teaspoon salt (Used 3 times for a total of 2 teaspoons)
1 egg
MARINARA SAUCE
6 Roma tomatoes
½ large white onion
2 garlic cloves
2 teaspoons basil
½ teaspoon marjoram
1 teaspoon oregano
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon thyme
1 6 ounce can tomato sauce
FINAL PREPARATION
water
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup flour
Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 30 minutes.
PREPARATION OF PASTA
Combine 3 cups flour, eggs, and water. Mix with hands. Make a ball of the mixture. It should just be able to come off your hand. If some of the ball sticks to your hand, then add a bit more flour, mix again, and try the new flour. If the flour ball is powdery, it is too dry. Add a bit more water, mix again, and try the consistency of the next ball. There may be a number of these iterations but it must be done. (You don’t want to let all the Italianos and Italianas in the world down, do you?)
Sprinkle a generous amount of flour on your cutting board and rolling pin. Roll flour ball out until it is 1/16″ or NO THICKER than ⅛”. Frequently sprinkle the rolling pin to keep the dough from sticking. Let rolled-out flour sit for AT LEAST 4 hours. It should be nearly dry.
PREPARATION OF FILLING
While rolled out flour dries, peel and mince 2 garlic cloves. Put garlic, ground beef, Parmesan cheese, parsley, and ½ teaspoon salt in frying pan. Cook on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes or until beef is no longer red. Put contents of frying pan into bowl. Add egg to bowl. Mix and put beef filling in fridge. (Time to sneak a nice, cold root beer or maybe something even stronger.)
PREPARATION OF MARINARA SAUCE
Mince Roma tomatoes. Peel and mince onion and 2 garlic cloves. Add tomato, onion, garlic, basil, marjoram, oregano, ½ teaspoon salt, thyme, and tomato sauce to sauce pot. Cook ingredients on medium-high heat until it boils, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes with the lid on. (Although the Republic will stand if you chose to cook with it off, you wild child you.) Stir occasionally.
FINAL PREPARATION
Dust cutting board with ¼ cup flour. Use knife to cut 1½”- wide strips in the flour. Cut these strips into rectangles every 3 inches. Dust strips with flour. Put a ½ teaspoon or so of the filling on the right side of the 1½-inch by 3-inch flour rectangle. Fold the left side over the filling. Push down on the open sides with the tines of the fork to seal the ravioli.
Fill pot with enough water to cover ravioli. Add 1 teaspoon salt and olive oil. Boil water. Add ravioli and cook for 20 to 30 minutes. Ravioli should float to the top and the dough should be completely soft. (Pure gold is soft as well. However, it’s not a great ravioli ingredient. Gold’s extreme lethality in a molten state make using it an expensive culinary faux pas.)
Meanwhile back at the range, cook pasta sauce in pot on medium heat until it is warm. Put ravioli in bowl and add pasta sauce.
TIDBITS
1) This tidbit was traded for a second-round and a third-round tidbit in a future cookbook.
2) Flour is extremely flammable. You might want to sweep up spilled flour instead of vacuuming it. Flour mills make strong efforts to prevent flour dust from getting into the air and onto the floors. Metallic and coal dust are also quite flammable.
3) Indeed, the Germans in World War II tried to make thermobaric bombs by releasing coal dust in the air just before the Allied Air Force would make its bombing runs. The Germans planned to ignite the coal dust, but could never do so satisfactorily due to problems in getting the dust to disperse.
4) But if you had tons of coal dust and thousands of giant fans on the ground, I mean really huge, you could ignite the air around the enemy bombers with a powerful flare.
5) It might be hard to smuggle thousands of giant fans into an enemy city, though. Maybe if you did it at night.
– 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.
Archer Woman #7
– 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.
Please, no more gruntjectives
The following list contains adjectives that once modified a noun in a meaningful way. Now they just mean, “I just want to emphasize a noun. Ya know to show that the noun I’m using is special in some way, ya know.” A good example is the word awesome. Awesome originally meant that something inspired awe. A good example is, “Jesus’ miraculous raising Lazarus from the dead was awesome.” If raising someone from the dead doesn’t fill you with awe, I don’t know what would. However, an awesome burger, an awesome movie, etc. only tell us that you liked something.
You might as well grunt when you want to use an adjective. An example would be, “That was a *grunt* burger.
Here is my list of most hated gruntjectives. I’m thankful that some have passed away. Then new two ones take their place like the on the mythological Hydra.
absolutely
awesome
clearly ambiguous
decimate
edgy
epic
green
groovy
healthy
heroic
historic
iconic – I hate this gruntjective the most. I hate it. I hate it to death. Are no longer any other adectives being used today?
impactful
insane
literally
maverick
miraculous
perfect
rad
random
surreal
unique
viral
What adjectives do you think have lost meaning from overuse? I’d like to know.
– 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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