Posts Tagged With: Italian

The Fart Primer

Posted on September 16, 2016 by pauldelancey

Our schools teach us how to solve quadratic equations. Our schools teach us how to compose essays on 19th-century English literature. They do not teach real-life survival skills. Specifically, they do not point out what foods make us fart. Say what you will about researching a prospective employer, all will go to naught if you bombard the interviewer with a barrage of deep and sonorous toots. Particularly if your blasts are stinky. So with the public welfare in mind, I present the following list. You’re welcome.

The worst fart causing foods are*:pintobeans

Bacon. Bacon! Bacon tastes great, worth any amount of farts.

Beans! What’s wrong with good ol’ reliable beans? “Beans, beans, the musical fruit . . . ”

Boiled cabbage. Smells like a fart when boiled. Still smells like a fart when farted.

Broccoli. There’s a reason President Bush didn’t like them.

Brussel sprouts. Must be tastier ways to construct a fart.

Candy: Especially if made with artificial sweeteners. Bad for the butt. Bad for the teeth. Bad at both ends.

Carrots: Improves your eyesight and more!

Cauliflower. Don’t let your dog eat this.

Cheese. Essential to modern cuisine, Italian, Mexican, you name it. Causes farts in countries around the world.

Collard Greens. Tasty if cooked right. Generates lethal farts either way.

Curry. The spice, not the actor.

Eggplant. Don’t let your dog eat this either.

Eggs. A versatile culinary ingredients. Eggs are essential to many fine dishes. Cooked by themselves, they are fart-making machies.

Fatty duck. Rendered goose fat is fantastic for making French fries. This dish is truly a doubled-cheeked sword.

French onion soup with cheese. Tastes great. The aroma changes on the way out, though.

Fried food, particularly fried chicken. Sometimes the taste is worth the consequences.

Frog legs. Why? Why? Why?

Lentils. Very vegetarian and vegan friendly. Not nose friendly.

Lutefisk. Smells horrible. Farting in a room with lutefisk will only make things smell better.

Milk. Especially if you have trouble breaking down lactose. Bowls of cereals, time bombs for the classroom.

Mushrooms. Slimy and fart causing.

Onion rings. Their taste will make guests want to come over. The farts will make them want to leave. Win. Win.

Pineapples. Visions of Hawaii. Odors of Hell.

Prunes. Makes you toot. Opens open your sluice gates as well.

Reconstituted beans. sulpher bombs. The ones backpackers use these on cross country trips. Your fellow trekkers will really believe they’re smelling a geyser or volcano.

Smoked oysters. Produce gourmet farts.

Snails with butter. Ew! Gross! Snails with anything are gross, expensive too. May I suggest beans?

Stuff canned in cottonseed oil. One of the food industry’s finest food-like products.

Tripe. Inards. Enough said. Stick with beans

* = Warning, results may vary.

 

– 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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Mozzarella En Carrozza

Posted on November 29, 2015 by pauldelancey

Italian Appetizer

MOZZARELLA EN CARROZZA

INGREDIENTS – SAUCE*MozzellaEnCarrozza-

½ cup butter
3 anchovy fillets or ½ tablespoon anchovy paste or .3 ounces nori (seaweed)
2 tablespoons drained capers
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 teaspoons parsley

* = Use marinara sauce instead, if you find both anchovies and seaweed to be icky.

INGREDIENTS – SANDWICH

12 slices ¼”-thick white Italian bread
1 pound mozzarella cheese
1 cup flour
½ cup milk
¾ cup fine bread crumbs
6 tablespoons olive oil
4 eggs

SPECIAL UTENSIL

parchment paper

Makes 12 little sandwiches. Takes 1 hour.

PREPARATION – SAUCE

Add butter to small pot. Melt butter using medium heat. Do not let it bubble. Stir frequently. Add anchovies, capers, lemon juice, and parsley. Stir until well blended. Turn off heat and cover.

PREPARATION – SANDWICH

Trim edges off bread slices so that you 5″ squares. Cut mozzarella into 6 equally thick slices. Slices should be square with 3″ edges. Put mozzarella squares on half of the bread squares. Put remaining bread slices on top of mozzarella squares.

Add flour to mixing bowl. Thoroughly coat sandwiches with flour. Add bread crumbs to plate. Add milk to a bowl. Briefly dip both sides of sandwich in milk. Seal cheese in sandwich by pressing the bread edges together. Dredge sandwich through bread crumbs until well coated. Place sandwiches on parchment-lined plate. (This prevents sandwich from sticking to plate.) Repeat for the remaining 5 sandwiches. Chill sandwiches in refrigerator for 40 minutes.

Beat eggs in mixing bowl until well blended. Briefly dip sandwiches into blended eggs. Add oil to frying pan. Heat oil at medium heat until it sizzles when a few bread crumbs are put in it. Put as many sandwiches as will fit in the frying pan. Sauté sandwiches at medium heat for 2-to-3 minutes on each side or until coated bread turns golden brown. (Sauté times tend to shorter a bit for each successive batch of sandwiches.) Repeat until all sandwiches are sautéeed. Drain sandwiches on paper towels. Cut sandwiches in two along the diagonal. Why the diagonal? I don’t know.

Serve immediately with sauce on the side.

TIDBITS

1) Pythagoras, the ancient Greek chef, loved to make grilled cheese sandwiches.

2) As who does not?

3) But Pythagoras made really, really good grilled cheeses. Philosophers from all over the Hellenic world flocked to his restaurant, Το Ψητό Τυρί.

4) The philosophic debates were of the highest order. Concepts such as: democracy, equal rights, rule of law, and cheese making got bandied about. Indeed, these debates made Greece the envy of the ancient Mediterranean world.

5) So much so that in the 2nd century B.C. Rome subjugated Greece for its grilled cheese sandwiches and democratic principles. For a long time, culinary historians remained divided on this conquests. Some held subjugating a people for democratic principles is an oxymoron like customer service or a working printers. Others averred that conquest is always a good thing as it facilitates the movement of great appetizers, entrees, and desserts to the conquering nation. As we all know, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 settled this debate forever.

5) In 1776, America’s founding fathers emulated the Greek philosophers when they framed The Declaration of Independence and baked the first apple pie.

6) In 1812, Zorba of Piraeus found a clay tablet will plowing his field. The tablet showed how to prove the Pythagorean Theorem, i.e., α^2 + β^2 = γ^2.

7) This theorem revolutionized the world by making more students more students hate mathematics than ever before.

8) In 1820, the Turkish Sultan Abim Bam Bu decreed that Pythagorean theorem would henceforth be written using the Arabic alphabet.

9) Instructing Greek students in Arabic and Turkish had been tolerated. So had the Pythagorean theorem. But teaching the young ones the Pythagorean theorem in Arabic pushed the Greek parents over the edge and in 1821 the Greek populace revolted against their Turkish overlords.

10) The Greeks finally gained their independence in 1833, permitting the free travel of Greek chefs all over the world. We live in a golden age.

– 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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Chicken Piccata

Posted on November 21, 2015 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

CHICKEN PICCATA

INGREDIENTSChickenPiccata-

4 (6 ounce) chicken breasts
3 tablespoons flour
⅛ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 table spoons chicken broth
¼ cup white wine
3 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons drained capers
1 tablespoon parsley

SPECIAL UTENSIL

kitchen mallet

Makes 4 plates. Takes 25 minutes

PREPARATION

Pound chicken breasts with kitchen mallet until they are ½” thick. Add flour, pepper, and salt to mixing bowl. Mix with fork or whisk. Dredge chicken through flour mixture.

Add butter to pan. Melt butter on medium heat. Stir frequently. Add olive oil. Add as many chicken breasts that will fit. Cover and sauté at medium heat for 2 minutes on each side or until chicken is cooked through. Repeat for remaining chicken breasts. Remove chicken breasts to serving plates. Add chicken broth. wine, and lemon juice to pan. Bring to boil at high heat. Boil for 2 minutes or until sauce starts to thicken. Stir frequently. Ladle sauce evenly over chicken breasts. Sprinkle capers and parsley evenly over sauce.

TIDBITS

1) The Gold Rush of 1849 drew poodles and oodles of French prospectors to California. Nineteenth-century French prospectors loved escargots. (Escargot is snail in English. The French have a word for everything.)

2) But California’s snails did not please the refined Gallic pallets. Mais non, suitable escargots had to be brought in from far-away New Orleans. Escargot trail drives were out. Snails do not last long under the hot Western Sun, especially before the invention of hydrating GatoradeTM. The Escargot Express was born. The most famous driver on this route was none other than Cacti Pa. Cacti loved chicken, wine, lemon juice, and capers. Station chefs along the route served him this entree, calling it “Piccata” in honor of the anagram loving Cacti Pa. And so it goes.

– 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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Basil Pesto Pizza

Posted on November 19, 2015 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

BASIL PESTO PIZZA

INGREDIENTSBasilPestoPizza-

2 cups fresh basil
4 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons ground walnuts
¾ cup olive oil
¾ cup grated Parmesan cheese
¼ teaspoon white pepper

1 tablespoon flour
no-stick spray
1 pizza crust (bought or from below recipe)
1 cup grated mozzarella cheese

SPECIAL UTENSIL

pizza pan
pizza cutter

Makes 1 pizza. Takes 30 minutes plus time needed to preheat oven. Allow 2 hours 15 minutes total if you are making your crust.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. While oven heats, make basil pesto by dicing basil, garlic cloves, and walnuts. Add olive oil, basil, garlic, walnuts, Parmesan, and white pepper to pan. Sauté for 5 minutes at medium-high heat or until garlic softens. Stir pesto frequently. Remove from heat.

Dust pizza pan with flour and spray with no-stick spray. Put pizza crust on pizza pan. Spread basil pesto evenly over the pizza crust. Sprinkle mozzarella evenly over pizza. Put pizza in oven and bake at 400 degrees for 10-to-15 minutes or until cheese or crust is golden brown.

TIDBITS

1) Culinary historians say young Basil Rathbone was named after the herb, basil. Old Basil Rathbone was still named after the herb. In between, he got teased a lot. He took up acting in desperation, for no one cares if a successful actor acts weird or has a strange name. His brilliant performances in the Sherlock Holmes movies gave him that success. The teasing stopped.

2) But the inner anguish from his teasing did not. Then one day while in Spain filming for the movie, The Name Escapes Me, he met a little boy selling basil pesto pizza. It was excellent. Basil Rathbone spread the delicious recipe everywhere he went.. No longer would the little Basils of the world be teased. The actor was even nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. And the little boy? Why, he became Juan Carlos I of Spain, the man who ended Generalísimo Franco’s brutal dictatorship.

– 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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Mexican Molettes

Posted on October 27, 2015 by pauldelancey

Mexican Dessert

MOLETTES

INGREDIENTSMolettes-

¼ cup butter
4 rolls
1¼ cups refried beans
1 cup grated Four Mexican Cheeses
½ cup salsa or pico de gallo

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Let butter soften at room temperature. Cut rolls in half. Remove a little bit of the insides from each half to make a hollow spot. Spread butter over the hollow spots on the roll halves. Put rolls in over. Bakel at 400 degrees for 5-to-10 minutes or until rolls turn crispy and golden brown.

While rolls are baking, cook refried beans in pan at low heat. Put beans in hollow spots in rolls. Add salsa and sprinkle cheese over each roll.

Makes 8 moletttes or half rolls. Takes 15-to-20 minutes.

TIDBITS

1) This dish is sold in the morning by street vendors all over Mexico.

2) The east coast of Mexico is on the Gulf of Mexico.

3) Gulf gas stations used to be all over America.

4) America’s Cup goes to the winner of an international sailing event.

5) Sophia Loren, the famous Italian actress, wore a C cup.

6) Vitamin C is good for you. It helps banish colds.

7) Ice cream is cold. So is Iceland.

8) Iceland also has volcanoes. So does Mexico.

9) But Mexicans eat molettes while Icelanders do not.

– 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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Beer Pizza

Posted on July 19, 2015 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

BEER PIZZA

INGREDIENTSBeerPizza-

1 beer pizza crust (See above recipe.)
1 small onion
1 Roma tomato
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
½ pound ground sausage
¼ cup beer (additional ¼ cup later)
½ cup pasta sauce
¼ cup beer
1¼ cups tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
no-stick spray

Takes 30 minutes.

SPECIAL UTENSIL

pizza pan

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray pizza pan to keep the pizza from sticking. (It’s not a good feeling to have your great looking, great smelling pizza fall apart because it sticks to pan when you try to serve it.) Put crust on pan.

Thinly slice onion and tomato. Add Italian seasoning and ground sausage. Mix with hands and form several small meatballs. Add meatballs and ¼ cup beer to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes. Stir a couple times to ensure even browning. Remove meatballs.

Add pasta sauce and ¼ cup beer to liquid already in pan. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 5 minutes. Ladle beer/pasta sauce evenly over crust. Sprinkle onion slices, tomato slices, meatballs and Parmesan cheese over sauce. Put pizza in oven and bake at 400 degrees for 10-to-15 minutes or until cheese or crust in golden brown.

TIDBITS

1) Old King Arthur’s knights loved beer pizza. When the blessing of the food was over, all hands shot out to grab a big piece. However, the Knights of the Square Table who sat at the corners were at a severe disadvantage over the knights who sat at the sides. Hence the saying, “As hungry as a corner knight.” These hungry knights invariably challenged the pizza-chomping side-of-the table knights to mortal combat. King Arthur found his army of knights so depleted by pizza-fired duels, that his kingdom was wide open to foreign invasion. Then, he hit upon the happy idea of making a round table for pizza eating. All knights were equidistant from the pizza. All Knight of the Round Table were equally fed and content. It was a glorious time.

– 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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Orange Italian Ice

Posted on July 9, 2015 by pauldelancey

Italian Dessert

ORANGE ITALIAN ICE

INGREDIENTSOrangeItalianIce-

9 medium oranges (Save peels.)
⅔ cups sugar
1½ cups water
1½ teaspoons freshly grated orange zest (from about ½ orange)

Makes 18 Italian ices. Takes 2 or more hours and then overnight.

PREPARATION

Cut oranges in half. Squeeze juice from orange halves into large pot. Save halved orange peels. Add sugar and water. Bring to boil using high heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Let cool. Add orange zest. Stir with whisk until orange/sugar syrup is well blended. Cool in freezer for 30 minutes. Stir so that any bits of orange ice are evenly distributed. Repeat every 30 minutes until corn/sugar is only an icy slush. Then let sit in freezer overnight.

Scoop orange/sugar slush into halved orange peels. Eat with a spoon. This dessert is particularly enjoyable on a hot, summer’s afternoon.

TIDBITS

1) Notice that this recipe takes a lot of time. What can you do while for the two hours and overnight periods to go by?

2) Have hot and steamy sex. This is probably better done overnight. I mean what if you’re engaged in some heavy petting during the two-hour preparation period when the timer goes off? Bing! (Special effects, you bet.) Then you say, “Sorry honey, I’ve got to add zest to the pot.” Then your partner says, “You ain’t adding any zest to our relationship.” Then you return from the kitchen to the bed, or even sofa, and no one’s there and all you see is a note addressed to Insignificant Other and you become so distraught that you start writing run on sentences.

3) On the other hand, serving orange Italian ice does say, “You’re special.” Indeed, there’s nothing like orange slush inside a hollowed-out orange hemisphere to set the stage for romance.

4) Orange Italian ices tend to melt in the car. Which is why you must always have your sweetheart come over to your place for a romantic evening. While your orange Italian ice chills in the fridge, snuggle next to your loved one in front of a roaring fire. Note, it’s best to have the roaring fire in a fireplace. Otherwise, the fire will spread rather rapidly and you will have precious little time for snuggling. Indeed, you will most likely be sprinting out the front door and your snuggle bunny will never call you again. Love is hard.

– 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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Caesar’s Salad

Posted on June 13, 2014 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

CAESAR’S SALAD

INGREDIENTSCaesarsSalad-

1 head romaine lettuce
4 bread slices
2 garlic cloves
1/4 cup olive oil (1 tablespoon more later)
2 ounces anchovies, cut in half (optional)

1 egg
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons lemon juice
½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

PREPARATION

Separate romaine lettuce into leaves. Tear leaves into 1″ squares. Remove crusts from bread slices. Cut bread into ½” cubes. Cut one garlic clove into four pieces and rub them along the salad bowl. Discard. (Oh no, no, discard the garlic pieces, not the salad bowl. Goodness, careful sentence structure matters.)

Add the other garlic clove and 1/4 cup olive oil to pan. Sauté at low-medium heat for 5 minutes or 300 seconds. Discard garlic clove. (It’s a bad day to be garlic.) Add bread cubes to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until bread cubes are crisp on all sides. Stir frequently. Remove crisp bread crumbs or croutons and place them on paper towels to drain.

Add romaine squares and croutons to salad bowl. (Add optional anchovies here.)

Add egg, Dijon mustard, pepper, salt, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, olive oil, and red wine vinegar to blender. Use mix or middle setting to blend ingredients for 30 seconds. Pour this dressing into salad bowl. Lightly toss salad. Sprinkle salad with Parmesan cheese.

Note, pregnant women and small children should not eat raw eggs.

TIDBITS

1) Anchovies are a happening item. Italian prostitutes of the 18th century used anchovies when making their famous “spaghetti alla puttanesca” for their customers.

2) The Romans used anchovy entrails to make an aphrodisiac, to reduce ulcers, to cure dysentery, or to season their food.

3) So if you were a Roman woman and a man had you over for dinner and he served anchovy sauce, you might want to wonder about him.

4) On the other hand, we could dramatically cut the cost of health care by requiring all pizzas to come with anchovies. We wouldn’t need hospital or medical insurance, just a large anchovy with extra cheese.

5) And the aphrodisiacal–whoa spell check is okay with that–qualities of anchovy pizzas would mean we wouldn’t have to see those ViagraTM ads on T.V. anymore.

6) But PlayboyTM would sport ads about anchovies all the time.

7) The entire economy would be directed to processing anchovies.

8) Military spending would fall to zero.

9) Our anchovy-driven sexual frenzies would leave us wide open to conquest by our enemies.

10) But anchovies also contain a toxin called domoic acid whichcan drive a seagull insane if ingested in too large a quantity.

11) Which is why the United States Army has warehouses full of anchovies. Within 15 minutes of an enemy invasion, the roofs of all these warehouses retract to reveal millions of vats just brimming with anchovies.

12) America’s heroic seagulls would then gorge themselves on their favorite food, became crazy and attack the invaders, just like in Alfred Hitchcock’s, The Birds.

13) America cannot be conquered.

14) But then any country with sufficient anchovies and pelican couldn’t be conquered.

15) Countries would have an incentive to stockpile these items.

16) I fear an anchovy-and-pelican race between nations.

17) But if worse comes to worse, we will blast the Barney-the-Dinosaur song at our enemies until they cry uncle.

18) Let us banish this frightening scenario by sipping on a wonderful, ice cold root beer. Ah, life is good again.

19) Caesar’s salad, anyone?

– 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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Powegian Breakfast Burrito

Posted on June 2, 2014 by pauldelancey

Fusion Entree

POWEGIAN BREAKFAST BURRITO

INGREDIENTSPowayBreakfastBurrito-

½ white onion
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
6 eggs (1 more egg later)
1 4-ounce can diced green chiles

½ pound sliced ham
1 tomato
1 pound Italian pork sausage
1 cup chipotle salsa
1 cup grated four Mexican cheeses
18 8″ flour tortillas
1 egg

SPECIAL UTENSIL

9″ x 12″ casserole dish

Makes 18 burritos or a saner 9 burritos with the amount of ingredients halved. Takes 40 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mince onion. Dice tomato. Cut ham slices into ½” squares. Add onion and vegetable oil to pan. Sauté onion on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add eggs and diced green chiles. Sauté on medium heat for about 5 minutes or until eggs reach your desired level of doneness. Stir constantly. Remove from heat.

Cut ham into 1″ squares. Dice tomato. Add ham squares, pork sausage, and chipotle salsa to large pot. Cook on medium heat for about 5 minutes or until thoroughly warm. Stir occasionally. Add tomatoes and cook for another 2 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add cheese. Stir until well blended.

Combine egg/chiles with sausage/cheese/tomatoes mix. Place ⅓ cup of combined mixture on middle, bottom third of tortillas. Fold bottom of tortilla over mixture. Fold in sides until they touch. Roll up tortillas from the bottom to make burrito.

Put egg in small dish. Whisk egg. Brush all burritos with whisked egg. Bake at 400 degrees for 12 minutes or until egg on top of burritos is golden brown and burritos begin to brown.

TIDBITS

1) Eating sausages 5,000 years ago enabled the ancient Sumerians to establish the world’s first advanced civilization.

2) The mighty sausage was first mentioned in the play “The Sausage” written by Epimarchus a really, really long time ago. The play got lost, however, and culinary drama disappeared for a really long time. (Note: really, really long time is longer than a really long time.)

3) Aristophanes, the dude from 5th-century B.C., mentioned sausages in one of his plays. Of course, mentioning sausages is not as good or powerful as writing an entire play about this amazing, meaty delicacy.

4) Culinary tragedy struck in the fourth century A.D., when the Catholic Church banned the eating of sausages as being sinful.

5) Church leaders had noticed the barbarians hordes that were carving up the Roman Empire ate sausages at their festivals. Therefore, sausages were ungodlyl.

6) Historians, often wonder why such spirited warfare existed between the barbarians and the Roman Empire as both peoples possessed sausages. Why fight someone else for something you already have?

7) The Catholic Church, over the years, relaxed its stance on sausage eating, banning it only on Fridays.

8) Arabs burst out of the Arabian peninsula in 632 A.D.. Fired by strong religious belief and fortified with beef sausages, they conquered North Africa, Spain, Sicily, and the Middle East.

9) Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenburg. Normal historians take this to be the start of the Reformation which split Christian church into Catholic and Protestant ones. Culinary historians speculate that if Martin Luther had only been able to eat sausages without guilt, he would have been devouring this wonderful entree to his heart’s content. Full of sausage-induced good will, he couldn’t have possibly mustered up the rage to write even two theses, let alone ninety five. The Christian church would still be one and horrors of the Thirty Years War, 1618-1648, fought between Protestant and Catholic Europe would never have happened.

10) Sausage-eating Protestants and six-out-of-seven-days-a-week Catholics built vast colonial empires starting from the 1500s. These empires fell apart during the mid-twentieth century when the European nations switched from consuming vast amounts of sausages to more trendy things such as sushi, salmon quesadillas, and specialty coffees.

12) Vatican II led many Catholics to believe that eating meat on Fridays is okay. The world has not had a major war since then.

13) “To retain respect for sausages and laws, one must not watch them in the making.”
– German chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898).

14) “War without fire is like sausages without mustard.”
– King Henry V.

15) “The dog’s kennel is no place to keep a sausage.”
-Danish proverb

16) “Yum.”
-me

– 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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Sausage and Pepperoni Pizza

Posted on March 12, 2014 by pauldelancey

Italian Entree

SAUSAGE AND PEPPERONI PIZZA

INGREDIENTSSausagePeppPizza-

1 pizza crust
2 cups pasta sauce (see recipe)
8 ounces sausage meat
4 ounces sliced pepperoni
1⅔ cups mozzarella cheese

SPECIAL UTENSIL

16″ pizza pan

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put pizza crust on pizza pan. Spread pasta sauce over entire crust. Make ½” sausage balls. Put sausage balls and pepperoni slice evenly over sauce. Bake pizza in oven at 400 degrees for 10-to-15 minutes or until cheese turns golden brown.

TIDBITS

1) Pizza has a long and rich history. So does the game of rock, paper, scissors.

2) The game started as rock, rock, rock in Vivaldi Gorge in the year 3,200,010 BC.. The game was played with real rocks and always ended in a tie. Caveman Ogg never lost. He even considered going pro, but stopped from a lack of corporate sponsors.

3) Ten years later Ogg accused Lucy from Olduvai Gorge of cheating. The enraged Ogg used the rock to brain his foe. Ogg fictionalized the account of his bloody deed on his cave’s walls. This was the start of the literary crime genre. So some good came out of it.

4) Lucy’s kin attacked Ogg’s family, driving them far away. In 1949 Drs. Leakey started looking for human bones in Vivaldi Gorge. Ten years later, they switched to Olduvai Gorge and found the bones of Lucy next to a tablet inscribed with the cryptic code of W-0, L-0, T-1,723. Oh, a baseball was found as well, but that’s almost certainly an artifact.

5) In 1845, Alexander Cartwright formalized the rules of baseball. Baseball with its clear victor took America and much of the world by storm. Dr. Simon Iota did change the game of rock, rock, rock to rock, paper, scissors, paper in 1867. But the new rules came too late. Baseball would reign supreme. Rock, paper, scissors is hardly played and is never shown on T.V., except maybe on ESPN4 at 4 a.m. on Tuesdays.

– 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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