Angry Man #1
– 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
2 eggs
1 pound farmers’ cheese or cottage cheese
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ cup flour (5 tablespoons more later)
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup raisins (optional)
3 tablespoons flour (2½ tablespoons more later)
2 tablespoons flour
1½ tablespoons vegetable oil (½ tablespoon per batch)
3 tablespoons sour cream (optional)
1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar
Serves 4. Takes 40 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add eggs to mixing bowl. Beat eggs well with whisk. Add cheese. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add baking powder, ½ cup flour, salt, and sugar. Mix with whisk until batter is well blended. Fold in raisins.
Spread 3 tablespoons flour over flat surface. Ladle batter evenly oven flour. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons flour on batter.
Add ½ tablespoon vegetable oil to large pan. Heat oil at medium heat until a bit of batter begins to dance. Use spatula to carefully add 2″ square pieces of flour-covered batter. (Don’t let them touch each other. You might need to cook in batches.) Cook for 2 minutes per side or until brown all over. Repeat for each batch. If desired, garnish with sour cream or confectioners’ sugar.
TIDBITS
1) This is the first time my tidbits have not been funny. Twelve days before writing this, Putin ordered a unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. This is an existential war for the defenders. I so wish for better days for Ukraine. The nation’s flag is on the left. The country’s symbol, the sunflower, is on the right.
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.
Serious Young Man Waiting for His Serious Show
Here is the fourth installment of my favorite, serious TV shows. I’m probably forgetting some great shows. Some I never saw.
Adventures of Robin Hood
Agatha Raisin *
Avengers *
Californians
Connections
Dragnet (1951-1959)
Durrells in Corfu*
Grantchester
Hill Street Blues
Lone Ranger
McCloud
Murder Call
Number 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
Rockford Files
Saint
Scott and Bailey
Star Trek
The Tunnel
Time Tunnel
Viking Valhalla
* = Primarily serious, these shows have a strong element of humor as 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
4 carrots
1 celery root or 3 celery stalks
2 parsnips
1 leek
2 medium yellow onions
¼ head Savoy cabbage or regular cabbage
3½ pounds chicken parts with bone in
5 allspice berries, aka allspice seeds
3 cloves
6 peppercorns
2 teaspoons salt
4 quarts water or enough to cover vegetables and chicken in pot
2 tablespoon fresh parsley
½ pound thin egg noodles or thin regular noodles
SPECIAL UTENSILS
8-quart pot or 2 4-quart pots
Serves 16. (This recipe is meant for many people. Feel to cut into in half or more.) Takes 3 hours.
PREPARATION
Peel carrots, celery root, and parsnips. Trim leek; keep only white and light-green parts. Leave onions unpeeled and add them to pan. Heat at medium-high heat until you get burn marks. (The burned yellow skins help color the broth.)
Add chicken parts, allspice, cloves, peppercorns, salt, cabbage, carrots, celery root, onions, parsnips, and leek to large pot. Fill pot with enough water to cover everything. Simmer at low heat for 2 hours 30 minutes or until chicken parts are tender and fall off the bone.. Stir enough to prevent burning. Skim off foam as it accumulates on surface to keep the broth clear.
Remove chicken parts, carrots, celery root, parsnips, leek, cabbage, and onions from broth. Tear meat from each chicken part into 4 or more pieces. Cut each cabbage, carrot, celery root, leek, and parsnip into 8 pieces. Remove skins and roots from onions. Cut each onion into 4 pieces. Return all of these ingredients to broth.
About 15 minutes before soup is ready, cook noodles according to instructions on package. Ladle broth with chicken and veggies into serving bowls. Add equal amounts of noodles to each bowl. Dice parsley. Garnish soup with parsley.
TIDBITS
1) People often ask me how much of each ingredient it would take for to make a recipe for everybody in an entire down. Here’s what it would look like for Poway, my fair city.
Ingredients for FEED ALL OF POWAY CHICKEN SOUP
12,141 carrots
3,035 celery roots
6,071 parsnips
3,035 leeks
759 heads cabbage
6,071 yellow onions
10,623 pounds chicken parts
15,176 allspice berries
6,071 cloves
18,212 peppercorns
126 cups salt
2) That’s a lot of food. Buy in bulk.
3) That’s a lot of food to fit in one car. Or even a van. You might want to organize a convoy of vans.
4) But tiny hatchbacks such as the Fit(tm) carry a lot in the back,
5) It’s deceiving I know, but that car can carry of groceries, especially you fold down the rear seats.
6) Anyway, it’s likely no supermarkets, especially the neighborhood ma-and-pa ones have 6,071 parsnips on hand.
7) Nor even the big box stores such as Costco(tm) could fill your ingredients list. You’ll have to go to multiple big stores.
8) All at once. If people hear that all the celery roots, parsnips, and leeks have been cleared out of one store, mass hysteria will ensue. People will start a celery root, parsnip, and leek run the lights of which have never been seen.
9) You and your Feed All Of Poway Chicken Soup pals will have to hit all big box stores at one. You will have to do this with military precision.
10) But then there will be no veggies and roots anywhere in your county. News of this shortage will travel rapidly. Shortages will occur across the land. Celery root-parsnip-and leek riots will erupt across the nation. Police will loose control. Our country will slide into anarchy. Vegetable-and-root lacking people will foment revolution. So on second thought, making this recipe for an entire city is probably not to best thing to do. And it would take a long time to cook.
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.
People cuss so much that we take it for granted. But how did people way back when learn this fine art? Wanda Wunder wonders.
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 avocados
1 green chile
2 garlic cloves
⅓ cup fresh cilantro
½ cup fresh parsley
1½ tablespoons lime juice
⅛ teaspoon pepper
¾ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons olive oil
2½ tablespoons white vinegar
SPECIAL UTENSIL
food processor
Serves 8. Takes 15 minutes.
PREPARATION
Peel and seed avocados and green chile. Add all ingredients to food processor. Blend until you get the desired consistency. Store in a Mason jar in the refrigerator.
TIDBITS
1) Guasacaca, wait, wait, wait! How the heck does my spell checker know the word “Guasacaca?”
2) Does everybody in America and the rest of the English speaking world know what guasacaca is? Do people know where to find guasacaca in their supermarket? Or if not, do they ask the employees for help in finding it. Hint: it’s usually in aisle 7A.
3) Oh great, just great I saved this file to look up something. Now that I’ve come back, the spell checker doesn’t recognize the word “guasacaca” anymore. I tell you, there are dark forces lurking in every hidden crevice of our world.
4) Well now, I don’t have much space left to expound on how to find gusacacaca if you don’t feel like making it. Guasacaca resides in vast pools in the Earth’s mantle. It then gradually and gently percolates upward and through Earth’s crust in much the same way coffee percolates.
5) If you’re lucky enough to live above subterranean pools of guasacaca, then all you have to do is go to a guasacaca lake, scoop some up with a bucket, and take it home. However, if you reside above great pools of lava, then you will suffer through endless cycles of volcanoes and lava flows. Choose the location of your home wisely.
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 pound hot dogs or sausages
1 medium onion
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 tablespoons flour
1¾ cups beef broth
¾ cup cream
3 tablespoons ketchup
½ teaspoon pepper
Serves 4. Takes 30 minutes.
PREPARATION
Cut hot dogs into circles ½” thick. Dice onion. Add onion and vegetable oil to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add hot-dog circles. Stir until well blended. Sauté for 3 minutes or until hot-dog slices brown.
Lower heat to medium. Add flour. Fry until flour turns browns. Mix until well blended. Add beef broth. Stir with whisk until there are no lumps. Bring to boil using medium-high heat. Stir frequently. Add cream, ketchup, and pepper. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Goes well with mashed potatoes.
TIDBITS
1) Culinary historians tell us this Finnish dish actually came from China some thousands of years ago and that it was originally called Yin Yang. Indeed, culinary philosophers maintain that Yin Yang is a Chinese philosophical concept that describes how apparently opposite forces may actually be complementary and interconnected in the culinary world. Later Chinese philosophers extended this concept to the entire natural world. Now everybody, not just chefs, can have big thinks about how things fit together.
2) Just so you know, it’s extremely windy outside my window.
3) For some 217 years, 9 months, and 26 days, Chinese debated on what were the grand universal twin powers from which flowed all opposite and complementary forces. Then Chef Tai Chi Pei piped up, “The twin universal powers are Hot Dog Sauce and Mashed Potatoes.” All the philosophers agreed at once. It’s just one of things that had been hard to see, but became incredibly obvious once presented. This revolutionary idea made its way to Finland via the Silk Road. Inner-truth seeking Finnish chefs gave culinary shape to this philosophy with this dish. Now you 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.
My last homework prior to yesterday was my doctoral thesis, “Official Reserve Management and Forecasts of Official Reserves.” The book ran over 300 pages, featured more equations than you could shake a stick at, researching data from all sorts of official sources such as the International Monetary, survey of the literature, three stage iterative least squares with precautions against heteroskedasticity, serial correlations, Durbin-Watts statistics, graphs, projecting beyond the sample period, and much more.
Then there’s yesterday’s homework assignment from my eye therapy. I had to draw straight lines and color in rectangles without going into the next box. It’s an exercise designed to get my eyes working together again. But it looks suspiciously like one of my First-Grade homework assignments. I’ve come full circle in my education.
First Grade Homework?
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
1½ pounds ground beef
2 teaspoons seasonings (garlic salt, pepper, etc.)
4 hamburger buns
optional toppings (cheese, lettuce, sliced onions, ketchup, etc.)
SPECIAL UTENSILS
smoker
electric thermometer
wood chips (hickory or mesquite)
Serves 4. Takes 1 hour 20 minutes for rare to 2 hours for well done. This time includes preheating the smoker. Times vary with smokers.
PREPARATION
Preheat smoker to 230 degrees. Add wood chips to smoker. While smoker heats, add ground beef and seasonings to mixing bowl. Mix with hands until well blended. Form beef into 4 patties. Patties should be about 1″ thick. Make an small indentation in middle of patties. (This helps keep the juices in the patties.)
Place burgers directly on smoker racks. Cook until internal temperature of burgers reaches your desired level of doneness. (Rare = 120 degrees, medium = 140 degrees, well done = 160 degrees.) There is so need to flip patties. Toast buns. Assemble bottom buns, smoked patties, toppings, and top buns.
TIDBITS
1) There are many ways to determine direction. The most obvious one is the compass. It however, don’t work well if you’re near one of the Earth’s magnetic poles. They also become completely useless when you forget to bring one. Then you and your friend, Bart, find yourself completely lost at the northern magnetic pole. Bart finally realizes he had a compass with him all the time. But now his compass doesn’t work because, well you’re at a magnetic pole.
2) Bart pipes up, “Say, moss grows on the north side of trees. That’s how we’ll find our direction.” Not quite, moss mostly grows on the north side. And there are no trees at the North Magnetic Pole. You resolve there and then to never again hike the Everglades with Bart.
3) If only you had had lettuce, onion, tomato, and a smoked hamburger patty. The veggies will always point to the southwest and the patty to the northeast. Now you 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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