Posts Tagged With: NASA

I am Holding the Planet Jupiter For Ransom

Posted on March 7, 2023 by pauldelancey

That’s right,

I mean business.

Early this morning, I turned my Miniturizo Ray(tm) on Jupiter. The planet is now only four inches across, easy peasy for my PlanetoPull Ray(tm).

So, the entire planet Jupiter is now sitting comfortably in a little bowl on a table in my office.

And there it’s going to stay until I’m paid one trillion-and-five dollars.*
*The extra five dollars is just a negotiating play. That way the ransom payers can say they bargained me down and feel good about themselves.

Anyway, if you want to ever again see Jupiter in the night sky, you’d better come up with the cash, Nash.

The left-below picture shows Jupiter in my office. The right-below picture shows a NASA photo. Proof you cannot deny.

You don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t get paid. I might draw a big butt on Jupiter. Or maybe I’ll just keep the planet as a paperweight.

– 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.

Categories: Secrets of the Universe | Tags: apocalyptic, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, dollars, hunks, Jupiter, Lutheran, murders, NASA, night sky, Paul R. De Lancey, ransom, recipes, thriller | 5 Comments

Loving Poem About NASA

Posted on February 2, 2023 by pauldelancey

NASA

NASA says they’re going to look more
For things they’ve never found.
How do they know what to look for
If they’ve never found them?

When Pooh looked for heffalumps
He never found the missing grumps.
But when Columbus looked for China
He found something much more fine-a.

Recently, I lost my sets of keys.
It was indeed of a time of anguish.
But I found them, for you see
I knew what for to wish.

So NASA, look around stars
Then you’ll find what is new
When you look up in the blue
OK, live large. Find planets, too.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

Categories: poems | Tags: apocalyptic, Chef Paul, China, Columbus, Comic Chef, cookbook, heffalumps, Lutheran, murders, NASA, Paul R. De Lancey, planets, Pooh, recipes, stars, thriller | 3 Comments

Turkish Ezogelin Soup

Posted on November 3, 2022 by pauldelancey

Turkish Soup

EZOGELIN

INGREDIENTS – SOUP

¼ cup bulgur wheat
1⅓ cups red lentils
2½ tablespoons rice
2 garlic cloves
1 large onion
1 tomato
2 tablespoons butter (2 more tablespoons later)
2 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
2½ teaspoons flour
2 tablespoons tomato paste
6 cups broth, beef, chicken, or vegetable

INGREDIENTS – TOPPING

2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon dried mint
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
½ tablespoon paprika

Serves 6. Takes 50 minutes.

PREPARATION – SOUP

Wash and drain bulgur wheat, red lentils, and rice. Mince garlic, onion, and tomato. Add garlic, onion, 2 tablespoons butter, and olive oil to pot. Simmer at medium heat for 4 minutes until onion softens. Stir frequently.

Add flour. Sauté until flour browns. Stir constantly. (Browning occurs quickly. Don’t let it burn.) Add minced tomato and tomato paste. Stir with spoon until well blended. Add broth. Stir with spoon until well blended. Add bulgur wheat, red lentils, and rice. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 25 minutes or until lentils soften. Stir enough to prevent burning. Remove from heat.

PREPARATION – TOPPING

While lentils simmer, add 2 tablespoons butter to pan. Melt butter using medium heat. Add all other topping ingredients to sauce pan Sauté briefly until butter sizzles. Stir constantly.

PREPARATION – ASSEMBLY

Ladle soup into serving bowls. Drizzle topping over soup. Goes well with lemon slices.

TIDBITS

1) The Ezogelin is round.

2) This is because it is has been ladled into a round bowl.

3) Indeed, all soups ladled into a round bowl become round, not just Ezogelin.

4) What if you wanted your Ezogelin to be another shape, say rectangular?

5) Sad to say, finding a rectangular soup bowl can be quite difficult.

5) Find a hexagonal bowl, even more so.

6) Even though you could place rectangular and hexagonal bowls next to each other and not have any open space between them. As the following nonexistent picture could have shown.

7) So alas, we must work with round bowls.

8) One possibility is to put a square cookie cutter in the bowl. Squirt liquid nitrogen into the space between the square cutter and the round edge of the bowl. Then flash freeze the nitrogen.

9) May I suggest using super-duper insulated gloves while doing this?

10) Why? Nitrogen becomes liquid at -320 degrees Fahrenheit. It freezes at -346. The average low temperature in Wisconsin in the winter is 8 degrees and you’d wear gloves then.

11) What should do if you drop liquid nitrogen? Step back immediately, point at the liquid nitrogen, and say in your loudest, sternest voice, “Liquid nitrogen! Don’t touch it. Your hand will freeze and shatter.”

12) Well, that’s bad. It should go without saying, that you shouldn’t try to mop up a liquid-nitrogen spill either.

13) What about the frozen nitrogen in our newly constructed bowl, the one with the square center? The frozen nitrogen will freeze anything that comes in contact with it. This is unarguably bad for your guests, except of course, for the truly unpleasant ones. Check with the FBI on this one.

14) So we must regretfully search for another way to make square soup.

15) The one that appeals to me is to place repelling force fields, with the correct strengths of course, along the edge of the bowl. These fields will push the soup away and into the shape of a square.

16) Way cool. You’ll dazzle your guests. Safely, too.

17) Not only that, you’ll impress the heck out of the scientists at NASA.

18) Life is good again.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

Categories: cuisine, international, science | Tags: apocalyptic, bulgur wheat, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, De Lancey, Ezogelin, force fields, good food, liquid nitrogen, mushrooms, NASA, Paul De Lancey, Paul R. De Lancey, recipes, red lentils, solid nitrogen, soup, soup bowl, thriller, Turkish, Wisconsin | Leave a comment

Mexican Stuffed Bell Peppers

Posted on September 16, 2022 by pauldelancey

Mexican Entree

STUFFED BELL PEPPERS

INGREDIENTS

4 bell peppers
¼ cup fresh cilantro (1 tablespoon more later)
1 16-ounce can refried beans
¼ cup cooked rice
¼ cup sour cream
½ tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon lime juice
½ teaspoon pepper
⅔ cup Mexican blend or Cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro

Serves 4. Takes 55 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut tops off bell peppers. Seed bell peppers. Dice ¼ cup cilantro. Add refried beans, cooked rice, sour cream, ¼ cup diced cilantro, cumin, lime juice, and pepper to mixing bowl. Mix with fork or spatula until bean mix becomes creamy.

Use spoon to stuff bell peppers with creamy beans. Add stuffed bell peppers to baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until bell peppers start to soften. Remove bell peppers and sprinkle cheese on refried beans. Bake again for 3 minutes or until cheese melts.

Dice 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro. Garnish bell peppers with cilantro.

TIDBITS

1) The thrusters on NASA’s rockets look remarkably like Mexican Stuffed Bell Peppers as the pictures to the right show.
.
2) This is no accident as NASA’s scientists love Mexican food. They’ve always have.

3) This is why NASA incorporates so much that is Mexican food into their rockets, space stations, and excursion modules.

4) Using this dish as the design for rocket thrusters was such a brilliant idea that when one scientist looked down on his Mexican Stuffed Pepper, he said, “Let’s use the shape of this bell pepper for our thrusters.” His luncheon pals threw up their hands in agreement. “Yea, why not.” And so, the quest to conquer space began.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: apocalyptic, bell peppers, cookbook, De Lancey, entree, excursion modules, good food, hunks, Lutheran, Mexican, murders, mushrooms, NASA, Paul De Lancey, Paul R. De Lancey, recipes, rocket thrusters, rockets, scientists, space stations, stuffed bell peppers, thriller | Leave a comment

Goofy Man Talks About Tacos

Posted on August 6, 2022 by pauldelancey

Goofy Man says what’s in our hearts.

Goofy Man #1

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: apocalyptic, asteroids, budget, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, De Lancey, good food, goofy man, hunks, Lutheran, murders, mushrooms, NASA, Paul De Lancey, Paul R. De Lancey, recipes, tacos, thriller | 2 Comments

How Many Strawberries Will Fit In Uranus?

Posted on July 20, 2022 by pauldelancey

Dear Reader,

Quite a few! Uranus is incredibly huge. So we’ll need to use a lot of large numbers to find the answer. Fortunately NASA, took a lot of accurate photos of Uranus. Hey, did you know that Uranus was originally called George? It’s true! Anyway, . . .

1 cup = 8 medium strawberries
1 cup = 14.4375 cubic inches
1 cubic mile = 254,358,061,056,000 or 2.544 * 10^14 cubic inches
1 cubic mile = 17,617,874,358,857 or 1.762 * 10^13 cups
1 cubic mile = 140,942,994,870.857 or 1.409 * 10 ^10^14 strawberries
Uranus = 68,300,000.000.000 or 6.83 * 10^13 cubic miles

So, ta da!

Uranus = 9,626,406,549,679,540,000,000,000,000 or 9.626 * 10^27 strawberries

There! That’s how many strawberries would fit in Uranus.

Now, you don’t have buy oodles of strawberries for a hands-on experiment. Besides Uranus is a cold and gaseous place.

Strawberry…………………………………… Uranus

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D

Categories: observations | Tags: apocalyptic, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, De Lancey, George, hunks, Lutheran, murders, mushrooms, NASA, Paul De Lancey, Paul R. De Lancey, recipes, strawberries, thriller, Uranus | Leave a comment

Mauritian Napolitaines

Posted on March 17, 2022 by pauldelancey

Mauritian Dessert

SIMPLE NAPOLITAINES
(Sandwich Cookies)

INGREDIENTS

1 cup butter, softened
2 cups flour (3 more tablespoons later)
3 tablespoons flour
3 tablespoons raspberry jam
2 9-ounce bottles pink cookie icing (Not cake icing)

SPECIAL UTENSILS

electric beater
1 cookie sheet
parchment paper
1½” cookie cutter (Must be a cookie cutter)
sonic obliterator

Makes 20 cookies. Takes 3 hours 30 minutes.

PREPARATION

Preheat oven to 335 degrees. Add butter and 2 cups flour to large mixing bowl. Blend with electric beater set or medium until butter and flour form a dough ball. Sprinkle 3 tablespoons flour on flat surface. Roll out dough until it is about ⅓” thick. Cut out dough circles with 1½” cookie cutter. Make them as level and smooth as you can. (I cannot stress this enough. Smooth cookie sides will make proper icing much easier later.) Cover cookie sheets with parchment paper. Place dough circles on parchment paper.

Bake dough circles at 335 degrees for 20 minutes or until the middle of a circle is no longer soft when pressed. Don’t let the circles turn brown! They should remain pale. Gently life parchment paper with circles and let cool on a wire rack or plate. (Leave circles on parchment paper.)

Once circles have cooled completely, spread ½ teaspoon raspberry jam over a baked circle. Gently place another circle over the jam to make a cookie. Repeat until all circles have been used.

Put cookies on large plate. Do not let them touch each other. Pour icing from bottles over cookies. Make sure to pour icing over the edge of the cookie tops so that the icing will flow down and coat the sides of the cookies. Do this all in one go. Let sit until icing hardens completely.

This is a hard one to do perfectly. There’s a reason dessert chefs differ from the other chefs. So appreciate why some things, particularly these cookies, can be expensive. And for the insensitive oafs who give you guff about your cookies, zap them with your sonic obliterator. You don’t need their negativity in your kitchen.

TIDBITS

1) Napolitaines look a lot like UFOs.

2) By the way, Napolitaines is pronounced Napolitaines.

3) I’m glad I cleared that up.

4) UFOs really do resemble Napolitaines. There’s a reason for that.

5) Having a successful space program brings enormous international prestige.

6) If you were to ask people what are the ten greatest things about America, 93.6% would say, “NASA.” The remaing 6.4% couldn’t find a No. 2 pencil and so, couldn’t fill out the questionaire.

7) So what do you if you want to develop a space program but simply do not possess the vast resources of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration?

8) Well, what do you if you want to make crab salad, but you haven’t the money to buy crabmeat?

9) Why, you purchase krabmeat, a crabmeat substitute. It’s made of various seafoods and costs much less than the real thing.

10) Similarly, if you wish to fling manmade objects into space, you send up something small. Dispense with lunar modules, the Hubble telescope, space stations or other enormously heavy gadgetry.

11) Fling Napolitaines from the Earth instead.

12) A batch of Napolitaines is easy to make. All you need is butter, flour, raspberry jam, and pink cookie icing.

13) While even the simplest of Hubble telescopes involve: miles of circuitry, rare metals, scads of computing power, and other complicated gizmos.

14) The Apollo Program required gigantic rockets, specialize fuel, more frigging circuitry, with all of its parts engineered with incredible precision, and a reinforced launching pad to hurl its lunar modules to well, the moon.

15) What does it take to fling Napolitaines into outer space?

16) A really big slingshot.

17) So that’s what thrifty Mauritius did. It slingshotted hundreds of Napolitaines into space. Some made it to the moon, some to Neptune, and some even exited the Solar System. However, many Napolitaines never left our atmosphere and orbit our planet a few dozen feet in the air. The cookies in this recipe, at that altitude, resemble alien space ships. Except for the color. Orbiting UFOs are grey or off white. Napolitaines are pink. Now you know.

Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D., and travel advisor

Categories: cuisine, history, international | Tags: America, apocalyptic, Apollo Program, Chef Paul, Comic Chef, cookbook, crabmeat, De Lancey, dessert, Earth, good food, Hubble telescope, hunks, krabmeat, Lutheran, Mauritian, Mauritius, murders, mushrooms, NASA, Paul R. De Lancey, rare metals, recipes, slingshot, space program, thriller, UFOs | 2 Comments

Secrets of the Universe #2, Asteroids Are Cocoa Pebbles(tm)

Posted on January 29, 2022 by pauldelancey

Asteroid or Cocoa Pebble?

Yesterday’s blog proved that the Universe arose from an exploded egg. But maybe not. For cereal astrophysicists maintain just as vehemently that all galaxies derived from one giant cereal bowl. Of Cocoa Pebbles.

According to these plucky scientists, nothing happened until at 12am, January, 0 CBS (Cereal Bowl Spilling) the cereal bowl tipped over. Speculation runs rampant and tensions flare over how exactly the bowl tipped, but all cereal astrophysicists agree that it did. Out flew the Cocoa Pebbles. When they coalesced over billions of years through gravitational forces, they became solid planets like Earth and Mars. Whenever Cocoa Pebbles didn’t come together, they remained Coca-Pebbly Asteroids.

Milk from the cereal bowl expanded in all directions and in great amounts. The Milky War formed from this very same milk. Gaseous giants such as Jupiter and Uranus formed from this milk as well. The Great Red Spot and other colors in Jupiter, however, derive from Fruity Pebbles(tm). The gassy giant Uranus is also a breakfast cereal. Did you know that NASA’s deep-space probes took photos of Uranus? Heh, heh.

All those stars in the night-sky are gigantic balls of milk that became so massive that their very own gravitational fields compressed the milk molecules to such an extent that they generated heat and lights. So, we are seeing milk rays that have traveled thousands of light years to get to us.

There you have it. Look at the photo to the right. Can you tell if it is a Cocoa Pebble or an asteroid? You can’t. They’re the same. Proof you cannot deny.

And every time you eat a spoonful of delicious Cocoa Pebbles, you’re devouring a building block of our universe. Heavens, space is tasty.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

Categories: Secrets of the Universe | Tags: asterpod.Satirm, astrophysicists, bacon, breakfast, cereal, Chef Paul, cocoa, cocoa pebbles, Comic Chef, cookbook, egg, good food, gravitational fields, Great Red Spot, Jupiter, Lutheran, NASA, Paul De Lancey, pebbles, recipes, thriller, universe, Uranus | Leave a comment

Secrets of the Universe # 1 – Saturn’s Moon Is An Egg Yolk

Posted on January 28, 2022 by pauldelancey

The building blocks of the Universe aren’t hydrogen, nitrogen, iron, and other elements. No. Eggs make up the most important part of all the galaxies. In fact, culinary astrophysicists believe the Universe came from one incredibly dense chicken egg.

Then the colossal egg exploded, just like when you’ve forgotten about an egg you’re boiling. First, the egg water boils the egg. Then the water evaporates, just like what happened to Mars’ atmosphere. At this point, all the energy from the burner goes into the egg. The egg heats up until it can no longer contain all the incoming heat. The egg explodes, flinging bits of egg in all directions. This is know as the Big Egg Bang Theory, or BEBT.

The Earth’s egginess has been hidden by millions of years of accumulating egg-shell dust, aka, soil. But you really can see the Solar System’s egginess in one of Jupiter’s moons, Titan. Look at the two photos below. The one on the left is one of NASA’s images of Titan. The picture on the right is a hardboiled egg yolk. They are the same. They’re the same! Titan is made of egg. Proof you cannot deny.

Titan Hardboiled Egg Yolk

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

Categories: Secrets of the Universe | Tags: apocalyptic, astrophysicists, atmosphere, Chef Paul, chicken, Comic Chef, cookbook, egg, galaxies, good food, hardboiled, hunks, Lutheran, Mars, murders, NASA, Paul De Lancey, recipes, Saturn, thriller, Titan, yolk | 2 Comments

How to Circumnavigate the Earth

Posted on December 3, 2021 by pauldelancey

Paul De Lancey, circumnavigating

On September 8, 1519, Ferdinand Magellan and 238 seamen of various ranks left Spain to circumnavigate the Earth. It was a long ocean voyage! Just over two years. Only 30 of the 239 returned home. Then out of those 30, twelve had spent some in a Cape Verde prison.

We can draw two conclusion from this.

1) You are more likely to survive sailing around the world if you go to prison en route.

Survival rate, no prison sentence = 7.9% (18 sailors out of 227)

Survival rate, prison sentence = 100% (12 sailors of 12)

Noting this, NASA plans to equip all long-range spaceships with prisons.

2) It takes a lot of time and a lot of people dying just to get back to the spot where you started. I mean, what the heck? If getting back to the same spot is circumnavigating, then I’m doing it right now. And no one’s dying, either.

You too can go around the world. Just stand still and say, “I’ve gone around the world.”

Congratulations, you world traveler, you.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.

Categories: travel | Tags: apocalyptic, Cape Verde, circumnavigate, circumnavigating, Comic Chef, cookbook, dying, good food, hunks, Magellan, NASA, Paul De Lancey, prison, recipes, Spain, survival, thriller, world | 2 Comments

Posts Tagged With: NASA

I am Holding the Planet Jupiter For Ransom

Loving Poem About NASA