Wanda Wunder #16
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.
Orange World, what fun!
People, especially kids, love theme parks. However, dissension often splits apart the happy family. Everyone wants to go to a particular ride or attraction. The bickering never ends. When an agreement is finally reached, you and the surly siblings enter into a seemingly infinite line.
So if the lengthy lines mean you’re never really going to get on a ride, why not go to Orange World instead? The genius of Orange World comes from the fact that its one line does not merely appear to be infinite, it is infinite! And with one line, there will be no discussions about which one to join. And how is this one line infinite? It’s a circle! Like the second hand on a clock, you shuffle endlessly forward around the circle.
Sure, you won’t get on a ride at Orange World, but you weren’t getting on a ride at the major theme parks anyway. And at one-third the price of a major theme park, you can’t afford to not venture into Orange World.
Why is it called Orange World? In the middle of the circular line sits a giant orange. It’s soothing to look at an oversize orange. And don’t we all need more serenity in our lives? I know I do. Go to Orange World and find the inner peace you’ve been craving. Take your family to Orange World. Take them today.
– 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.
Bowling is a fine sport. Many people are great at it. Many more enjoy it. But let’s face it. It’s expensive. Your costs are:
1) Buying a bowling ball for $50 to $160 or suffer with the ones the bowling alley provides.
2) Buying bowling shoes or $60 to $250 or rent the grungy ones the bowling alley provide for maybe $5.
3) Renting a bowling lane each an every time you wish to bowl for $4 to $10 per outing
4) Gas money and wear and tear on your care.
If only there were a cheaper way to bowl.
I’m glad you spoke up. Meet the latest must-play sport:
Bowling With Oranges
How could you not want to switch from bowling balls to bowling with oranges? Oranges cost maybe 30 cents a pound. You can eat your orange after the bowling is over. Can you do that with a bowling ball? No, I didn’t think so. Unlike with a bowling ball, you won’t need to go to the hospital when you drop an orange on your foot. You can also make juice with an orange, another advantage for the fruit.
The outlay for orange bowling is minimal. In addition to the tiny cost of the oranges, there is only the one-time outlay of buying small plastic, or wooden, bowling tins. Even this will only set you back five dollars. There are no bowling alley fees. Simply clear off your dining-room tables, and voilà, you have your own bowling alley. As for bowling shoes, just keep your shoes on.
And by gosh, bowling with oranges is so much fun. Form orange-bowling leagues and surrender yourselves to unbridled fun.
– 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.
Chinese Entree
INGREDIENTS
1 orange (Keep peel)
12 ounces flank steak
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 egg white
1 tablespoon rice wine (sometimes called mirin) or pale sherry
1⅓ cups white rice
1″ fresh ginger (or 2 teaspoons fresh)
1 garlic clove
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons beef broth
2 tablespoons soy sauce
⅛ teaspoon pepper
½ tablespoon sugar
5 dried red chiles
1½ cups peanut oil
Fresh zest from 1 orange or 2 teaspoon dry zest
SPECIAL UTENSIL
wok or Dutch oven
zest peeler or potato peeler
Makes 4 bowls. Takes 1½ hours.
PREPARATION
Remove peel orange. Save orange slices. Remove zest, the orange part of the peel, with zest peeler. Dice zest. (If you want to have a more authentic taste and can afford to plan ahead, spread the zest evenly over wax paper and let sit for 1-to-2 days until it is dry and brittle. Or just buy orange zest.)
Cut flank steak into strips 2″ long and ¼” wide. Add cornstarch, egg white, and rice wine to mixing bowl. Toss strips until they are well coated. Add steak strips. Put in refrigerator and marinate for 1 hour.
While beef marinates cook rice according to instructions on package. Mince ginger and garlic clove. Add sesame oil, ginger, and garlic to skillet. Sauté at medium-high heat for 3 minutes or until garlic turns color. Stir frequently. Remove sautéed ginger and garlic to mixing bowl. Add beef broth, soy sauce, pepper, and sugar to mixing bowl. Blend with whisk.
Dice red chiles. Add peanut oil and steak strips to wok. Sauté on medium-high for 2 minutes or until steak strips start to turn brown. Remove steak and drain on paper towels. Reserve 1½ tablespoons of peanut oil Add 1½ tablespoons reserved peanut oil, orange zest, and red chiles to wok. Stir frequently. Sauté on medium-high heat for 2 minutes or until chiles darken and oil smells fragrant. Stir frequently.
Add ginger/garlic/broth/soy sauce from mixing bowl to middle of wok. Return steak strips back to wok. Sauté at medium-high heat for 1 minute or until the steak strips become crispy, shiny, and have absorbed most of the sauce. Serve on top of rice. Garnish with orange slices.
TIDBITS
1) Orange beef originally came from orange cattle roaming the Painted Dessert in Arizona. Their orange hide helped the beeves, or cattle, blend in with the Dessert’s orange rocks. This camouflage technique helped the beeves escape voracious giant carnivorous beavers.
2) Things looked bad when the vicious beavers began Beaver Dam, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient Animal World. The water level in the Painted Dessert began to rise. Then rose even more. The beeves moved higher and higher up the canyon walls. Soon they would reach the green rocks where their orange hides would stand out starkly against the green rocks. The toothy beavers began salivating.
3) Then in a fortuitous stroke of fiction, humans, the Rohohoe tribe, in fact, arrived in the Painted Dessert, bringing commas for run-on sentences and arrows for hunting.
4) And hunt they did. Giant beavers tasted great when sauteéd in a lemon-basil sauce. Life was good for the Rohohoe. It was even better for the beeves. Their feared predator gone, their numbers rebounded or soared, whichever metaphor works best for you.
5) The ancient Chinese loved orange beef, having acquired a taste for it years before. Unfortunately, the abominable snowman, yeti, hunted their own orange beeves to extinction. Orange hides really made hunting in the snow-covered mountains of Tibet overly easy.
6) Fortunately, the ancient Rohohoe loved Chinese jewelry. Trade talks, smoothed by a mutual love of ScrabbleTM proceeded rapidly. And so began the great orange beef cattle drives.
7) Until global warming caused sea levels to rise to such an extent that the land bridge between North America and Asia disappeared. Snap. Just like that.
8) Deprived of Chinese jewelry, the Rohohoe economy dissolved into anarchy. Traces of this once proud people show up only in the finest cookbooks. Bereft of fresh orange beeves, Chinese founded culinary schools. They would rely on their own ingredients. No longer would Chinese caravans ply the world’s continents. No longer would their tradesmen paint, “Cho was here,” on stones all over America’s Southwest. Oh, I guess I should tell also those archeologists, sweltering in the hot Arizonan sun, what those petroglyphs mean.
– 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.
Italian Dessert
INGREDIENTS
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.
Brazil over Germany. I’m feeling very hemispheric right now. I’m also upset about the vicious tackle that took out a Brazilian star. I didn’t see it, but still. I just got reminded how 
West Germany and Austria effectively colluded in a World Cup match in 1982 to keep Algeria from advancing. Grr! Besides I like Brazilian food a lot more. BRA is the three letters internet reports use for Brazil or Brasil. Women wear bras. I like women. GER for Germany, is one letter away from being germ. Germs make us sick. Advantage, Brazil.
Netherlands over Argentina. I’m not feeling hemispheric loyalty anymore. Besides, I lived in the Netherlands and enjoyed it very much. My brother played soccer in the Netherlands for the American International School. No one in our family has even been to Argentina. Got to love those orange uniforms. The Dutch monarchy is descended from the House of Orange. A popular drink in the Netherlands is Oranjeboom, or Orange Tree. There’s also Dutch ovens. I love Dutch ovens. They make cooking so much easier. There’s no such item or beer, that I know off that has anything about Argentina in its name. Poffertjes is a great Dutch dessert. Sure, the Argentinian barbecue is great, but I’m in a mood for dessert. Oh, and hot air rises in Holland. A real estate agent once told my mother and I that. I have no such confirmation for Argentina.
– sports reporter, Paul De Lancey
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.
Saudi Appetizer
KABSA SPICE MIX
INGREDIENTS
2 1/4 teaspoons allspice
2 1/4 teaspoons cardamom
3/4 teaspoon cloves, ground
½ tablespoon coriander
½ tablespoon cinnamon
½ tablespoon fennel
3/4 teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon lime or orange zest
½ tablespoon pepper
½ tablespoon turmeric
Makes 4 2/3 tablespoons
Note: The above list of ingredient assumes the spices to be already ground. However, spice mixes taste better when using grinding your own spices. However, if you think the effort in tracking down ginger root, cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, cloves, and peppercorns might turn you into an axe-wielding murderer, please consider using already ground spices.
PREPARATION
Mix ingredients together with fork.
TIDBITS
1) Isn’t that the shortest preparation instruction you’ve ever seen?
2) William Shakespeare could have had the shortest resume ever. All he would have needed to write was, “I am available.”
3) The smallest country in the world is Vatican City with an area of 0.2 square miles and 770 permanent residents. This tiny nation is the spiritual center for over one billion Roman Catholics.
4) Monaco gets the silver medal in the small-countries event with an area 0.7 squares miles and 32,000 people. It’s ruled by Prince Albert II. This nation maintains its independence from France only as long as the princely line produces heirs. Last time I checked the good prince had not produced kids, much less get married. Get cracking, Albert.
– 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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