GRAMMAR HAIKU #1
It is a truism.
Good grammar and chocolates
Will impress your date.
GRAMMAR HAIKU #2
Remember tonight,
Lust is fleeting but grammar
Endures forever.
– Paul R. De Lancey, 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
2¼ teaspoons yeast
1 cup water, lukewarm
3½ cups flour (2 tablespoons more later)
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon sugar
2 tablespoons flour
4 cups vegetable oil
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1⅓ cups shredded cheese (Gouda, Edam, or your choice)
1 cup sour cream
Serves 8. Takes 2 hours 10 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add yeast and lukewarm water to mixing bowl. Mix with fork until yeast dissolves. Add 3½ cups flour, salt, and sugar. Mix with spoon until well blended. Knead mixture until it becomes a dough ball and is no longer sticky. Cover and let rise 50 minutes or until it doubles in size.
Dust flat surface with 2 tablespoons flour. Divide raised dough balls into 8 mini dough balls. Add mini dough ball to flat surface. Use hands to press mini dough balls into 6″ wide dough circles.
Add vegetable oil to large pot. Heat oil using medium heat. It is hot enough if a tiny bit of dough in the oil starts to dance. Carefully place a dough circle in the hot oil. Cook for 3 minutes until bottom side turns golden brown. Flip dough circle over. Cook for 2 minutes or until new bottom side turns golden brown. This is your fried bread. Reduce heat a bit if sides turn golden brown in fewer than 2 minutes. Raise heat a bit if it turns brown in more than 3 minutes.
Repeat for remaining 7 dough circles. You might need to reduce to heat to low with succeeding breads to prevent to dough circles browning before the inside is still doughy. Place fried breads on plate covered with paper towels. Pat dry. Spread sour cream equally over the 8 fried breads. Sprinkle mince garlic over cream cheese. Sprinkle shredded cheese over garlic.
TIDBITS
1) Everybody loves Lángos. Including soldiers of invading armies. Defending armies use this to their advantage. Whenever the wind blows toward the attackers, the defender cook thousands of fried breads. The attackers smell the alluring aroma and stampede the Lángos frying in oil. Just as the advancing soldiers reach the pots, the boiling oil bubbles over and scalds their hands. No one likes an oil owie. The attackers retreat. The war ends. Peace breaks out. All is good again.
Paul R. De Lancey, 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.
LAUNDRY HAIKU #1
Laundry, oh laundry
I hate you. I will hate you.
’till the end of time.
LAUNDRY HAIKU #2
You, pile of laundry,
I so wanted to eat out.
But then I saw you.
LAUNDRY HAIKU #3
I have just one sock.
A parallel universe
Has the other one.
Paul R. 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.
INGREDIENTS
2 cups frozen French fries
1 baguette, crusty roll, or hoagie
1 tablespoon olive oil or vegetable
5 baloney slices
3 tablespoons ketchup
½ teaspoon piri piri sauce or hot sauce
½ cup shredded iceberg lettuce
Serves 4. Takes 20 minutes.
PREPARATION
Cook fries according to instructions on package. Cut baguette open lengthwise, but not all the way through. Put opened baguette in oven 3 minutes before fries are to be done. Take fries and baguette out when fries are done.
While fries bake, add olive oil to large pan. Heat oil using medium heat. Oil is ready when a bit of baloney starts to dance in the oil. Carefully add baloney spices to pan; oil is hot. Make sure baloney slice don’t touch each other. Sauté baloney for 2 minutes or until bottom of baloney slices brown. Flip slices and sauté for another 2 minutes or until the new bottom side browns.
Arrange baloney slices on bottom half of baguette. Then sprinkle fries over baloney. Drizzle ketchup and piri sauce over fries. Sprinkle lettuce over ketchup and piri piri sauce. Close sandwich. Cut sandwich into 4 equal pieces.
TIDBITS
1) The Gatsby Sandwich looks a lot like a ping-pong paddle. This is not an accident. The sport of ping pong consumed the famed author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, all his life.
2) Indeed, the great writer littered his earlier works with ping pong imagery. His most renowned work in the niche ping pong, aimless rich folk genre surely must be Proud Priscilla Pernod and Paul’s Ping Paddle. Literary critics still debate his pregnant metaphors and why he ever wrote the novel.
3) Anyway, disaster struck in 1924 when Fitzrgerald was thrown out of the Paris Ping Pong tournament for using a corked paddle. Depressed permanently by this affair, F. Scott turned to writing once more and penned his magnum opus, The Great Gatsby, which has tortured high-school students ever since.
4) The son of one of these destroyed scholars moved to South Africa and invented the Gatsby Sandwich. Some see the sandwich as an homage either to The Great Gatsby or to ping pong. While others hold that the chef only had French fries, a baguette, and baloney on hand. Who can say?
Paul R. 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.
You work hard all day. Things went wrong. You’re seething with barely suppressed anger. But food is needed at home. So off to the supermarke you go. The one particular item you need is all the way down the aisle. This aisle is so long you can barely see the other end for the curvature of the Earth. You almost make it to your package of squid-ink spaghetti you need for that meal you were going to make for your Venetian boss, where you were going to ask for a much needed raise.
But, but, but, there’s someone blocking your way with her cart. You summon your last reserves of patience and say, “Excuse me, would you please move your cart.” But no, the oaf, she doesn’t move her cart. She is oblivious. You shout at her, “Move your fecking cart.” She sneers at you. “How rude.”
Your self control evaporates. The two of you tussle. Another shopper has filmed the whole thing and posts it everywhere. Shoppers everywhere take this video as a license to attack other shoppers. Shopping-cart riots engulf our great nation. This unbridled anger spreads to politics. Soon, all of America descends into undeclared civil war. Lutefisk vendors take advanage of the widespread chaos to sell lutefisk at our grammar schools. My forward-looking mind shuts down at this point.
– Paul R. 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.
INSURANCE HAIKU #1
I call insurance.
I see continents drifting
While I wait, wait, wait
INSURANCE HAIKU #2
The check’s in the mail.
Your call is very important.
We’ll be right with you.
– Paul R. 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.
INGREDIENTS
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
2 cups heavy whipping cream
5 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
⅛ teaspoon salt
SPECIAL UTENSILS
food processor or blender
3 cup Mason jar
Makes 2½ cups. Takes 20 minutes to make and 4 hours to firm in freezer.
PREPARATION
Add chocolate chips to pan. Melt using low-medium heat. Stir constantly. Add melted chocolate chips and all other ingredients to 3 cup Mason jar. Make sure that the lid to Mason jar is screwed on tightly. Shake jar vigorously for 5 minutes or until mixture thickens to the consistency of batter. Put jar in freezer. Let sit for 4 hours or until firm.
TIDBITS
1) Family dinners can often be quite contentious.
2) Why?
3) There’s always someone who doesn’t like some dish that you made for the gathering on the clan.
4) And you spent up to two days making your feast.
5) And someone always brings up politics, which always gets people riled.
6) But this argument gets forgotten when someone offers to help and puts your grandmother’s cast-iron skillet in the washer. 30 minutes your angel of a daughter, Sally, looks up at you with soulful eyes. Tears drip down as she quavers, “Mommy, you were going to give that skillet one day.” Her distress punches you in the feels as you review the ingratitude and argument of the dining room. You wish, you really wish that just once serenity could prevail while eating with those oafs.
7) With this recipe your wish is granted. Everybody, absolutely everyone loves chocolate ice cream. Eating this dessert makes everyone so happy that they become strangely pleasant. Furthermore, this dish takes almost no effort to make and is so easy to clean. What more could you want?
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.
GOLF HAIKU
Iggy piggy poo.
Stupid ass devil golf club,
I shall destroy you.
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.
Moby Dick was to be portrayed by a whale in the movie with the same name. There are, of course, sperm whales that can be hired for the role. However, sperm whales know they have no serious competition from human actors, not even the ever superb and ever versatile Tom Cruise. Sperm whales realize this and charge $100,000 a day while on the set. White sperm whales are much rarer and command acting fees of $10,000,000 a day. No motion-picture studio can afford such a cost.
This is why the movie Moby Dick starring Gregory Peck did not film actual white sperm whales. The studio simply could not afford to cast Spanky the Sperm Whale.
So what did they do? There answer was ingenuous. They simply boiled some far-cheaper weisswursts. German white sausages, and drew mouths and eyes on them with a black marker. You really can’t tell the difference unless you see the white sperm whale and the weisswursts side by side and motionless as can be seen below
Of course, Hollywood always wants a sequel to any blockbuster. It never happened in this case, because the studio’s coffee lady moved to New Zealand, However, my sources told me the sequel would have been called Caleb Dick, Moby’s son. The above picture on the right was a promotional poster for the never-materialized second movie. Now you know.
Oh, and it took more time than I care to reveal to come up with the above pictures. However, that time would have surely been spent by me fomenting revolution in the streets. And we don’t need that.
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 struggle is real.
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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