An amazing amount of food is round. Are there other shapes allowed in cooking?
Yes, I’m glad you asked. Just in time for early, early Christmans shopping is the cookbook:
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.
Men, you’d better listen to Lucy.
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 cups fresh, crushed strawberries (about 1 pound whole)
2 tablespoons lemon juice
4¼ cups sugar
¾ cup water
6 tablespoons (1 1.75 oz box) fruit pectin powder
SPECIAL UTENSILS
potato masher or food processor
6 * 1-cup hot, sterilized* Mason jars (They really must be hot and newly sterilized.)
Makes 5-to-6 cups. Takes 1 hour plus maybe 3 hours to set.
PREPARATION
Remove green stems from strawberries. Cut each strawberry into 8 bits. Smash strawberry bits with potato masher until thoroughly crushed. (Or bits add to food processor. Pulse processor until thoroughly crushed, but not yet pureed.) Some strawberry bits should remain.
Add strawberries and lemon juice to large mixing bowl. Mix with fork until well blended. Add sugar. Mix with fork or whisk until sugar dissolves completely. (Sugar that doesn’t dissolve make the jam grainy.)
Add water and pectin to pan. Bring to boil using high heat. Stir constantly. Boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Pour boiling water over strawberry/sugar mix. Stir constantly for 3 minutes. The mixture should start to jell and thicken.
Pour strawberry mixture into Mason jars. Leave ½” gap at the top. Stir until strawberry bits, gel, and juice blend. Cover and let stand until set, but not longer than 24 hours. If desired, serve some immediately. Store the rest in the refrigerator for 3 weeks or in the freezer for up to 1 year.
TIDBITS
1) Mason jars are round.
2) Not everything is round. Sometimes pizzas are rectangular. Flower pots can be square. Refrigerators are never round. No, not ever.
3) However, Mason jars must be round. It would be impossible to screw on or off a square lid.
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.
Some people forgo common courtesy. Archer Woman knows how to teach them.
Archer Woman #2
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 who do rude things often say, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” Archer Woman knows what she’ll do,
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 medium onion
1½ pounds spinach
1 tomato
2½ tablespoons ghee or butter
2 teaspoons curry powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup coconut milk
2½ tablespoons creamy peanut butter
SPECIAL UTENSIL
food processor (You really need this unless you’re willing to spend a lot of time chopping by hand, or so a friend told me when his food processor died just as the spinach dicing started.)
Serves 6. Takes 40 minutes.
PREPARATION
Dice onion, spinach, and tomato. Add ghee, onion, tomato, curry powder, and salt to pan. Sauté at medium heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add spinach. Lower heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes. (Do not let spinach get mushy.) Stir enough to prevent burning. Add coconut milk and creamy peanut butter. Simmer for 3 minutes or until peanut butter blends in completely. Stir occasionally.
Goes well with rice beans, or maize porridge.
TIDBITS
1) Popeye the Sailor ManTM loved spinach.
2) It also made him strong
3) Tanzania should have its own version of Popeye.
4) Papaye Mtu Baharia is quite possibly a correct translation of his name into Swahili.
5) The most popular name for men in Tanzania is James.
6) So, I give you James Mtu Baharia, Tanzania’s strong spinach-eating hero.
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 – PORK BALLS
2 green onions (2 more later)
1¼ pounds ground pork (70%, if possible)
½ teaspoon Chinese five spice or white pepper
½ tablespoon brown sugar
1½ tablespoons cornstarch
1¼ teaspoons minced ginger (¾ teaspoon more later)
½ teaspoon salt
½ tablespoon soy sauce
6 tablespoons peanut or sesame oil
INGREDIENTS – SAUCE
¾ teaspoon minced ginger
4½ tablespoons soy sauce
1½ tablespoons fish sauce or soy sauce
2 teaspoons Shaoxing wine or dry sherry or sake
2 green onions
SPECIAL UTENSILS
wok or large pan
Serves 4. Takes 40 minutes.
PREPARATION – PORK BALLS
Thinly slice 2 green onions. Add all pork-balls ingredients except peanut oil to large mixing bowl. Mix with hands until well blended. Form 8 pork balls with hands. Add peanut oil to wok. Heat oil at medium-high heat until a slice of green onion in the oil starts to dance.
Carefully add pork balls to hot oil. Fry the pork balls for 2 minutes or until pork balls turn golden brown all over. Gently and quickly turn enough to ensure even browning. Cover. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 15 minutes or until pork balls are no longer pink inside. (You can slice a pork ball slightly open and take a peek.) Turn occasionally to ensure even cooking inside. Use slotted spoon to remove pork balls. Drain on plate covered with paper towel.
PREPARATION – SAUCE
Add all sauce ingredients except 2 green onions to mixing bowl. Mix with spoon until well blended. Add pork balls to serving bowl. Ladle sauce over pork balls. Thinly slice 2 green onions. Garnish with sliced green onions.
TIDBITS
1) Braised Pork Balls In Sauce are round.
2) Electrons are also round. They can be seen with an electron microscope.
3) Electron microscopes are really neat. Where can you get one?
4) First, try CostcoTM. They have everything. However, they tend to sell in bulk. So, you might have to buy four electron microscopes at once. No one needs four such things.
5) So, look for electron microscopes on ebayTM. You might find a good deal. However, you most likely be purchasing a used one. Did the previous owner take good care of it? Will it even work when you receive it in the mail? Do you really want to buy it sight unseen?
6) You can look at everything that Dollar TreeTM carries before buying them. This precaution is essential for making an informed purchase. However, as of press time, the price tag for electron microscope exceeds a dollar. So you’re unlikely to find this gizmo there.
7) I don’t go to swap meets. Thus, I don’t know if you can pick up an electron microscope at one. If you frequent swap meets, please let me know about this.
8) Sometimes you can get a good sofa or desk that are left on the sidewalk in front of someone’s house. The same, however, cannot be said for electron microscope. A friend of mine, took four such abandoned microscopes. Everyone of them proved to be busted. Bummer.
9) But then, who would abandon a perfectly good electron microscope?
10) By the way, what is a synonym for electron microscope? Field emission telescope? Nah. How about Electron View Biggifier (EVB?) That seems more likely. Yeah, we’ll go with EVB.
11) Well then, where can you get an EVB? Okay, you need a really rich EVB hobbyist for a friend. Be sure to drops hints before your birthday.
12) Now a gift on an EVB is really special, no matter how rich your friend. So you really should consider sending her a thank-gift right away. May I suggest giving a fresh batch of homemade chocolate-chip cookies. Everybody loves those.
13) Don’t forget while EVB magnifies electrons, there is no such thing as a Braised Pork Ball microscope to view braised pork balls. All legitimately made pork balls can be seen with the naked eye. Regard with suspicion all microscopic pork balls sold online or by phone call.
14) Above and to the right is an image of the radon atom as seen by my EVB. As you can see, electrons are black.
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.
Optimism is overrated. Optimists always preach to pessimists, “Stop being Dave and Debbie Downers. Just be happy. Life is too short to be downcast. You’ll never get anything done if you always dwell on the negative.”
Well, oh ho, let’s look at all the great life enhancing inventions pessimists have gifted the world.
1)) The first one is the parachute. Sure, optimists brought us the magnificient airplane. That gets shot down in war. Parachutes, concieved by pessimists, enable pilots to survive a crashing plane.
2) Fire extinguishers, neglected by optimists who built opera houses and movie theaters, help patrons to escape a fire.
3) Seat belts help drivers and riders to live through car crashes, sometimes unharmed. It took a look time for pessimists to win the battle on that one.
4) Air bags for cars. You had to be pessimistic about fatal automobile crashes to come up with that idea.
5) Backing up files on computer, on memory sticks, and the cloud. You had to be pretty darn negative here to think up that.
6) Hiring CPAs, tax attorneys, and the lot to do your taxes. Depressed about doing your taxes correctly and avoiding an audit, weren’t you?
7) Insurance. Preventing you from being financially devestated by a unlikely distaster. Imagine, an entire thriving industry built on pessimism.
8) Our armed forces. We are indeed pessimistic that something horrible will happen to our nation and the world without a military to protect us.
9) Our police force. Our negativity constantly anticipates loss of property from thieves and murderers.
10) Antiseptics and ether. Would you chance surgery without them?
11) Locks on your house. The chance of your house being burgled is clearly less than 100%, yet we all get them and feel more secure as a result.
12) Alarm clocks. We don’t think we can get up in time without them.
13) Firemen. We can be pretty optimistic than we’ll never need a fire station. Yet thanks to pessimists they get built over and over. Homes and lives get saved.
14) Multiple engines on early airlines. Customers were so pessimistic about engine failure, that airlines were forced to add engines to the planes. Airline travel has flourished ever since. Can you imagine our world with air travel?
15) The eraser. Enough said.
There are many, many other life-enhancing inventions spurred on by pessimists. Please feel with ones that come to your mind. Thank you,
Anyway, three cheers for pessimists. I feel more optimistic knowing they’re around.
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.
Indeed.
Wanda Wunder #22
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
6 ounces cooked bacon
¾ pound cooked chicken breast
2 tablespoons chives
2 stalks green onions
2 cups grated mozzarella
½ cup grated provolone
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
½ cup creamy Caesar dressing
1 pound pizza dough
¼ cup creamy Caesar dressing (2 teaspoons at a time)
6 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese (1 tablespoon at a time)
SPECIAL UTENSILS
rolling pin
large baking sheet.
parchment paper
Takes 1 hour 15 minutes. Serves 6.
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Dice cooked bacon, cooked chicken breast, chives, and green onions. Divide pizza dough into 6 balls. Add bacon, chicken, chives, green onion, mozzarella, ½ cup Parmesan cheese, provolone, and ½ cup creamy Caesar dressing to large mixing bowl. Mix with hands or fork until well blended.
Roll each dough ball into a 9″ * 7″ rectangle. Add 1/6, about 1 cup, of the chicken/cheese mixture to the bottom middle of a dough rectangle. Smooth mixture over dough rectangle, leaving a ½” border. Fold in sides and roll up like a burrito. This is the bake log. Pinch ends of bake log closed. Gently press seam of bake log until closes. Repeat for each dough rectangle.
Place parchment paper on baking sheet. Place bake logs, seam side down on parchment paper. Brush each bake log with 2 teaspoons Caesar dressing. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese over each bake log. Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes or until tops turn golden brown.
TIDBITS
1) Naval submarines are called that because they have the same profile as a submarine sandwich. American submarines, at the start of WWII, used torpedo sandwiches to sink Japanese ships. These torpedoes faired poorly as did similarly shaped sandwiches such as the one is this recipe. Eventually the Navy turned to metallic torpedoes armed with explosive warheads to turn the tide in the Pacific.
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's Blog 