Many book holders cost about $25, at least the one I saw at Barnes & Noble did. And they are bulky. And you can’t have them over the stove. What can be done? I’m glad you asked. Take a plastic pants hanger, one that you get when you buy a pair a pants from the store. Simply place your recipe in the pants hanger and hang it above the stove. You can now cook without dashing back and forth between the kitchen table and your stove. Hurray!
Grit magazine is still around. I saw hundreds of their ads in darn near every comic book that came out when I was growing up in the 60’s. But they never gave any indication of promoting culinary adventuring. Until now. Please enjoy the following pictures. The first one is from Sad Sack and the Sarge magazine, July, 1969. The second is from Grit magazine’s website. Enjoy.
From my cookbook.
American Soup
INGREDIENTS
1 1/4 pounds chicken breasts
4 ounces carrots
3 celery stalks
1 medium yellow onion
4 garlic cloves
9 cups chicken broth, a bit more than 2 quarts
1/2 teaspoon basil
2 bay leaves
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice
1/2 teaspoon coriander
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1/2 teaspoon tarragon
1 teaspoon thyme
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoon olive oil
12 ounces egg noodles
PREPARATION
Cut chicken breasts into 1/2-inch cubes. Dice carrots. Devein, or remove long, silky strings from outside of celery stalks by breaking stalk in half and pulling apart. Dice celery and onion. Mince garlic cloves. (Whole garlic cloves rarely fare well in recipes.)
Pour chicken broth into large soup pan. Add chicken cubes, basil, bay leaves, pepper, poultry spice, coriander, oregano, tarragon, and thyme. Cook at medium high for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, back at the saucepan, melt butter at medium heat. Don’t turn your back at this step; butter melts fast. Add olive oil and the diced, minced, and otherwise dazed and defeated veggies mentioned above. Cook and stir at medium heat for 5 to 7 minutes or until vegetables are soft.
Add these sauteed vegetables to the soup pan. Keep cooking the soup at medium-high heat for another 5 to 7 minutes. Add noodles to soup and cook according to instructions on noodles’ package or for about 8 minutes more.
Chicken-noodle soup is good for your health, goes well with biscuits and has been an American favorite for years; even before the Cubs’ last World Series win.
TIDBITS
1) Oregano looks a lot like marijuana, but it cannot get you high or cure glaucoma.
2) As of yet, there are no medical-oregano stores, not even in the most progressive states.
3) Another food that both starts and ends with an “o” is the mighty OreoTM cookie. Most nutritionists hold that this delicacy is not the healthiest of foods.
4) The OreoTM is, however, one of the tastiest morsels on this Earth.
5) As long as you don’t spice it with oregano.
6) Or even garlic.
– 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 Entree
INGREDIENTS
1 1/2 pounds of ground turkey meat
2 big garlic cloves
1 cup of sourdough bread crumbs
2 jars of spaghetti sauce
12 ounces of spaghetti
COOKING THE SPAGHETTI
Follow the instructions on your bag of spaghetti. Different sizes and types of spaghetti have different cooking instructions.
PREPARING THE MEATBALLS
This dish is relatively forgiving. If it’s too spicy, add some water or tomato sauce. If it isn’t spicy enough add some more. If it’s too “liquidy”–-“liquidy” is a legitimate cooking term–-cook the sauce a little longer. If there isn’t enough sauce add more.
Begin defrosting the turkey meat overnight. This way saves electricity and is better for the environment than defrosting by microwave. Sometimes, however, you just don’t have the time. It’s a good idea to take the meat out of the microwave and remove the defrosted outer meat. If you don’t, you will end up cooking the outer part of your block of turkey meat, making it extremely difficult to make meatballs.
Mince the garlic cloves. Take a slice of sourdough bread and make crumbs out of it. I suggest a food processor as it can make smaller crumbs than you can and it won’t get bored doing it either. Sourdough is the chosen bread in this recipe as it goes well with the garlic and spaghetti sauces.
Mix the meat, cloves, and crumbs together. Make meatballs that are at least 1 inch in diameter and less than two. Meatballs that are more than 2 inches across stand a good chance of resembling a model of the Earth–-a hard crust on the outside, gray in the middle with a reddish core.
Put the meatballs in the pan. Actually, this recipe will make two pans worth, giving a huge, delicious meal or wonderful leftovers that your kids will eat the next day before you get up.
Cook on medium heat. Gradually add spaghetti sauce until the medium balls are covered. Reduce heat to low and cover. You won’t have to turn over the meatballs more than a few times as the sauce atop will keep the moisture in.
You’re ready with your sauce at this point. However, if your noodles are not, if you can’t get your kids to log off Wizard 101 or if your sweetheart is in the middle of a Wii Fit session, it is an extremely good idea to set the heat to warm at most or even shut it off. Stir occasionally and gnash your teeth. Your anger will evaporate with the compliments your hungry brood or guests will give you for this meal.
TIDBITS
1) Pasta was eaten by the Chinese seven-thousand years ago.
2) Cortez brought tomatoes back to Spain from Mexico in 1519. So his conquest of Mexico, while bad for the Aztecs, was a positive boon for the culinary world. No tomato sauces for spaghetti noodles for 5,500 years! Ugh.
3)Pasta was not brought back from China by Marco Polo. Ancient Romans ate this food as well. Dang, yet another example of how boring history can be.
4) Pasta was considered to be peasant food by Italian nobility until around the 19th century.
5) Pasta is an anagram for “pa sat.”
– 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.
Cajun Entree
INGREDIENTS
6 turkey hot dogs
6 hot dog buns
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon Poultry MagicTM spice
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon thyme
No-stick cooking spray
PREPARATION
Preheat skillet to 350 degrees. Completely defrost turkey dogs. Mix paprika, salt, cayenne, poultry spice, cumin, and thyme on large plate. Coat all sides of the turkey dogs with spray.
Place the turkey dogs on plate and roll them until they are coated with spices. Place turkey dogs in skillet and cook for 8 to 12 minutes making a quarter turn every 1 to 2 minutes, or until spices blacken.
Toast buns. (Why do hot dogs and hot-dog buns come in different amounts? Why has no president done anything about it?) Put turkey dogs in buns. If you like Cajun cooking, you should need no condiments, such as ketchup. But as the French say, “Chaque à son gout.”
TIDBITS
1) I have never seen blackened hot dogs anywhere. This dish is a product of my feverish imagination. It’s good, though.
2) In 1755 and 1758, the British exiled French Canadians from Acadia. Many moved to Louisiana where they became known as Cajuns.
3) Cajun food is spicy. Canadian food is not. Nor is Eskimo cuisine. Eskimos do not have hot sauce.
4) I mostly grew up in Arcadia, California.
5) Cayenne is the capital of French Guiana. French Guiana is in South America. Why is this land not independent? Do the people love French cooking?
6) Cayenne is mostly grown in Mexico, Asia, Africa, New Mexico, and Louisiana. But apparently not much in a land that has a capital named Cayenne.
7) National Hot Dog Day is July 18.
8) Babe Ruth is believed to have consumed twelve hot dogs and drank eight sodas between games of a double header.
9) Americans eat about 150 million hot dogs on the Fourth of July.
10) Humphrey Bogart was a big fan of hot dogs. Coincidentally, he won an Oscar for his performance in The African Queen.
11) Mustard is the favorite hot-dog topping among adult Americans. Kids, however, prefer ketchup.
12) Maybe this recipe will change that.
– 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.
Hawaiian Entree
INGREDIENTS
6 frankfurters
1 white onion
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 cups crushed pineapple with juice
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon Meat MagicTM spice
1 cup brown sugar
3 slices bacon
6 hot dog buns
PREPARATION
Put franks in pot. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium and cook for about 15 minutes. Cut bacon slices in half. Fry bacon on medium-high until it starts to become crispy or golden brown. Toast buns. (This does not mean to sit down on a hot pad.)
Mince onion. Melt butter in saucepan. Saute onions in butter until soft. Add cornstarch, pineapple with juice, cider vinegar, turmeric, cumin, meat spice, and sugar.
Put frank in hot dog bun. Put a half slice of bacon alongside the frank. Put a big spoonful of onion/pineapple/sugar mixture on top of everything.
TIDBITS
1) And to those who think government studies don’t reek of excitement . . .
“There were a number of significant items from the USDA Frankfurter Study. Notably, the USDA-ARS package rinse method, developed to facilitate this study, was six times more effective at recovering Listeria from frankfurter packages than the currently approved USDA-FSIS method.”
2) Take a deep breath. Drink some ice-cold root beer and sit down until your heart stops beating like a jackhammer. Okay?
“Using the ARS method, analyses of the 32,800 one-pound packages indicated 543 or 1.6% (range = 0 to 16% for the 12 plants) tested positive for L monocytogenes.” And so on.
– USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Eastern Regional Research Center (ERRC) Spring 2003. “Microbial Food Safety Research Unit: Special Projects Team at ERRC.”
3) Even the attribution to this article is sexy.
4) I found this article by Googling “fun facts about hot dogs.”
– 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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