Wander Wunder wonders “Lye is used to unclog drains. Who thought putting it on olives would make them edible? Who tested this idea?”
Wanda Wunder
– 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 pound chestnuts (most of the fresh ones are available in Autumn)
SPECIAL UTENSIL
baking pan
Serves 6. Takes 45 minutes.
PREPARATION
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. While oven preheats, cut an “x” that covers one entire side on each chestnut. Make the cut deep enough to cut through the shell. (This makes the chestnut easy to peel. It also keeps it from exploding. This really can happen if you omit this step.)
Place chestnuts on baking pan. Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes or until chestnuts become tender, the chestnut shells start to open and become easy to peel, and the edible nut that’s inside turns golden brown. Remove from heat. Cover with kitchen towel. Let cool for 5 minutes. Peel and eat immediately.
TIDBITS
1) As you can see, the left chestnut in the above photo is unpeeled. It also has an “x” cut into it by a knife. This makes it much easier to peel. The two chestnuts on the right have been peeled and are ready to eat. ☺
2) But wait! This narrative gets even more exciting. ☺☺
3) When prehistoric tribes decided to cut “x”s on chestnuts, they inadvertently developed the game Tic-Tac-Toe. The uncut chestnuts became “zero” or the letter “o.” These doughty cavemen were already two letters on the way to the present English alphabet. Go, cavemen, go! Excelsior!
4) Then one fine summer day caveman Carl La Fong invented the letter “b.” (We know about La Fong because he signed his cave paintings. They’re worth quite a bit if you can discover one.) Ancient peoples could now spell the word “box.”
5 Before you knew it, peoples everywhere had an alphabet and words for everything. Not much later, the word “box” led to actual boxes. CheeriosTM and AmazonTM became possible. And we owe it all to chestnuts and the visionary Carl La Fong. Yay.
– 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.
Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and happy new year from me and the critters of Paul’s Flying Squirrel Squadron.
Oh, NORAD Tracks Santa said the jolly Saint Nick delivered 7,623,693,263 gifts last night. Well done, sir.
– 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.
Hi! This is the Christmas Wreath I made. I dyed the pinecones and glued to a wreath made of branches. I hope all of you are holding up well and are stress free, and happy.
– 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.
Wander Wunder wonders “Is the book of love mentioned in the famous song ‘Who Wrote the Book of Love’ available as an audiobook.”
Wanda Wunder
– 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
½ pound noodles, rice vermicelli or bean thread
4 cups chicken broth and water as necessary to cover noodles
1 medium onion
1 fresh bok choy or 2 cups Chinese cabbage
1 pound chicken breast
2 tablespoons peanut oil or vegetable oil
2 teaspoons minced garlic
1¼ teaspoons minced ginger
1 cup soy sauce
¼ cup kecap manis or soy sauce
3 spring onions
SPECIAL UTENSILS
colander
kitchen scissors
Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add rice noodles to large pot. Add hot chicken and as much hot water as necessary to cover noodles. Drain in colander, reserving 1 cup chicken broth from pot. Dice onion. Shred bok choy. Cut chicken into ½” cubes.
Add oil and green onion to pot. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently. Add chicken cubes, minced garlic, and minced ginger. Stir until well blended. Reduce heat to medium. Simmer for 10 minutes or until chicken cubes brown. Stir enough to ensure even browning.
Add reserved 1 cup chicken broth from pot, cooked noodles, bok choy. soy sauce, and kecap manis. Reduce heat to low-medium and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir frequently. Snip noodles into manageable bits with kitchen scissors or regular scissors. Dice spring onions. Garnish chop sui with spring onion.
TIDBITS
1) Pause and reflect.
2) Meditate.
3) Now look at the following pictures.
boulette roulette
4) They look amazingly similar, don’t they? This is no accident.
5) The picture on the left is a boulette wheel.
6) The one on the right is a roulette wheel.
7) Boulette and roulette are both games of chance.
8) They are both played with a bowl.
9) The two games are fun ways to lose money quickly.
10) Boulette means little bowl in French. Roulette translates as little wheel.
11) If these two gambling ventures are so similar, how is it that we only play roulette?
12) Both games involves spinning.
13) In roulette, a finely balanced wheel is spun within a bowl. However in boulette, the entire bowl is spun. Spinning a bowl works fine when it sits on a well oiled table. Well sort of. An over enthusiastic spin will send the bowl off the table where it will shatter into a million pieces.
14) Also, it is remarkably hard to spin a bowl of chop sui that’s atop tablecloth. Go ahead, try it. On second thought, no. And then, and then, so many games of boulette ended when a hungry gambler ate the chop sui. No chop sui, no pointer green onion to point at a number, no game. And so, boulette rapidly fell out of favor. Long live roulette.
– 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.
Wander Wunder wonders why do drivers take so long to go forward when the light turns green. They have one job while waiting at the intersection; look at the light and drive through the intersection. And look both ways for people who don’t know what a red light means. Ok, two jobs. But still.
Wanda Wunder
– 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.
Independence Fireworks
By far, the greatest number of nations achieving independence has occurred in my lifetime. It’s true. You can look it up. I am, of course, rather humbled by this knowledge. I don’t recall having much direct influence on this march to freedom but nevertheless, it has happened concurrently with my existence. I can only surmise that my life has always been a beacon of hope to people in downtrodden lands.
I see a Nobel Peace Prize in the near future.
For the record, countries achieving independence since my birth are:
Togo
Guinea
Madagascar
Mali
Senegal
Ivory Coast
Niger
Cameroon
Togo
Madagascar
Democratic Republic of Congo
Somalia
Benin
Burkina Faso
Chad
Central African Republic
Republic of Congo
Gabon
Nigeria
Mauritania
Sierra Leone
Tanzania
Uganda
Burundi
Rwanda
Algeria
Kenya
Malawi
Zambia
Gambia
Zimbabwe
Rhodesia
Botswana
Lesotho
Mauritius
Eswatini (Swaziland)
Equatorial Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Mozambique
Cabo Verde
Comoros
São Tomé and Príncipe
Angola
Seychelles
Djibouti
Namibia
Eritrea
South Sudan
Antigua and Barbuda
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Dominica
Grenada
Guyana
Jamaica
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Suriname
Trinidad and Tobago
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Brunei
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Malaysia
Singapore
Maldives
Palestine
Tajikistan
Timor-Leste
Turkmenistan
United Arab Emirates
Uzbekistan
Yemen
Belarus
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Croatia
Czech Republic
Estonia
Latvia
Lithuania
Malta
Moldova
Montenegro
North Macedonia
Serbia
Slovakia
Slovenia
Ukraine
Fiji
Kiribat
Nauru
Samoa
Palau
Papua New Guinea
Solomon Islands
Tonga
Tuvalu
Vanuatu
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Cyprus
Georgia
Abkhazia
South Ossetia
Kazakhstan
– 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 cup strong coffee*
or 1 cup regular coffee plus 4 teaspoons instant coffee)
6 ounces bagels, bread, or dinner rolls**
1 cup milk
4 eggs
⅓ cup butter, softened
¾ cup sugar
no-stick spary
* = Or ¼ cup coffee grounds in 1 cup water
** = 2 bagels, 6 slices bread, or 4 dinner rolls
SPECIAL UTENSILS
coffee maker
blender
electric beater
6 ramekins
9″ * 13″ casserole dish
Serves 6. Takes 1 hour 5 minutes.
PREPARATION
Make 1 cup strong coffee. Put bagels in 1st mixing bowl. Pour coffee over bagels. Let coffee soften bagels. Add coffee, softened bagels, and milk to blender. Puree until you get a paste.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Separate eggs .Add egg yolks, butter and sugar to 2nd mixing bowl. Combine with fork until well blended. Add this egg/butter/sugar mix to 1st mixing bowl with coffee/bagel. Mix with whisk until well blended. Add egg whites to 3rd mixing bowl. Whip egg whites with electric beater until peaks form. Fold egg whites into coffee/bagel/sugar/egg yolk mix.
Spray ramekins with no-stick spray. Pour mixture into ramekins. Put ramekins in casserole dish. Add water to casserole until water is 2/3 way up the ramekin sides. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes or until surface of puddings become firm to the touch and cracks in the surfaces appear. Goes well with vanilla sugar on top or with a scoop of vanilla cream on the side.
TIDBITS
1) See how, in the above picture, the ramekin filled with coffee pudding has broken down the color of the plate into its constituent colors. All culinary scientists use coffee in their spectrometers.
– 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.
And here it is, “Modern Day Wise Words – Part Three.
Unplug the air conditioner before you try to clean it with a metal table knife. – Kathryn Minicozzi
His cornbread ain’t done in the middle. – Mike Allsopp
He ain’t the sharpest pencil in the cup. – Brynne Chandler
In vino veritas, but in taco beatitudo. -Brynne Chandler
Don’t poke the bear unless you’re sure of your honey. – Brynne Chandler
Buy clothes in haste; repent in a leisure suit. – Paul De Lancey
The only time a printer will work without stopping is when you accidentally click on “Print Full Document.” – Paul De Lancey
The journey of 500 miles starts with a single step. However, this still leaves us with a long way to go.” – Anonymous
We’re here, because we’re not all there. – Anonymous
There are two types of people, men and women. – Anonymous
– 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 