Sleepy Cat says good night and wishes you pleasant dreams. And so do I.
– 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.
Egg volleyball burst upon the collegiate scene this August and is taking our universities by storm. Listen to what the egg-volleyball luminaries are saying.
“We’re all scrambling to find the find the best athletes,” said Eunice Oeuf, Women’s Athletic Director for the University of Wisconsin.
“High-school athletes know there’s a high demand for their talents,” said Coach Ben “Data Base” Yumurta of the Cal Tech Beavers. “The big schools eat up most of the hot prospects. We get all sorts of rejections. You really need a hard shell to make it in this coaching job.”
“We poached an egg-volleyballer who had committed to Stanford,” said college recruiter Joe Eieren of the UCLA Bruins. “Now, we’ll whip them.”
“We’re forming men’s and women’s volleyball teams,” said Executive Chef Sue Vide of the Culinary Institute of America,” Our students already know how their way around eggs and have the necessary supple wrists for egg volleyball. We expect to leave our opponents with egg on their faces.”
“Other teams will crack under pressure when they face us,” boasted Yoko Arrautzak of the Duke Blue Devilled Eggs. “They might even run.”
Yancy Atody, hard-boiled coach of the Tennessee Lady Volunteers, scoffed at this claim. “We’ll make omelettes out of them.”
“Ha,” retorted Coach Arrautzak, “They don’t have the eggs to beat us.”
Albert “Al” Bumen, spokesman for the American Poultry Council can’t stop smiling. “We’re so pleased that the universities are finally taking this support seriously. We’ve been tossing this idea to them for decades.
– 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
2¼ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
⅔ cup water
1 medium onion
1½ tablespoons butter
6 cups water
5 ounces Gruyère, Emmenthaler, or Appenzeller* cheese
2 ounces sour cheese: ricotta, cottage, Limburger, goat, Harzer*, or other
* = Appenzeller and Harzer cheeses are your first choices, but they are powerful hard to find in supermarkets. Better luck will be found online.
Serves 4. Takes 45 minutes.
PREPARATION
Add flour and salt to large mixing bowl. Mix with whisk. Add eggs and ⅔ cup water to small mixing bowl. Mix with whisk or fork. Add watery eggs to large mixing bowl. Knead with hands until you get a firm, smooth dough ball. Dough should be thin enough to be pushed through holes in slotted spoon. If not, add a little more water and knead once more. Cover with damp cloth and let sit for 15 minutes.
While dough sits, grate or crumble Gruyère and sour cheeses. Mince onion. Add onion and butter to pan. Sauté at medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion softens. Stir frequently.
Add 6 cups water to large pot. Bring water to boil using high heat. Push dough ball through holes in slotted spoon into boiling water. You should be getting teeny, tiny bits of dough falling in the pot. Stir enough to keep dough from sticking to bottom of pan. Using slotted spoon, skim off dough bits as they float to the surface and add them to a serving bowl.
Add Gruyère and sour cheese to serving bowl. Mix dough bits and cheese with fork until well blended. Top with sautéed onion. Serve with applesauce or green salad.
TIDBITS
1) This is a Liechtensteiner entree. Liechtenstein is a tiny country. It needs a tiny tidbit. Indeed, if you were to spread out a picnic towel, part of the towel would spill over into neighboring Austria. To avoid international incidents, the Treaty of Vaduz forbids expressly picnics in Liechtenstein.
– 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.
Dance as a Greek goddess at the DMV
Everybody knows that waiting in line at the DMV is the most soul-sucking experience imaginable.
But we are all wrong.
Just because the slow lines inside the DMV resemble plate tectonics, it doesn’t mean our imagination and hopes have to slow that much as well. No! Well then, what do we do in those funereal confines?
I’m glad you asked. Here are some fun things you can do while waiting to turn in your paperwork for a smart license.
1) Start a flash-mob Greek dancing extravaganza. Put on your togas, crank up the Hellenic flute music and rock the joint as your favorite Greek goddess or muse.
2) Start a chess tournament. Don’t worry, there will be enough time. You’ll need to bring your own tables and chess sets.
Such fun
3) Give archery lessons. Isn’t there a risk of hitting someone? Won’t someone move into the path of the arrow? No, people don’t move inside the DMV. Well, hardly ever. And even then, your impeded shot will just make the line shorter. It’s a win-win scenario for all but the victim.
4) Organize a reading contest. The first person to read Moby Dick from cover to cover wins.
5) Set up a film festival. Screen the car classics, Thunder Road, Smokey and the Bandit, Death Race 2000, and if time permits, Mad Max – Fury Road.
6) Do DMV dating. It’s just like speed dating where you get five minutes with a potential date, but much, much longer.
7) Keep track of your time and apply it to any future jail sentences.
Dine Well While Waiting Out the Line
8) Bring a crossword puzzle book. Finish it.
9) Have a candlelit gourmet lunch with the person next in line. Dinner on lobster thermidor, steak au poivre vert, chicken Florentine, and baked Alaska. Meet the love of your life, make a business contact, or just past the time with delicious food and pleasing conversation.
10) Learn Portuguese. You never know when you’ll go to Brazil.
11) Get paid by the hour while you keep a billionaire’s place in line. The billionaire can use this time to rocket into space. It’s a win-win situation.
As you can see, there are many exhilarating things you can do while in line in the DMV. I hope to see you there. Son of a bee, we’ll have great glee at the ‘MV
– 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.
Sure, Greek philosophers, and other smarty pants after them, talked up a storm now and then about the concept of infinity. But none of it wrote down a symbol for it. So they all got forgotten, except for Socrates. And as we all know, Socrates was forced to take hemlock for not coming up with a symbol for infinity. The ancient Athenians took their proto-calculus discussions seriously.
One day, British mathematician and doughnut lover, John Wallis, was sitting at his table looking at two alluring pink doughnuts. His next door neighbor, Carl La Fong sat across from John gazing longingly at the pink delights. The great British painter, John Hoskins, happened to be there. This is his painting, “Two Pink Doughnuts.” It hangs in the Tate Museum in London, England.
“May I have one of your pink doughnuts?” asked La Fong.
“No, you may not,” said Wallis, “I love pink doughnuts beyond all measure.”
“Would you, could you, give me one pink doughnut if you had three?” asked La Fong.
“No, I would not. I would eat all three. I would eat them just with me.”
“Would you, could you, give me one pink doughnut if you had four?”
Wallis shook is head. “No, I would not. I would eat all four. I would eat them by the door.”
“Would you, could you, give me one pink doughnut, if you had an infinite number of pink doughnuts?”
“No, I would not. I would eat an infinite number of doughnuts.” Wallis scratched his head. “Say, what would the symbol for infinity look like?”
“Like this, you greedy man.” La Fong squished the two doughnuts.
And, lo and behold, John Hoskins painted the squished doughnuts. The wildly popular painting is on display at the British Science Museum in London. It’s called, “Infinity.” Here it is:
And so due to Wallis, La Fong, and Hoskins, we now have the symbol for infinity. Sir Isaac Newton used it to develop calculus. Now you know.
– 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.
May you get a full-night’s sleep. May you have pleasant dreams. May you wake up refreshed. May tomorrow possess no annoyances, no troubles. I wish you all the best.
– 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
⅔ pound dry cracked corn
6 cups water
2 cinnamon sticks
1 cup (10¾ ounces) condensed milk
1½ cups (13½ ounces) evaporated milk
½ tablespoon vanilla extract
⅓ cup sugar
½ teaspoon nutmeg
Serves 9. Takes 3 hours plus overnight soaking.
PREPARATION
Place cracked corn and water in large pot. Keep pot overnight in refrigerator. Keep water. Add cinnamon sticks. Cook corn at medium heat for 1 hour 15 minutes or until corn starts to break apart under the slightest pressure. Stir frequently enough to prevent burning. Check occasionally to make sure water still covers the corn. Add water as necessary. Remove cinnamon sticks.
Remove pot from heat and let cool for 30 minutes . (Liquid will cool quicker if you pour it into a cold pot.) Add condensed milk, evaporated milk, sugar, and vanilla extract. Stir until sugar dissolves completely, nothing sticks to the bottom, and there are no clumps. Remove cinnamon sticks. Refrigerate for 1 hour. Pour into glasses. Sprinkle nutmeg on top. Drink and eat with spoon.
Keep in jars or pitcher in refrigerator. Stir to break any up clumps before pouring.
TIDBITS
1) Just last year, culinary scientist Carl La Fong, announced that rock samples from the Earth and its moon contain nearly identical percentages of Chicheme. (See recipe above.) This assertion has rocked the scientific world. “Where did all this Chicheme come from?” ask the theory’s doubters.
2) “From the Earth’s core,” says La Fong. “Recent ultra-long-wave analysis shows the core to made up entirely of Chicheme. Over the period of 100 million years, about twenty meteor strikes at the same spot on the Earth’s crusts opened a tunnel to the core. Molten Chicheme flew out of there into space where it eventually coalesced into our moon.”
3) La Fong added, “There’s simply not enough cracked corn, cinnamon sticks, condensed milk, evaporated milk, etc. produced on the Earth’s surface to produce all the Chicheme that people consume. It simply must come from the Earth’s core via a 4,000 mile tunnel. So there, I’m right.”
– 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.
My life is exciting. I spent nearly the entire time yesterday making chocolate-chip and Heavenly cookies. Then I packaged, paid for them online and arranged a pickup with the post office. “How could I top that?” I hear you say.
Well let me tell you. I couldn’t get to sleep until 3:30 am. At 5 am, a scant 90 minutes later I was awakened with the news that someone was scratching around the front door. I opened the door to see two raccoons* holding a package each. I retrieved the packages. Nature’s little blighters had chewed through the box and had gotten to the cookies inside. Fortunately, I had extra cookies. But I had to work fast as I had two appointments coming up soon. I repackaged and relabeled the boxes. I also secured the boxes of cookies with more tape.
Enough of that! Off to an eye doctor. Then onward and upward to see a dentist. Then home. I’d tell you more but I suspect you’re already seething with envy.
Fun More Fun
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D., party animal
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.
Do you make other drivers’ lives miserable and dangerous? Take this test and find out.
Do you:
1) Do you occasionally run red lights? (2 points)
2) Do you routinely run red lights? (4 points)
3) Bonus points for question 2). Give yourself (2 extra points) for every car that run the red light before you? For example, if 4 cars run the red light before you do, then you get 4 * 2 = 8 points.
4) Do you routinely go 10 mph above the speed limit? (1 point)
5) Do you routinely go 20 mph above the speed limit? (3 points)
6) Do you routinely go 30 mph, or more, above the speed limit? (If yes, please stop taking the test. There’s no point to it. Paul’s Flying Squirrel Squadron is already on its way to have a “chat” with you. Best notify your next of kin to stay inside until its over.)
7) Park in handicapped parking when you are totally healthy, just because you won’t be there long? (1 points)
8) Back out of your parking spot without looking, because who could have possibly expected other cars to be in a fast-food restaurant’s parking lot? (1 point)
9) Text while driving? (2 points)
10) Not signal when turning? (1 point)
11) Not signal when changing lanes? (1 point)
12) Not a point observation but, OMG, did you not get the “blinker package when you bought the car?
13) For every lane changed above 1. (1 point) For example, you changed 3 lanes above 1 on a freeway. You get 3 – 1 = 2 points.
14) Slow do to 35 mph before exiting the freeway. (1 point)
15) Honk at other drivers? (1 point) Clarification, this only applies to road rage, not when you’re warning the other car that had you in its blind spot.
16) A car is patiently waiting at an intersection for a break in the traffic. You pull up enough to block that driver’s view. (1 point)
17) Sell lutefisk? (2 points) Sorry, this really isn’t a car question. I just really hate the food.
18) Pass by the menu at the drive-through lane, then take your time to decide at the to-go window?
19) Does your car spew great clouds of smog? (2 points)
20) Cut people off? (3 points)
21) Give others the finger? (1)
************************************************************************
What does your total score mean?
0 points: You are in no way a driving dick. In fact, you will go straight to Heaven when you die.
1-8 points: It’s still okay for you to drive without supervision. Think about your dickish traits and how you can overcome them.
9-16 points: Cause for alarm. You may still drive unattended. You will, however, be under constant surveillance.
17-24 points: You’re awful. You must post a bond before you hit the road. The bond will be forfeited to your surrounding motorists
25-32: You’re nearly erect. You must post a double bond before driving. You must also be accompanied by a guard who will taze you everytime you earn another point. (After he makes you pull over, of course.)
33+: You throbbing dick! You will not be allowed to drive at all. You will be fitted with an ankle device that will incinerate your foot if you do . A drone strike will obliterate you once you step outside.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D., concerned motorist
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 say you want to attend a contest that is conceptually easy to win? One that’s not physically demanding? Then the Finnish Dialect Speaking Championship is the event for you. It’s held in early July in Kuopio, Finland. Keep in mind, past winners tend to possess a strong command of this Nordic language.
Finnish girl (right) practices with her dog (left)
– 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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