Chupaqueso con tocino recipe
Doc mentions that he ‘could really go for one of Arnie’s chupaquesos con tocino with extra bacon and an icy-cold brewski or three.’ This is a particularly toothsome food-beverage combination, and if you wish to experience for yourself, the original recipe is from the Shlock Mercenary by Howard Tayler, and is reproduced here:
“You will need a good teflon skillet, a fairly sharp teflon spatula, some sharp cheddar, some fresh parmesan, and some Monterey Jack cheese.
Grate about a half-cup of cheddar and a half-cup of jack.
Heat the skillet, and spread the cheddar evenly in the pan. You should have an eight-inch diameter circle of grated cheese, with a little bit of pan showing through here and there.
As the pan gets hotter, the cheese will obviously melt. Then it will toast, and you’ll get cheese-grease floating on top of melted cheddar, itself on top of a layer of crusty toasted cheddar.
Start lifting around the edges with the spatula. You’ll soon reach a point (you’ll know, trust me) when the structural integrity of the crusty-toasty cheese allows you to flip the whole thing over.
(Speaking of “over,” this is often the point where you’ll get frustrated and decide to start over.)
After toasting side two for a moment, flip it again so the “smooth” side is down, and the recently toasted side is up.
You now have a cheese shell sizzling in a puddle of cheese grease. It’s still flexible, but much longer and it won’t be, so you’ll have to work fast. Add the jack cheese and a sprinkle of parmesan, and then tri-fold the cheddar-shell around it.
Slide it out of the pan onto your plate. It’s called a “chupaqueso” either because you can suck (chupa) the cheese (queso) out of the middle as you crunch away, or because this cheese (queso) thing you made sucks (chupa).
*For added flavor you might try adding cooked-and-crumbled bacon with the jack and parmesan. In this case you’ll end up with a chupaqueso con tocino, or, as it’s often pronounced in my house, “chupaqueso con SWEET TRADER OF PORK BELLIES THERE’S BACON IN THIS THING chomp chomp AAARGH I BURNED MY MOUTH slurp gulp chomp.”
For the record, it’s much easier to make a chupaqueso by sliding your credit card into a Popso 2250 Autovend. Officially licensed Tacobufa Chupaquesos are seamless, oblong, cheese-crust shells around a patented six-cheese blend. For just a little more money the Bufador Mealy-Dealy gets you a drink and a large order of Monosfritos (made with freshly-picked monos, or so I’ve been told).”
Editors
An editor does many things. Sometimes, it’s to tell you how best to prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse; other times, the editor will tear the hell out of a sentence you’ve written and paste it back together in a way that significantly improves its readability; still other times, the aforementioned editor shares a story with you that makes you snort loudly at the coffee shop with the free Wi-Fi you happen to be authoring at. For now, I’ll share George C. Hopkins’ latest pursuit of optical enhancement:
Spent the middle part of the day yesterday running around doing errands. Had the eye exam at my local VA clinic the day before and got a new prescription for new tri-focals (been wearing tri-focals for about 10 years now and am convinced that they’re the best thing since the ‘get-up-and-go’ cocktail [prune juice, ex-lax, Viagra, Everclear and ether - serve over dry ice in a highball glass]).
They (the VA) offer a reasonable selection of free frames to go with the free glasses. I asked for a pair that would make me even more of a babe magnet than I already am, and they suggested a pair of white wire frame aviator style. This exact frame, so they said, was an exact copy of the frames that the Fonz wore off-camera.
Tempting.
I instead went with a pair of big, thick, ugly, hard-to-break, black plastic ray-ban wayfarer style, which looked like they might stand up to a goose wing across the nose better than the Arthur Fonzarelli-style wire frames.
Goose wing across the nose is no joke. My good lady wife and I have both had two or three pairs of glasses apiece sundered by goose wings. She’s had her bell rung a couple of times too - not out cold, but not firmly in contact with the external environment for a minute or two either.
It’ll make your eyes water, nose run, ears ring, and sphincter loosen, oh yes indeedy.
Went out to my local military installation yesterday and had those good folks make me up a pair in the current military Birth Control frames and issue me a pushing stick so that I can better fend off the attractive, large-breasted young women who will no doubt want to bear my children once they get a load of me rocking my thick black plastic frames.
Will advise on results soonest.
Inspirations for this go around
Several things inspired me for this book. Going along with the title theme of Book Three, High Fantasy, I wanted a title that was both relevant to the text and a nod to an Austin band. High Fantasy is a play on the Austin, Texas band The Sword’s 2015 album, High Country, which I still recommend along with their recent acoustic rendition, Low Country. This book, The Mechanical Heart, is also a nod to an Austin band called Rory and the Artificial Heart. So there’s that too.
The Adventure Zone podcast has storylines that never fail to amaze me and continues to influence my writing. I was heavily inspired by the latest Groundhog Day-esque arc in this Dungeons and Dragons podcast.
Chrono Trigger. The greatest RPG (JRPG) of all time? Debatable, but in my book, yes. The End of Time was a must exactly as it is in the game. I recall spending more minutes than I’d care to admit here running around in the End of Time trying to figure out how to win the game.
In some part, Travis Bagwell’s Awaken Online: Catharsis added some fuel to ideas I’ve been playing with regarding in-game AI. If the Sage of Gotha can tap into a player’s biggest fears and exploit them, what happens when something sinister is birthed from this process? The next book in the Feedback Loop series will play with this and I look forward to opening this particular can of worms.
Thanks to all those who email me and support me by reviewing my books and telling other readers about my works. Special thanks to the editor-in-chief, George C. Hopkins, the beta-reader-in-chief, Kay, and the special fellas that email me occasionally to offer me encouragement and make jokes about socks and living in Asia. Big up to you all.
That’s it for now. Please review any and all of the Feedback Loop books if you have read them. This is the number one way to help the book reach more readers. Buy a book for your granny or grampy if they’re into scifi.
Yours in sanity,
Harmon Cooper
[email protected]
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue: Potluck
Back of the Book Shit
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
C
hapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Epilogue: Potluck
Back of the Book Shit
Table of Contents
The Mechanical Heart: (Book Five) (Sci-Fi LitRPG Series) (The Feedback Loop 5) Page 27