These muffins are my effort to find a cure for the common cold. They contain raisins (iron! potassium!), walnuts (protein!), pineapple (manganese! vitamin C!), orange juice (more vitamin C!), carrots (anti-oxidants!), and enough spices to decongest an elephant.

This throw-everything-in approach fits well with my pick from Run Hundred‘s top 10 workout songs list for January (and yes, I do feel hypocritical when I’ve been in no condition to go to the gym). The first time I heard somebody on the radio rapping “I wear your granddad’s clothes – I look incredible,” I figured this was some odd Will Smith schtick. (You must admit, Will Smith looks incredible in basically anything.)

No, it’s “Thrift Shop” by hipster-rapper Macklemore and producer Ryan Lewis featuring Wanz. And it is about… wait for it! Thrift shopping. Preheat the oven to 375 and let’s make some muffins.

Read the rest of this entry »

Donald Trump’s life will never be complete because he cannot be a rapper.

He also can’t have these cookies, as his household staff doesn’t know how to make them. But it’s more tragic that he can’t be a rapper.

This revelation came to me while listening to Rameer J’s new mixtape, Full Course (free legal download). His visual for an album cover gives one hint of how this happened. Is this or is this not a man who’s prepared to run a business empire, gold-plated pocket calculator in hand?

These cookies — which are a chocolate-flavored take on the classic Rice Krispy cookie — represent the sweet rewards of success. We are going to make them while listening to Full Course (NSFW), which turns out to be a romp through the conflicting thoughts of an indie musician in pursuit of the dream of fame. This is a story about the tension between art and commerce, and the tension between ambition and realism.

Read the rest of this entry »

All together now: “Your candy corn cupcakes do not look like candy corn!”

These cupcakes are an experiment that tastes pleasing enough but doesn’t entirely work as proof-of-concept. So this recipe falls in the vast range of cookery that lies between sunlit photos of domestic perfection (on the one hand) and “help! I can’t boil water!” (on the other).

This level of randomness fits well with a day when I realized two hours into a project that I needed — and couldn’t legally get — samples from a musician’s upcoming album and so would have to save him for later. As a result, it’s time for three contrasting layers of Artists I’ve Discovered on Twitter, in this case, psychedelic folk-pop UnAware (Facebook), hip hop Shoota The Outlaw (Reverbnation), and Clapton-esque acoustic guitarist Bud Buckley (Reverbnation). Preheat the oven to 325 and let’s see what’s what.

Read the rest of this entry »

Froot Loop Chicken inaugurates a new series based around season 12 of American Idol. Once the show starts assigning themes in the live rounds, there’ll be recipes to match each theme… but in the mean time, look for one post a month profiling the new judges. (Because the show is culturally significant, and I feel like it, that’s why.)

Look right here for the first one. Nicki Minaj says her favorite food is Popeye’s Chicken, a recipe I won’t be making unless the economy gets so bad that I have no choice but to put on a silly uniform and run a fryer. However, there’s a niche craze for Captain Crunch Chicken, and I’m fairly confident that a variant can be made with Froot Loops. Nothing short of Froot Loops is worthy of Minaj’s brightly colored wigs and calculatedly wacky style.

Also, both the chicken and Minaj deserve recognition that it’s not random craziness we’re seeing: this is done on purpose and with brains behind it. So let’s preheat the oven to 350 and jump right into her most recent hit, “Beez In the Trap.” [Note: nothing that follows is worksafe or a good idea to teach to adorable three-year-olds.] Read the rest of this entry »

There is foliage on my pizza.

There’s also a surprising amount of foliage in the surrounding neighborhood, as opposed to the more common Phoenix landscaping practice of expecting pedestrians to skitter from the skinny shade of one palm tree to the next.

The pizza is at Cave & Ives (official site), of which, more below. The neighborhood is an area called Arcadia Lite, due to its proximity to the darker and heavier… well, no, actually to the wealthier and ritzier Arcadia neighborhood. Both word on the web and architectural evidence suggests that Arcadia Lite is in the midst of a transformation from “middle-class with a side of discount stores” to “ardent gentrification with lashings of hipness.”

As always, the plan is to accompany the tour with selections from Daytrotter, so let’s start with trippy hip-hop troop Shabazz Palaces (official site), because this is exactly the sort of earnest hipster rap that probably has an audience in Arcadia Lite. Read the rest of this entry »

Then there are the days when it’s questionable whether I know how to cook. As a result, this post may have some NSFW moments. Click cautiously.

Run Hundred‘s top workout songs for June included the Men in Black 3 theme, “Back in Time,” which is working extremely well for me as a summer confection that I enjoy on the radio now but won’t remember by Thanksgiving. This seemed to call for a 1960s recipe, updated. Since the song is a mish-mash mash-up, I wanted a casserole.

After enough tiptoeing around the web that I was really, really hungry, I realized that Nibble Me This’ baked eggs Napoleon (recipe), which I’d Pinned as a recipe to try, had the right 1960s feel of haute cuisine fanciness laminated onto simple pantry ingredients. Plus, it would easily lend itself to modifications. So preheat the oven… no, wait, the oven preheating thing causes an unstable time loop… Read the rest of this entry »

Eight is the average number of gigs played by a North Dakota band before it either splits up or moves to Minneapolis.

Hip hop is the dominant local music form, according to Reverbnation. The style is presumably dubbed Frozen North.

Consistent with my new theme of reducing the cuisine of great regional restaurants to home cooking, I took my inspiration from the Hotel Donaldson (menu). The entrée most amenable to simplification is the spring chicken, largely for the appeal of making bright green edamame hummus.

The rapper most amenable to my ear turned out to be Mylez (Reverbnation), for the orchestral good time that he builds into his mixes. Preheat the oven to 350 and let’s get down and dakotan. Read the rest of this entry »

You know that dream where Zac Maloy and B.o.B. rent a swamp-front Creole cottage in Louisiana, stock up on beer, and invite you over to listen to them write songs together? And then you’re clapping out the beat while they’re in the kitchen, making jambalaya?

Two words: Steel Bill (official site). Yes, confessional, guitar-focused, faintly punk-y, grunge-y hip-hop with some veers into world beat. Let’s make jambalaya and take a listen. Read the rest of this entry »

A sudden urge to make tamale pie is not a source of pride. Tamale pie is among the most Americanized of pseudo-Mexican foods, with the bonus onus of lacking the hipster cred that’s been accrued by giant corporate burritos.

Your mom probably made tamale pie. Mine didn’t. Mine made the similar recipe that involved Fritos.

However, tamale pie links two ideas that had been on my plate. One is the monthly Top 10 Workout Songs from Run Hundred (site so you can vote!), which reliably includes something musically provocative. This month, the ear-catcher was a punk remix of Nicki Minaj’s mega-hit “Super Bass.” Meanwhile, Maura Johnston’s 11 Most Infuriating Trends of 2011 had called out white people revamping urban radio hits. In general, I value trend-watchers’ insights because my bent is for short, intense projects, not for longer-term absorption of the zeitgeist. This one, though… we gotta talk. Let’s start with the Nicki Minaj original. Read the rest of this entry »

Want to pull my pullet?

My Secret Recipe Club assignment for October was A Little Nosh, which is a site I’ve visited before for recipe ideas. Every one of Amy’s baking or breakfast projects looks mouthwatering… but if you’ve been following my State Fair entry extravaganza, you can guess how eager I am to bake right now. Fortunately, she also had the answer to a question that had been on my mind for almost a year: is it possible to make “pulled chicken” in the manner of pulled pork?

The answer is a resounding YES. Indeed, it’s easy, with her Pulled Chicken for Dummies instructions. Since she’s from somewhere on the Atlantic seaboard (yes, I feel vaguely like a stalker!) and I usually pair chicken with hip-hop or R&B, I thought Washington, D.C.’s Thievery Corporation (site) might be a fun and eclectic accompaniment. Read the rest of this entry »

There exists a fusion genre of country rap, sometimes called “hopry.” The potential of this music to thoroughly cheese off dedicated rock fans delights me.

So does my turkey-mushroom pesto, which is one of those “well, let’s throw ingredients around and see what works” recipes that… works.

Thanks to Wikipedia’s willingness to nuzzle up and nibble my ear, I’m equipped with a selection of hopry acts. So if one doesn’t please, the rest may be worth trying. Shall we marinate a mighty mushroom as we ponder how Bubba Sparxxx is a country boy but a playa too? Read the rest of this entry »

If I felt ghetto, I could call this Crack Pasta.

At Easter dinner, the guests partook of Dr. Bob’s baked ham, dipped into various cartons of store-bought salads, regarded my rum-soaked strawberries with the skepticism of a clipper ship captain who fears that if there’s rum now, there’ll be pirates soon… and inhaled this pasta. This pasta was more popular than dessert.

I have no idea why. Since we’re going with the inexplicable, the obvious match is Tyrese (listen — or not, there will be vids), who may be finally about to drop an album after a six-year hiatus. I was going to start with his current single, except that it seems to be off a prior album? Or there’s some confusion of prepositions, as surely “get it in” and “get it on,” while roughly synonymous from a male perspective, should not be considered identical as lyrics? Screw it. (Tyrese writes a lot of songs about that.) Let’s just go with it. Read the rest of this entry »

My first successful dish after a long bout of flu — with resulting reluctance to eat, much less cook — defies the laws of physics.

The concept was to construct an individual-sized portion of TheKitchn’s Quick Breakfast Casserole, thus enabling myself to eat some nice eggs without standing pathetically over a hot stove, weakly waving a spatula. And then it puffed.

A concept dish requires a concept album. I’ve been mildly obsessed with B.o.B.’s The Adventures of Bobby Ray since belatedly buying it a couple weeks ago. Plus, much like my accidental souffle, it consists of a bizarre agglomeration of ingredients that nonetheless melds and sings. You can take a partial listen here, but I’m going to go more-or-less track by track, with a surprise at the end. If B.o.B. has somehow slipped your mind, the video of his nigh-unto-ubiquitous hit is after the jump and before the recipe. Read the rest of this entry »

Paper Tongues’ December 14 show at Wild Horse Pass Casino was so compelling that upon buying the band’s eponymous album, my worry was that I’d been swept away by the moment and would be faintly embarrassed in the morning.

What we have here is a publicity still that I’m hoping A&M/Octone will not slap me for using, as not only did I not get good photos of the band in action, but even my food-porn photo of seafood pasta in vodka-cream sauce at Va Bene somehow got deleted from my phone. Va Bene is another experience where the service is so good that one worries about potential atrophy of the critical faculties — but honestly, this is not a horrible thing in a dinner or in a live show. The point is, after all, to enjoy it. Shall we? Read the rest of this entry »

M-m-m-muffins!

My modus operandi is to muster massive muffin enthusiasm because pulled pork was something I didn’t quite pull off, my souffle was insufferable, and a perfectly nice shrimp pesto pasta proved to be a dish I’ve used before. A small batch of muffins, however, saves the day.

In the spirit of finding the positive in the negative, let’s start tonight’s music with an original anti-bullying song from BlaiseSings (Twitter), a 16-year-old singer-songwriter from back East. She recently performed the song at an innovation gathering for teens in Manhattan (article). Read the rest of this entry »

These muffins involve an improbable combination of ingredients that should never have worked. This leaves me no choice but to recap the middle act from last Wednesday’s show, Tim Fite (listen). Tim Fite is what would happen if John Waters and Bullwinkle the Moose had settled down in Yoknapatawpha County and produced a son, and that son had moved to Brooklyn because he had a dream to make music.

Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Franti & Spearhead put on a terrific live show, and I am a curmudgeon. We need to stipulate those two items up front.

This is a case in which I think the artist is great, enjoyed the show, think it was a well-constructed show… and still am pretty sure I was not the target audience for this experience. I’m an introvert. My specialty is looking wistfully mysterious from a bar stool in the distance. Give me the bar stool and the distance, and I can bring the mystery like nobody’s business. I am utterly inept at situations that call for jumping up and down with my hands in the air. Indeed, I can provide the date, hour, and GPS coordinates of the last time I was drunk enough even to consider doing that, as well as testifying that on that occasion, I had quite a lot to say about Lacan but did no noticeable jumping.

At the same time, the spectacle of several hundred people jumping up and down with their hands in the air is quite impressive, when viewed from a safe distance to the rear that prevents one from being showered with other people’s beer. It’s even more impressive when they shout the more memorable bits of the lyrics, which they obediently do. A Franti/Spearhead show is the full aerobic workout of rock shows; it might even qualify as kick-boxing. Read the rest of this entry »

Desperately needed inspiration comes from the oddest places. Dinner this week had included one salmon filet that must have been destined for sainthood, as it was raw after 20 minutes in boiling liquid, and three undistinguished chicken dishes, plus 28 indie bands with the same opening riff. Then @YoSwanny proposed #foodthursday in response to this series of tweets and the accompanying widespread revelation that many people had felt my same urge to tumble off the healthful eating bandwagon.

The only possible inauguration for #foodthursday is therefore a cheeseburger, accompanied by songs about cheeseburgers. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, that’s a yam you see yonder.

My original plan was to commemorate the Uruguay-South Korea match by turning pasta, for which Uruguayans feel amore, with the trusty Korean stir-fry sauce in an homage to fried rice. U.S.-Ghana was to be represented by yam-peanut pancakes, which I may have to tackle some other time.

It will be explained below how things got out of hand. The out-of-handness of things makes it possible to turn to Ghana’s hiplife movement for a compilation album, Black Stars (listen) (details about album). The album name is in turn appropriate to the occasion, as Black Stars is also the name of Ghana’s football (soccer for us Americans) team. It is these confluences of influences that allow me to get through the day, also to consume so many yams. Read the rest of this entry »

Shame is supposed to be a great regulator of Japanese society. It’s therefore weirdly appropriate that it regulate discussion of the first World Cup Food Challenge meal that includes Japan.

The planned menu was fresh pea soup (Denmark-Netherlands), Milanesa (Paraguay-Italy), and yam potstickers (Japan-Cameroon). Unfortunately, while flouring the steak for Milanesa, it occurred to me that this is essentially chicken-fried steak. And we know what happens when one loses faith in the middle of a recipe: disaster. The steak tasted great but looked like a crime scene (and I wouldn’t make it again). The soup looks pretty and tastes like an overpriced restaurant (and I wouldn’t make it again). The lone success of the night was the potstickers, which I would recruit 8-year-olds to make in vast quantities. In a spirit of humbleness, let’s try out feminist Japanese rapper Hime (listen) and get sticky. Read the rest of this entry »