Think hard about pizza when you look at this pasta salad. Visualize pizza. Grok pizza. Be one with pizza.

Just don’t order pizza.

Working — with agonizing slowness — on the novel has hacked the tenderloins off my concentration for cooking or for any other sort of writing. In the interest of retrieving my tardy self-discipline, I’m going to o’er-leap the metaphorical stack of indie albums that I ought to write about and tackle #2 in my Legacy of the American Idol Judges series: worldwide legend Mariah Carey (official site).

Since Carey says her favorite food is pizza, but she doesn’t get to eat it because she’s always dieting, the accompanying nosh is a pizza-themed pasta salad. Salad’s dietetic, right? As with Minaj, let’s start with the most recent hit… well, most recent song… Read the rest of this entry »

One retro cupcake deserves another.

The genesis of these cupcakes was Offbeat Home’s Weekend Challenge: Nerdy Cupcakes or Unicorn Heads?, and yes, I realize there are people who wonder how I could pass up a chance to attempt to build papier-mâché taxidermy. Someday, I shall tell about the Heffalump Head Disaster. But not today.

Haley Reinhart’s sultry, retro-19060s soul/pop debut album, Listen Up! (buy at iTunes or Amazon) seems like a good fit for my urge to try a retro-1960s cupcake recipe. I’m going to go track-by-track, so you may want to mosey on over to Spotify to listen along. Or you can preheat the oven to 350 and prepare for surprises. Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday night involved delightful experiences that should be shared more broadly. Pork/shrimp/coconut crepes at Sekong by Night was one of the best meals I’ve ever had, for a mere $8; but I’m going to haul my more epicurean pals there and do a full review anon (though not anonymously).

Cambodian food might seem an odd match with folk/R&B artist Teneia Sanders (web site), but (a) very few indie restaurants near the Rhythm Room are open on Sundays and (b) “surprising contrasts” are an appropriate theme for the evening, starting with opener Walt Richardson (web site). Richardson is apparently the Elder Statesman of the regional non-metal music scene (yes, Phoenix has a non-metal local music scene, and I promise, this came as a surprise to me, too), and his style is… folk reggae. He does a story-telling song about whether the viewpoint character’s fate matters that I have quite a crush on, but I can’t find it anywhere, so you’ll have to make do with an old clip of “Cool Mama” (old clip), which he performed on Sunday with his actor sister Lily [whose surname I'd provide if I was sure of it]. That immediately preceded Sanders’ show to launch her new album, Confessions of a Scorpio, so… Read the rest of this entry »

The organic sausage-mushroom pizza at Z Pizza ain’t got nothin’ on Bruno Mars.

Mind you, it’s a decent slice: the sausage is spicy, the tomato sauce is pleasantly acidic, the cheese is minimal (I’m still on my anti-cheese kick), the crust is crisp, and the service is friendly.

But Bruno Mars provides a truly stunning concert experience. I bought tickets for the Hooligans in Wonderland tour because his radio hits are catchy, it seemed like fun, and I was curious. But I’ve never been anything that qualified as a fan, so when I toss superlatives in arcs of hyperbole, imagine this being done in a neutral, objective fashion.

The opener was Mayer Hawthorne, who looks vaguely like Elvis Costello but writes and sings pure pre-rock Motown. I may cover him in more detail later. Midliner was Janelle Monae, who is creative, intense, high-energy, high-concept, and plagued by some of the most irritating tech in the history of sound boards. This isn’t just me: she ripped the monitor from her ear twice within the first handful of songs.

Then Bruno Mars hits the stage, and man, does he connect with the audience. There must be something about his posture or maybe his opening track, as he exudes connectedness in silhouette, from a distance. This should not be possible. His music is elevated by the intensity and charm of his performance.
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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 »

Look! More boneless, skinless chicken! (I initially typed this as “chinless chicken.” Do we doubt?)

My original intent was to use the can of coconut milk in my cupboard to make this lime-coconut chicken from A Perfect Bite. Then I read the calorie count on coconut milk. When I came to… other things happened.

This also seemed like the evening to reconsider my reluctance to embrace Adele. Having read seemingly every music source on the planet raving over how amazelating 21 is… it’s tough to approach that kind of album with an open mind. So I skittered up to it crabwise, plucking a few tunes from Youtube, starting with this one. Read the rest of this entry »

I want to like Ne-Yo in much the way I want to like boneless, skinless, tasteless chicken breasts: the substance is popular, flexible, and oh-so-healthful. While other R&B artists are singing about how Shawty is a hotty and their girlfriends’ll never know, Ne-Yo writes songs about loving a woman for her brains and decisiveness. [pets Ne-Yo]

So when I learned that his most recent album, Libra Scale (listen to most of it) is a conceptual work based around the comic book notion that three garbagemen have to choose between fame/power and love, plus it’s a tribute to Michael Jackson, I had to bite. The only conceivable downside from my point of view was the Michael Jackson angle, as I’m apparently the one person on the planet who wasn’t into his music. But I’m willing to give it a shot while doing something violent to a chicken breast. Shall we? Read the rest of this entry »

Bet you never knew black-eye peas were brought to the American South by Sephardic Jewish immigrants who settled in Georgia and were accustomed to serving the dish for Rosh Hashanah. (Yes, Wikipedia and I have been playing footsie under the dining table again.) I guess this makes them “soul food” in more ways than one.

These black-eye peas are about to become a side dish in a nice Southern fish fry, and in keeping with the soul food theme, we’re going to take a listen to some of the projects co-written or produced by Tennessee’s Sal Oliveri, whose background runs heavily toward Christian pop. Read the rest of this entry »